Christology
Borg
Borg and
Wright accept the basic Christian proclamation that “Jesus lives” as “both Lord
and Christ” (p.129). For Borg, these affirmations are a post-Easter phenomenon
that did not reflect the reality of what the Jesus of history proclaimed nor
what his disciples believed during his earthly ministry. They reflect, rather the simple fact that “the
followers of Jesus, then and now, continued to experience Jesus as a living
reality after his death” (p. 135). Thus,
whatever actually happened during the ministry of Jesus and in the events
surrounding the reports of the empty tomb and the post-crucifixion sightings of
the risen Messiah, it is “the post-Easter Jesus as an experiential reality”
that is of enduring importance. It is
the risen Christ “encountered as a living spiritual reality” (p.135) which is
the grounding point of faith for Borg, upon which the authenticity of doctrine
and tradition are legitimized as a metaphorical expression for truths that transcend
the boundaries of language.
Wright also accepts Borg’s thesis
that the full incarnational view of Jesus was a product of “a developing
tradition” (p. 130). However, Borg does
not draw distinctions between Jesus as the Jewish Messiah as plausibly
identified by himself and his initial followers both before and after the
crucifixion, as does Wright, and the fully formed Christ of the New Testament, the
suffering and risen God of the Incarnation.
Thus, for Borg, the various referencing of Jesus in the New Testament,
whether as “The Wisdom of God” “The Son of God,” or “messiah,” point
metaphorically to the same existential reality; that of “tak[ing] very
seriously what we see in him as a disclosure of God” (p. 152). Wright, by contrast, argues that an implicit
incarnational perspective was assumed very early on. This was reflected, Wright argues, in the
letters of Paul (particularly 1Cor 8:6, Phil. 2:5-11, and Col.1:15-20), based
on the grounding belief that God’s will in full bodily form was exhibited in
the life, teaching, the symbolism of the healings, along with the crucifixion
and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
This Jesus, perceived as Israel’s
Messiah interpreted through the prism of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, was the
basis of a more fully developed incarnational perspective, already implicit in
key Pauline texts. In Wright’s words:
If you start with the God of the
Exodus, of Isaiah, of creation and covenant, and of the psalms, and ask what
God might look like were he to become human, you will find that he might look
very much like Jesus of Nazareth, and perhaps never more so than when he dies
on a Roman cross (p. 167).
The general point by way of critique
of Borg’s position is not that the New Testament does not use metaphor, but the
significance in its own right between the images evoked and that to which the images
refer, namely to Jesus the Christ as “the image of the invisible God” upon whom
“all the fullness [of God] should dwell” (Col 1:15, 19). With Borg, the metaphorical reality beneath
this language has universal significance beyond the thought categories of
second temple Judaism and even fully formed christological ones in their symbolic
pointing toward a more transcendent and universal reality than that which can
be depicted in words. The metaphorical
emphasis in Borg is reinforced through a pre and post Easter dichotomy, which
he seems to conflate with a before and after New Testament depiction of Jesus. For Wright, they emerge from their grounding
in Jesus’ messianic vocation in which fully formed christological claims only
make sense to the extent to which they maintain their rooting in the creation,
covenant, wisdom, and apocalyptic longing based on Israel’s story. Otherwise one is referring to another story
lending toward syncretism. The force of
Wright’s argument cannot be used to substantiate what actually happened in the
first few years after Jesus’ death.
However, it does lend support to counteracting the notion that the
concept of Jesus as both Israel’s
Messiah and the Lord of human history was a product of a latter faith
community, which the gospel writers retrojected back into history through their
narrative constructions.
Both Borg and Wright agree that the
Christian revelation was not simply a product of the imagination of Jesus, or
of the events and beliefs surrounding his life, teaching, death and
resurrection, nor even a product simply of the early faith community, and the
writings of the books that became the New Testament. For both writers all of these events are
crucial for the understanding of the emergence of first century Christianity. What both writers would also say is that it
was (and is) God working through these events which brought to proximate fulfillment
in the mission to the Gentiles, God’s covenant
with Abraham as depicted in Genesis 12. Where
Borg and Wright differ is both in the extent to which they perceive the actual
history and the claims of faith as continuous or discontinuous, and its corresponding
significance in shaping how faith is defined.
For Borg, the importance of the
resurrection is “that the risen Christ journeys with us” (p. 134) through our
lives. The cost, as well as the joy, Borg
notes, is in following Jesus “on the path of death and resurrection” regardless
as to the literal truth of the biblical narrative. What Calvary
signifies in its most fundamental sense is “the path of dying to an old way of
being and being born into a new way of being” which is only possible through
radical death to old self. It is in this
profound mirroring of the pathway to new life in unswerving faith in God that
Jesus as Christ “becomes the incarnation of the Way” (p. 139). The metaphorical truth, on Borg’s account, beneath,
through, and beyond the biblical story is valid whether or not the events in
the gospel narratives took place as described, which has its analogues for
those of other religious traditions, in the faith traditions that belong to them.
Whether there was an actual
historical reality upon which the gospel writers provided elaborated resurrection
accounts, as Wright suggests, is a secondary matter for Borg, of which he is
highly suspicious. What he does argue is
that it was the “experiences of the risen Christ as a continuous presence”
[that] generated…the story of the empty tomb” (p. 137) and the corresponding
sightings, whereas Wright maintains the reverse. Empathetic identification with the risen
Christ leads, on Borg’s reading, to a profound hope, that in some ultimate
sense, “the domination system [which] killed him” (p. 137) is reversed. This, in the most fundamental sense is what
the resurrection signifies—“Jesus is Lord. Rome
[as a symbol of the domination system] is not” (p. 136) and that “all the would
be lords of our lives,” whether personal and political, would be subordinated
to the lordship of Christ, onto life, onto death, and onto new life. For Wright, this is also pivotal, except for
him unless this belief had deep roots in actual history, a gnosticism in the
venue of Matthew Fox’s “cosmic Christ” or that of Bishop Spong’s theology
“beyond incarnation” or theism is an all-too-present outcome of a disembodied
Christian spirituality.
Unlike
Wright, Borg does not think the historical Jesus “foresaw his own death as a
sacrifice for sin,” or that he likely viewed himself as Israel’s
Messiah. Moreover, Borg rejects any
notion that “God can forgive sins only because of Jesus’ sacrifice” even as the
sacrifice of Christ is “a powerfully true metaphor of the grace of God” (p.
140). On Borg’s account, Christ’s
sacrifice “is a metaphorical proclamation of the radical grace of God,”
pointing to “the abolition of the system of requirements, not the establishment
of” a new set based on a literal interpretation of the atonement. In this respect, any notion of Jesus as God’s
unique son as articulated most fully in the Gospel of John and the Epistle to
the Hebrews is viewed by Borg, as a profound and beautiful metaphor signifying
the sufficiency of God’s grace which can find congruence in other stories and
images reflected in other religious traditions.
Viewing the Trinity itself as a
metaphor rather than descriptive of something of the essence of the personhood
of God, Borg can claim that Christ as Lord is decisive for those affirming the
Christian faith as their unique pathway to God, but not decisive in any
ontological sense in the claim of Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life”
(Jn. 14:6) without equivocation and remainder as an objective statement of the
human condition. This is a complex issue
that requires a much more nuanced examination than is often given that, in the
most profound sense, this claim is based on faith rather than knowledge, but
which, nonetheless, has the capacity to more than hold its own apologetically
as well as doctrinally. However much
work is required to substantively flesh out this foundational belief, invariably
through a mirror, dimly, to shift too quickly to a “metaphorical” explanation is
to slide too easily over the scandal that God is revealed most fully in a
particular religious tradition rooted in a specific time and place.
This is the central argument of traditional
orthodox theology which underlies the mandate to “go therefore and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Sprit” (Mt 28:19). Namely, the claim that “for us there
is only one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one
Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things through whom we live” (1Cor.
8:6). Such missionary zeal and the
theological certitude it presumes would not have a place, except perhaps metaphorically,
on Borg’s vision of the Christian revelation, which, if taken on its own terms,
could only be interpreted as finds incredibly naïve, arrogant, or both, utterly
out of place in the pluralistic multi-religious perspective of the contemporary
era.
Wright
By contrast, Wright roots his theology
firmly in the radical particularity of Israel’s central monotheistic claim,
christologically interpreted through 1Cor 8:6 in which there is no other
greater, even as the full mystery of the biblical revelation remains beyond
human comprehension. This requires
“great risk,” as Wright puts it partly for rhetorical effect, that “our God is
the true God, and your gods are worthless idols” (p. 160), a comment that
necessitates much elaboration. On this,
Wright is challenging the “gods of this age” (my quotes), whether “the earth
goddess, Gaia, revered by some in the new age movement” (p. 158), the secular
project of social integration via Jurgen Habermas’ (1984, 1997) ideal speech
act, or the postmodern deconstruction of all mettanaratives, except for that of
its own—that all world views are historically construed, and therefore relative
in their depiction of truth. Israel’s
God is utterly different, too, from Paul Tillich’s panentheistic “‘God above
God’ who transcends the polarity of being and nonbeing, infinity and finitude
actuality and potentiality,” the “creative force that moves the world to higher
possibilities” (Bloesch, 1995, pp. 21, 19), a process god.
In short, Wright rejects the
modernist project of correlative apologetics.
Apologetics is essential work in opening space for discussion in the
public square. At its best, however, the
effort to “translate” the gospel in other idioms than its own revelatory
language only goes so far in communicating the untranslatable, the irrevocable
power and Lordship of YHWH, embedded historically “in Jewish soil,” both
radically transcendent and immanent, the God of judgment and infinite embrace
revealed fully and finally through the Word and the Spirit in Jesus of Nazareth. Wright’s forte is in placing history and
faith claims in closer proximity even while recognizing the invariable chasm
between the two, a niche that has given shape to his Christology of a fully
embodied and fully transcendent suffering, redeemer, God, of love, judgment, finality,
and truth.
Thus, for Wright, as well as for Borg,
Christian spirituality, fully rooted in Jewish soil, is not some detached
essence beyond the illusion of the body or human history as encountered.
Rather, it is within the location of both the
glory and limitations of human finitude where in the midst of human history “the
true God is strangely present, knowable, and lovable” (p. 208) revealed through
a mirror/dimly in
Israel’s
story.
Within the context of who we are,
both in our personal lives and public culture, the essence of Judeo-Christian
spirituality remains the commandment to love the Lord, your God with all your
heart, mind, strength and soul, and your neighbor as yourself.
It is
this
gnosis lived through radical faith which gives rise to increasing knowledge
about that which is most important, namely, God’s truth as revealed especially
in the wisdom literature of the Old and New Testament.
It is in this respect that Wright embraces
both creator and creation spirituality “while firmly rejecting the magical”
(italics removed) in relation particularly to the latter. Thus, “creation can
be the bearer of God’s presence, holiness, love, and grace” (p. 209), but not
the source as is at least the temptation in theologies that embrace “mother
earth” as the body of God.
To the extent
that creation embodies God’s presence its relevance as expressed in
Judeo-Christian spirituality is its sacramental power.
So it is with history in which for Wright,
there is “no Jesus of history played off against the Christ of faith” (p. 210)
even as the relation between history and faith requires subtle mediation.
The more fundamental point is that
the essence of who Jesus is lies in the totality of what this “no other name”
(my quotes) represents through whom true God is most fully mediated. This Wright insists upon much more
unequivocally than does Borg, which his historical studies have helped him to
confirm. Thus, for Wright, the essence
of Judeo-Christian spirituality lies in the dynamic tension between loving the
world to the point of radical commitment toward its reconciliation with God and
rejecting any deification of the world, and certainly its evil, which requires
an element of radical separation. For
Wright, “Christian spirituality, focused on and shaped by Jesus, looks at the
glory and shame of it all and brings both, in prayer and liturgy before the
presence of God” (p. 212). It is this particular
spirituality, in all its folly and scandal that speaks to the fullest
aspirations and needs of humankind, which, even as “the secret things belong to
the Lord, …those things that are revealed belong to us and to our children
forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut: 29:29). Within this
context of revealed truth, one finds and is found by the God who can be
revered, who desires and commands our full allegiance. This is the essence of Wright’s historically
grounded embodied Christology.
What then of history? We cannot leave things at this point without
taking a closer look at the nuanced way in which the relationship between
history and faith is teased out in Wright’s theology in his desire to “speak truly
of God” (p. 214). Such truth, Wright
notes, is a scandal in light of modern and postmodern secular thought which he
seeks to counter by pointing to the presuppositions of all world views, while relying
ultimately on faith through God’s “self-revelation” via the confluence of
Scripture and history. It is this,
Wright claims (pace Deut. 29:29) that “has given us such knowledge as is
possible and appropriate for us” (p. 214) even without the capacity to unravel
all mysteries in the quest to transcend human fallibility and finitude, the
underlying temptation of gnosticism.
Within this framework Wright constructs a methodology that combines
building best case plausibilities in juxtaposition to the perceived limitations
of other perspectives. It is this
“critical realism” that grounds his analysis of the relationship of faith and
history. In short, “split the historical
Jesus off from the Christ known in faith, as some have tried to do [including some
narrative theologians], and you are left without a revelation of the one true
God within our world, the world of physicality and history” (p. 214).
The question remains not whether,
but how faith and history interact, for without question the origins of
Christianity were embedded in the dynamic culture of second temple Judaism
and the personage of Jesus of Nazareth and his early followers. What Wright says bears careful observation,
for in the final analysis he acknowledges the invariable gaps in the historical
record which limit what can be definitively claimed even as there is reasonable
evidence to draw upon for best case hypothesis formation. Rejecting Borg’s characterization of “history
metaphorized” on meaning being beyond authorial intent, one of Wright’s central
points is that the gospel “authors thought [italics added] the events they
were recording—all of them, not just some—actually happened.” Noting that they could have been mistaken on,
say the resurrection sightings or the transfiguration story, Wright argues that
if that were the case the gospel writers would have failed “to convey the most
important meaning they had in mind, which was precisely in these events as historical events [italics in
original] Israel’s God, the world’s creator, had acted decisively and
climactically within creation within Israel’s history” (p. 215).
At this point Wright is parsing
matters closely.
It is one thing to say
that the Bible speaks of truths that are “dependent on history” and even to
argue that events as described have a solid plausibility as to their
facticity.
It is another altogether to
claim that what is written in the gospels is an accurate description of what
actually happened, a position which Wright does not claim, though this begs the
question then of precisely “what Israel’s God was doing in
actual history” (italics in original) (p. 215).
A major concern of Wright’s is the all-too-prevalent
emphasis in contemporary Christian spirituality as reflected in Borg, but
especially Bishop Spong and Matthew Fox in their proclivity toward a
“dehistoricized spirituality” cut off from the actual personage of the
pre-Easter Jesus of Nazareth.
What Wright is contending for in
the most fundamental sense is the veracity of the claim that “our God is the
true God, and your gods are worthless idols” (p. 160). As a historically-based religion that claims
to embody the fullness of God in its founder it matters whether there is a
solid correspondence between what is stated that happened in the written testimonies
and what actually happened in fact, even as the quest for the historical Jesus
remains ever elusive in the most fundamental of details. Working from a “realistic” epistemology,
Wright notes that “whether the [gospel] stories really did happen” is beyond
the purview of contemporary historical evidence to discern, even as the
critical point remains that “everyone who told them thought they did” (p. 216).
In light of the cloud of witnesses
giving testimony to the resurrection sightings, Wright draws as the most likely
conclusion that the sightings on the road to Emanus and elsewhere actually did
happen. For if they did not it would
raise the profoundest questions about any such claims having a historical
referent as the basis in identifying the universal God in the radical
particularity of Israel’s truth. The
full force of Wright’s embodied Christology depends, then, on the accuracy of
an actual historical event, namely, the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the
dead, as documented in all of the gospels and the letters of Paul, even given
the likely elaboration in some of the texts.
What Wright does not sufficiently
discuss, at least in The Meaning of Jesus
is the difference between history as lived and the realistically-based
historical description as a biblical genre, which includes both history as
lived and history as remembered. Closely
related is history posited in the mouth of Jesus in the manner of the ancient
historian who sought through narrative to highlight the essence of the historical
character through descriptions that were invariably idealistic, however true to
the character and to the era portrayed. Still
with Wright, Paul’s writings provide more than a little persuasive evidence
that the tradition, canonized in the gospels formed very early even as the
first several years after the crucifixion remain opaque as to precise
historical description. In short, Wright
has provided tantalizing insights on the relationship between faith and history
even as the questions he raises begs additional ones that require further
investigation.
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