Review of Wright and Borg: The Meaning of Jesus

A few weeks ago I attended the annual combined meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion which was held this year in San Francisco. It was a four or five day conference attended by 10,000+ bilblical and religious scholars. Papers were presented. Thousands of books were on display. Receptions and gatherings took place. It is quite a bit of nerdy fun, but these kinds of conferences can also be quite overwhelming - especially for someone raised in conservative Evangelicalism.

My first trip to the conference - several years ago now - was quite troubling because it was certainly not what I was used to. The purpose of both the SBL and the AAR is to advance the academic scholarship of the Bible and religion (as a discipline) not necessarily to advance the Christian faith. That was what seemed so foreign to me. It felt so odd to spend several days talking about God as an object of our intellectual speculation and not as the subject of our worship. (I remember calling my dad and telling him that the conference was great, but if the Lord returned, I think the conference would carry on). I don't ever want to grow fully accustomed to dealing with faith as an academic pursuit, nevertheless I have grown in my appreciation for what even the most suspicious scholarly work contributes to the conversation of vital Christian faith.

In particular, I've grown a bit in my appreciation of what the so-called "Historical Jesus Movement" has contributed to biblical scholarship and even to evangelical thinking about the Gospels. As Christians read the Bible with any degree of thoughtfulness we recognize that what we find there is the product of both divine and human interaction and synergy. Even the most conservative Christian who is convinced that the Scriptures contain the authoritative "Word of God" recognize that the divine Word is received and then transmitted through human agents.

In the conservative Evangelical church our emphasis tends to be on the divine voice revealed through the Old and New Testaments - and rightly so. We are, as the Body of Christ, most interested in discovering what our Creator and Father has to say to us through the preaching and teaching of the church. Religous and Biblical scholarship on the other hand, tends to focus more on the role particular humans and particular human communities played in the writing and formation of the Scriptures. The interest of current scholarship tends to be on the historical contexts, the political motivations, and the social constructions that were at work in the development of Hebrew and Christian sacred texts.

By the way, both are important. I would argue that when conservative Christians fault it is when we pay no attention to human aspects of history, politics, sociology, religious development, etc. at work in the writing (and interpretation) of the Scriptures. But when scholarship faults (at least from my perspective as a Christian) it is when it only pays attention to the human element and leaves out (or nearly leaves out) the presence, revelation, and work of the divine in the Bible.

The Historical Jesus Movement is and was primarily a scholarly pursuit. The basic premise of the movement is that because the four Gospels contained in the New Testament are products of the early community of Christian faith written to inspire others to have faith in Jesus as the Christ, they are faith histories and not what we would consider today to be "acutal" histories of the person Jesus of Nazareth. (Which by the way is a premise we conservatives would not disagree with). So the pursuit of the Historical Jesus Movement is to try and recover - as much as possible - the actual historical Jesus (what he said, what he did, and what he meant) from the Jesus described by the community of faith. That likely means - for those scholars - that much of what we receive in the Gospels are faith additions, embellishments, and products of the later church placed within the mouth (and actions) of Jesus. (Which is the point where they lose most conservatives).

One of the leading advocates and respresentatives of the Historical Jesus Movement is Marcus Borg - Professor of Religion at Oregon State University. I just finished read the book The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions which is a dialogue between Borg and well-known and much more conservative scholar NT Wright. The book takes eight questions about Jesus - How do we know aobut Jesus? What did Jesus do and teach? Why was Jesus killed? What is the resurrection? Was Jesus God? What do we believe about the birth of Jesus? Is Jesus coming again? And what is the impact of Jesus on the Christian life? - and allows Borg and Wright to each write a response (and some dialogue) on each of those important questions. Borg writes from his "Historical Jesus" standpoint and Wright from his more conservative Orthodox vantage point.

The book is actually quite a fascinating read. Subject by subject they alternate who writes first and it is interesting how civil, thoughtful, and convincing both writers are with one another. I found the book stimulating. It was like getting to go to lunch with both of them and asking them the questions you have always wondered about.

Here are three quick thoughts about the book:

1. Although I really enjoyed the book I don't recommend it for everyone. Not because the book raises some hard issues, but because some people aren't wired in ways that will allow them to fully appreciate it. There are a lot of brothers and sisters in Christ who prefer - or are at a place in their walk with Christ - when they desire or even need indoctrination. They want to know what they should believe and are not ready to wrestle with the challenging perspectives of others. I think at some level it is healthy to have to wrestle with hard questions, but not everyone is ready for that or even wants that. So consider yourself warned.
2. Although I largely don't share Borg's perspective, I am very thankful for the work of the Historical Jesus Movement. I think the basic flaw of the movement is that it is always forced to set up rules ahead of time to try and recover the historical Jesus from the Gospels. When we have to set up rules to help us discover what is historical from what is not, the rules always determine what we are looking for ahead of time. For example, if we begin to look for the "historical" Jesus by determining that miracles were added to the Gospels by the faith community after the life of Jesus and anything that is unique to one particular Gospel and not found in the other three is a later addition, then we don't really know in the end if we discovered the historical Jesus or the non-miraculous, highly repetitive Jesus we were looking for at the beginning. If historians assume Jesus was a politically profound peasant, then that's usually who they discover. As Wright points out in the book, all we have today is the Jesus of faith because that is the only Jesus the Gospels tell us about. Nevertheless, the work historical scholars have done in helping us root Jesus back into the historical, political, and sociological context is invaluable. Too much teaching and preaching decontexutalizes Jesus which easily turns into a form of idolatry on our side of history as we assume the words and actions of Jesus are decontextual and therefore easily translated and recontextualized into the twenty-first century. The truth is, the more we discover Jesus in his historical and social setting the more we are able to discover his radical kingdom message for our day.
3. Even though I sided with Wright's perspective in the debates, I left the book deeply moved by Borg's own personal sense of Christian faith. And there are even parts of Borg's articulation of faith that I found not only informative but significant for my own faith. What I appreciated most about this book is the ability of Borg and Wright to dialogue with Christian civility about their differences. There should be more of what Richard Mouw calls "Convicted Civility" or "Uncommon Decency" that marks our conversations with one another as followers of Jesus (both the one of history and the one of faith). For that alone I am thankful to have read The Meaning of Jesus.

Comments

[Constance Morrow]

I really enjoyed your review of the book. I remember when a number of years ago I heard Borg speak at Washington National Cathedral and how thrilled my clergy colleague was afterward at all she had heard him say. I was quiet. She knew me very well and after awhile she said, 'So what did you think about Borg's assertion that we find Christ in everything or in nothing?" When I said I wasn't moved by his remarks she was quiet. Finally she said, "Not much there about being saved by Christ's blood shed on the cross was there?" I said, "No." We left in a companionable silence each with our own thoughts.