Marcus Borg is a leading New Testament scholar, member of the so-called Jesus Seminar (a group of scholars that I've criticized here), and author of several works about the life and teachings of Jesus.
As I've discussed in other posts, the Jesus Seminar's main prupose is to make Christianity palatable to a secular and anti-Christian audience. This seems to be weird, since if Christianity is true, then anti-Christianity has to be false and secularism too. (In the same way that if near-death experiences are true afterlife experiences, materialism is false. You cannot have them both).
The popularity of the Jesus Seminar ideas (and the ideas of other people like Dan Brown) is caused by the widespread hostility towards Christianity in USA and other western countries. This is why many these books (like Brown's the Da Vinci Code) become best-sellers, even when they're defending false ideas (ideas which even atheist scholars specialized in the field reject as false and ridiculous).
In the case of the Jesus Seminar, they attract not only atheist readers, but all the readers who (for whatever reasons) are hostile to traditional Christianity, including mystics, spiritualists, pantheists and specially religious pluralists. (Note that this claim is a pure factual asseertion: I'm not claiming here that the hostility to Christianity is justified or unjustified, or that Christianity is true or false; these are another matters. I'm simply claiming that people hostile towards Christianity tends to be attracted and sympathetic to the Jesus Seminar's work on Jesus, and this claim can be easily corroborated. The reason is that the want to have a new vision of Jesus more palatable to their anti-Christian tastes and preconceived ideas).
It's important to understand that many members of the Jesus Seminar, including Borg, are religious pluralists, i.e. they believe that no religion or spiritual way is "the only way", but that all or many religious are valid and true. As consequence, they try to undermine the view of Jesus and Christianity as the "only way", and in order to do it, they have to create a new portrait of Jesus.
In the case of Marcus Borg, his religious pluralism is grounded largely in his 0wn personal mystical experiences. In this interview, Borg says "Yes, I did have a number of mystical experiences in my early 30s that made all the difference in my life. Suddenly, through these experiences, my life changed from having this notion of God as a hypothetical concept to experiencing the reality of God. This transformed my understanding of God.
As I've discussed in other posts, the Jesus Seminar's main prupose is to make Christianity palatable to a secular and anti-Christian audience. This seems to be weird, since if Christianity is true, then anti-Christianity has to be false and secularism too. (In the same way that if near-death experiences are true afterlife experiences, materialism is false. You cannot have them both).
The popularity of the Jesus Seminar ideas (and the ideas of other people like Dan Brown) is caused by the widespread hostility towards Christianity in USA and other western countries. This is why many these books (like Brown's the Da Vinci Code) become best-sellers, even when they're defending false ideas (ideas which even atheist scholars specialized in the field reject as false and ridiculous).
In the case of the Jesus Seminar, they attract not only atheist readers, but all the readers who (for whatever reasons) are hostile to traditional Christianity, including mystics, spiritualists, pantheists and specially religious pluralists. (Note that this claim is a pure factual asseertion: I'm not claiming here that the hostility to Christianity is justified or unjustified, or that Christianity is true or false; these are another matters. I'm simply claiming that people hostile towards Christianity tends to be attracted and sympathetic to the Jesus Seminar's work on Jesus, and this claim can be easily corroborated. The reason is that the want to have a new vision of Jesus more palatable to their anti-Christian tastes and preconceived ideas).
It's important to understand that many members of the Jesus Seminar, including Borg, are religious pluralists, i.e. they believe that no religion or spiritual way is "the only way", but that all or many religious are valid and true. As consequence, they try to undermine the view of Jesus and Christianity as the "only way", and in order to do it, they have to create a new portrait of Jesus.
In the case of Marcus Borg, his religious pluralism is grounded largely in his 0wn personal mystical experiences. In this interview, Borg says "Yes, I did have a number of mystical experiences in my early 30s that made all the difference in my life. Suddenly, through these experiences, my life changed from having this notion of God as a hypothetical concept to experiencing the reality of God. This transformed my understanding of God.
Karl Rahner, the great Catholic theologian, said that the future of Christianity will be mystical or it will not be at all. What I understood him to be saying is that in a world of religious pluralism, a religion that simply operates as a kind of hypothetical construct will cease to have any enduring power. The question becomes: Why should I take Christianity seriously if there is no experiential validation of its foundational claims? How can I take Christianity seriously if we cannot experience God as real and known to us in various ways? For Christians, the decisive way God is known is through Jesus. Jesus gives us a sense of the character and passion of God."
As Borg's concede, his own personal, mystical experiences, were the cause of his change of view about God. Influenced by Rahner, Borg realized that in a religious pluralist world, religion has to be experienced by each practitioner, not simply thought in hypothetical terms. Borg asks why should he take Christianity seriously if there is not experiential validation of its claims?
Borg's question reveals an obviously flawed assumption and reasoning. For example, why should I take NDEs seriously if I haven't had any experiential, personal validation in my life of the claims of NDErs? The answer is that a bunch of people have had NDEs, and serious scientists consider them worthy of study, and this is important to the survival question. The fact that I myself lack such experiences is not reason to think that the people who DO have them are wrong, or that study them is a waste of time.
Do I need to have "past-lives memories" myself in order to take the evidence for and against resurrection seriously?
In the same way, if you have never observed an UFO or being abducteed, does it mean that you cannot take ufology seriously? Obviously no. There are many reports of abductions and other lines of evidence suggesting that something interesting is happening in ufological studies, and it has nothing to do with your own personal, subjective experiences.
Likewise, the fact that I myself lack any inmediate experience of Christianity's (or any other religion, for that matter) fundamental claims is not reason to think these claims are false or cannot be taken seriously. For example, if Jesus' resurrection is historical, then I have reason to think Jesus' teachings seriously and be open to Christianity's fundamental claims. It has nothing to do with my own subjectives personal experiences.
By the way, Borg assumes that his own view of God as a "hypotethical concept" is the view of Christians in general. This is simply false. Many Christians say that they "feel Jesus Christ in their hearts" and things like that (If these feelings are veridical or not is not my point now). They feel their life changed by God. So, they not have the cold, purely intellectual view of God that Borg had before his mystical experiences.
But Borg's flawed reasoning is beside the point in this moment. My interest is to show the connection bewteen Borg's personal (mystical) experiences and his religious pluralism and how it affects Borg's view on Jesus.
Once Borg's view about God is changed by his mystical experiences, it is not surprising that he interprets Jesus' life and teachings in that new (pluralistic) light. In fact, as Borg explicitly says, such new light about Jesus "undermines a widespread Christian belief that Jesus is unique, which is commonly linked to the notion that Christianity is exclusively true and that ‘Jesus is the only way." ( Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, p. 37)
Note Borg's insistence in undermining Christian exclusivism, and making Jesus look as nothing fundamentally special or unique (among other spiritual teachers of other religious). This insistence is caused by Borg's uncritical acceptation of religious pluralism which, in turn, was caused by his own mystical experiences.
This approach to Jesus' life and teachings have the following consequences:
-It begs the question against the possibility that the traditional exclusivistic view of Jesus be correct. This is a question that has to be settled by the evidence, not by our personal prejudices or ideologies (in favor or against such a view).
-It makes antecedently very improibable, almost impossible, the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, since the latter is not the kind of phenomenon that you would expect in a Jesus who is not essentially or fundamentally different than other spiritual teachers. This is why Borg and other members of the Jesus Seminar reject in advance the historicity of Jesus' resurrection.
-It forces in advance a certain pluralistic reconstruction of the historical Jesus, in which the evidence is interpreted in terms of pluralism alone. The inmediate consequence of this is a very poor and seriously undermined image of Jesus (specially of one who is putatuvely resurrected).
In my interview with Robert Perry, Robert quoted the following Borg's words (which are telling of Borg's pluralism and his watered down view of Jesus): "Rather strikingly, the most certain thing we know about Jesus according to the current scholarly consensus is that he was a teller of stories and a speaker of great one-liners whose purpose was the transformation of perception. At the center of his message was an invitation to see differently"
Note that if we accept Borg's words at face value, then Jesus' status is not essentially different than any other spiritual teacher of mankind. If Jesus was merely a "teller of stories" and a speaker of "great one liners" with the purpose of "changing people's perception", then what the hell is the fundamental spiritual difference between Jesus and other teachers like Silver Birch, Buddha, Hermes Trimegistro, Sai Baba, Paramahansa Yogananda, Osho or popular writers like Louise Hay, Wyne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch or Eckhart Tolle? Is not the main, basic, essential and often explicit purpose of all of these people to "change people's perceptions" through a bunch of stories, examples, analogies, anecdotes, arguments, metaphors, maxims, aphorisms and great one liners?
Note by the way that in Borg's poor and watered down view of Jesus, the historicity of the resurrection (if it occurred) is absolutely unexplanaible in the context of Jesus' life and teachings. Jesus' resurrection becomes a miracle without a proper context rooted in Jesus' unique nature and teachings. The unique phenomenon of the resurrection comes from the left hand, without any connection with anything special in Jesus, since nothing special or unique or spiritually exclusive exists in him as a plausible explanation of the unique event of the resurrection.
Borg's strongly undermined, poor and watered down image of Jesus makes no room for the resurrection of Jesus and make it extraordinarily unlikely given religious pluralism. Therefore, if the evidence favors Jesus' resurrection, both religious pluralism as Borg's reconstruction of the historical Jesus, is largely refuted and is probably false.
I suggest my readers to explore critically the evidence for and against Jesus' resurrection, and draw their own conclusions about the implications of this matter.
Borg's question reveals an obviously flawed assumption and reasoning. For example, why should I take NDEs seriously if I haven't had any experiential, personal validation in my life of the claims of NDErs? The answer is that a bunch of people have had NDEs, and serious scientists consider them worthy of study, and this is important to the survival question. The fact that I myself lack such experiences is not reason to think that the people who DO have them are wrong, or that study them is a waste of time.
Do I need to have "past-lives memories" myself in order to take the evidence for and against resurrection seriously?
In the same way, if you have never observed an UFO or being abducteed, does it mean that you cannot take ufology seriously? Obviously no. There are many reports of abductions and other lines of evidence suggesting that something interesting is happening in ufological studies, and it has nothing to do with your own personal, subjective experiences.
Likewise, the fact that I myself lack any inmediate experience of Christianity's (or any other religion, for that matter) fundamental claims is not reason to think these claims are false or cannot be taken seriously. For example, if Jesus' resurrection is historical, then I have reason to think Jesus' teachings seriously and be open to Christianity's fundamental claims. It has nothing to do with my own subjectives personal experiences.
By the way, Borg assumes that his own view of God as a "hypotethical concept" is the view of Christians in general. This is simply false. Many Christians say that they "feel Jesus Christ in their hearts" and things like that (If these feelings are veridical or not is not my point now). They feel their life changed by God. So, they not have the cold, purely intellectual view of God that Borg had before his mystical experiences.
But Borg's flawed reasoning is beside the point in this moment. My interest is to show the connection bewteen Borg's personal (mystical) experiences and his religious pluralism and how it affects Borg's view on Jesus.
Once Borg's view about God is changed by his mystical experiences, it is not surprising that he interprets Jesus' life and teachings in that new (pluralistic) light. In fact, as Borg explicitly says, such new light about Jesus "undermines a widespread Christian belief that Jesus is unique, which is commonly linked to the notion that Christianity is exclusively true and that ‘Jesus is the only way." ( Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, p. 37)
Note Borg's insistence in undermining Christian exclusivism, and making Jesus look as nothing fundamentally special or unique (among other spiritual teachers of other religious). This insistence is caused by Borg's uncritical acceptation of religious pluralism which, in turn, was caused by his own mystical experiences.
This approach to Jesus' life and teachings have the following consequences:
-It begs the question against the possibility that the traditional exclusivistic view of Jesus be correct. This is a question that has to be settled by the evidence, not by our personal prejudices or ideologies (in favor or against such a view).
-It makes antecedently very improibable, almost impossible, the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, since the latter is not the kind of phenomenon that you would expect in a Jesus who is not essentially or fundamentally different than other spiritual teachers. This is why Borg and other members of the Jesus Seminar reject in advance the historicity of Jesus' resurrection.
-It forces in advance a certain pluralistic reconstruction of the historical Jesus, in which the evidence is interpreted in terms of pluralism alone. The inmediate consequence of this is a very poor and seriously undermined image of Jesus (specially of one who is putatuvely resurrected).
In my interview with Robert Perry, Robert quoted the following Borg's words (which are telling of Borg's pluralism and his watered down view of Jesus): "Rather strikingly, the most certain thing we know about Jesus according to the current scholarly consensus is that he was a teller of stories and a speaker of great one-liners whose purpose was the transformation of perception. At the center of his message was an invitation to see differently"
Note that if we accept Borg's words at face value, then Jesus' status is not essentially different than any other spiritual teacher of mankind. If Jesus was merely a "teller of stories" and a speaker of "great one liners" with the purpose of "changing people's perception", then what the hell is the fundamental spiritual difference between Jesus and other teachers like Silver Birch, Buddha, Hermes Trimegistro, Sai Baba, Paramahansa Yogananda, Osho or popular writers like Louise Hay, Wyne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch or Eckhart Tolle? Is not the main, basic, essential and often explicit purpose of all of these people to "change people's perceptions" through a bunch of stories, examples, analogies, anecdotes, arguments, metaphors, maxims, aphorisms and great one liners?
Note by the way that in Borg's poor and watered down view of Jesus, the historicity of the resurrection (if it occurred) is absolutely unexplanaible in the context of Jesus' life and teachings. Jesus' resurrection becomes a miracle without a proper context rooted in Jesus' unique nature and teachings. The unique phenomenon of the resurrection comes from the left hand, without any connection with anything special in Jesus, since nothing special or unique or spiritually exclusive exists in him as a plausible explanation of the unique event of the resurrection.
Borg's strongly undermined, poor and watered down image of Jesus makes no room for the resurrection of Jesus and make it extraordinarily unlikely given religious pluralism. Therefore, if the evidence favors Jesus' resurrection, both religious pluralism as Borg's reconstruction of the historical Jesus, is largely refuted and is probably false.
I suggest my readers to explore critically the evidence for and against Jesus' resurrection, and draw their own conclusions about the implications of this matter.
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