Concluding Reflections
Given the readability of the book,
its dialogical form, and its wide use among adult church study groups, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions is a useful text in
highlighting theological tensions in contemporary mainline Protestantism. It is more, though incompletely that than it
is an adequate summary of Borg and Wright given the range and depth of their
other texts, an analysis of which extends beyond the purposes of this chapter. The role of metaphor and myth, the importance
of historical accuracy as a signpost for theological truth, the
inclusive/exclusive debate on the relationship between Christianity and other
world religions, and ultimately the basis and shape of Christian belief are
examined through divergent and sometimes complementary perspectives that our
two authors provide. Given the core
premise underlying this book of viewing the Bible as the interpretive basis to
interrogate the world, Borg’s theological liberalism has largely served as my
foil. This is not to discount Borg’s project of seeking to make Christianity
viable to modern/postmodern sensibility, as his way of seeing both the Bible
and Jesus anew has opened up faith possibilities to many for whom the traditional
orthodox story no longer (or never seemed)
persuasive. At his best, Borg has
presented a credible picture of Christianity as a beautiful and profound
pathway to the holy and one in which those who choose to do so can enter in and
find rich meaning without having to diminish the validity of other religious
traditions and faith journeys. I accept
the intent of Borg’s apologetic project.
However, I have problems with
several of Borg’s assumptions.
Specifically, I wonder the extent to which his metaphorical
interpretation is Christian to its core as opposed to exhibiting a profound Christian
sensibility within a syncretistic context that views all of the world religions
as more or less equally valid and somewhat divergent pathways to ultimately the
same underlying truth that is reflected through their various traditions and
“metaphors.” That is, from the
hypotheses that I am building upon, I am taking as axiomatic that it is God in
his fullness that is revealed in Jesus Christ and that the Bible in its
comprehensiveness is the primary source of revelation, which requires the illumination
of the Holy Spirit and much depth commentary even to partially grasp. It is this incarnational perspective, which
drives the assumption that God is revealed most fully and truly to humankind in
and through Christ not simply as an experience, but, however perceived through
a mirror, dimly as an ontological truth claim with universal applicability.
This perspective does not discount
the value of other perspectives, religious or secular, but it does assert that
in the most fundamental sense that the fullest revelation of God given to
humankind is reflected in, and only in
Christianity even as there is much to learn and potentially to incorporate from
other world views. Given the limitations
and flawed nature of one’s own knowledge, as well as a healthy regard for the
views of others, humility requires such openness. However, one can only go so far in embracing
pluralism without sacrificing that which is most essential; namely, the belief
that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life without equivocation and
remainder in which the pathway of syncretism is nothing short of idolatry. No doubt, this can sound extremely arrogant,
and when embraced as a form of triumphalism, contains its own idolatrous
temptations. It is a scandal of major
proportions. However, if the grounding
point of Christianity is the Incarnation, the Trinity, then God revealed in his
fullest and truest sense can be through no other name, lest one surrender the
very essence of faith, to that which might be viewed, evangelistically as the
idolatry of syncretism in the name of religious globalism.
This is the hypothesis from which I
build, the substance of which I seek to articulate throughout the course of
this book. A secondary hypothesis is
that any substantive revitalization of mainline Protestantism will require a
return to a fully-orbed and “generous” orthodox position, thoroughly conversant
with modern culture and scholarship, but based upon a renewal and
reinvigoration of its own religious traditions.
This includes among other things, comprehensive Bible study and
biblically-based worship through which the ultimate vocabulary and meaning of the
faith is grounded, in which scriptural revelation becomes the basis for
interpreting the world; that is, the culture (Erickson, 1983/1984/1985). I encourage Borg and those sympathetic to his
project to further flesh out their assumptions and implications thereof. I do not diminish the importance of such
work, which very well could contribute as well to that which I seek, a
revitalization of mainline Protestantism on its founding assumption and
traditions in a manner that can be appreciated by modern people. However, that is not the tack I am taking
here, as I am working from a more orthodox perspective and seek to build my
case from within an evangelical-reformed-based hermeneutical sensibility that
reaches toward an ecumenical participation (Bloesch, 1992; Fackre, 1993). From this vantagepoint, the Borg presented in
The Meaning of Jesus is one that I
have little choice but to criticize in some rather stringent ways.
The broader issue with which this
chapter seeks to grapple is the role of history in its relationship to faith. Its primary focus has been on divergent
interpretations of the historical Jesus and the significance thereof as
reflected in the views of Borg and Wright. I will not recount that discussion
here except to allude back to the ways in which the authors’ christologies are
invariably informed by their interpretations of this history. As a faith
grounded both in Jewish tradition and the broader ancient world it is
impossible to grasp something of the origins of Christianity without
acknowledging the importance of this history.
It is in and through this tradition that the monotheistic Lord God
revealed himself to humankind. This is
the scandal of particularity which religious globalism categorically rejects
upon which, in my view, the core claims of Christianity stand or fall. What is awesome in the magisterial sense is
less why God has chosen this particular pathway through Israel’s history, a
question that perhaps cannot be answered by human beings, than how God has
revealed himself through this tradition and the nature of his character and
core precepts that “belong to us and to our children forever” (Deut 29:29).
Obviously, this claim cannot be proven except through revelation itself. It can only be lived, illustrated, and
compared to other world constructions.
Nonetheless, it is the axiomatic truth claim upon which Christianity
stands—the doctrinal ultimate vocabulary to which even apologetics, in the final
analysis, is subordinate—faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not seen.
There is another sense in which
history is at work in the contemporary understanding of religious studies as an
academic discipline. Not only
Christianity, but all the world’s religions originated in a specific time and
place. Those that have endured,
moreover, have evolved through culture and history, which invariably shapes
their emergent manifestations. These obvious
truths have shaped the study of religion in such academic disciplines as
sociology, history, and anthropology primarily through a comparative approach
which eliminates the religious itself or even theology as legitimate sources of
knowledge in their own right. These
assumptions are grounded in a secularized world view that posits the religious
in the realm of “belief,” beyond rational knowledge or communication. This “self-evident” secularized world view is
not only pervasive within the academy but within large sectors of western
culture.
Any revitalization of mainline
Protestantism will need to grapple with these academic norms and the broader
cultural paradigms which reinforce them on their own terms, while radically
challenging the hegemony of secularization, based on its own articulated
framework that God is in Christ reconciling the world. This counterclaim needs to be made on grounds
that in principle can be defended academically and in a manner that resonates
within the context of common public discourse in which the religious is neither
privileged nor marginalized. The
challenge of bringing the religious to the public square in a manner that honors
and defends its own core assumptions without magisterially imposing them on
those who do not accept them or deliberately marginalizing them for that matter
as ipso facto, out of bounds, will require a subtle combination of courage and
discernment. Mainline 20th
century theology has made a major contribution in seeking to correlate
religious categories within the context of modern cultural and intellectual
presuppositions.
That, in itself, is important work,
but only half the story. The other part
is to interrogate the world through the theological presuppositions of what
C.S. Lewis (1980) refers to as “mere Christianity” and to make the religious as
intellectually viable as other academic disciplines. Without this shift, the category of God
acting in history revealed through Scripture cannot be credibly posited even as
a plausible hypothesis, a scandal which Christian scholarship needs to bring to
the academy in light of other truth claims that mightily press on its own. Without this prospect studies of the
historical Jesus can only be but stymied by secular presuppositions taken as
axiomatic in which historicism itself; that is, culture, is viewed as the
“center of value” of human meaning. The
presupposition with which I am countering is not simply another belief, but at
the very least, a truth claim in relationship to human experience, even as its articulation
cannot be but inevitably flawed. It is
this particular scandal which radical Christianity is compelled to defend with
all the subtlety, depth, and humility that its advocates can muster without
which the very basis of faith, short of some syncretistic substitution,
disintegrates. However the many issues
surrounding the historical Jesus are worked out in the scholarly literature, to
the extent that the belief that the called Christian community, the body of
Christ “as The Israel of God” (Gal: 6:16b) is repressed as a serious hypothesis
of God acting within history, such studies can only be but invariably flawed.
One of the major consequences of
the scholarship on the historical Jesus over the past 125 years, or so is the
emphasis on the constructed nature of Jesus as a literary artifact of the early
church, which, while grounded in some history, is viewed as an ideal portrait
with ideological intent. This has resulted in much skepticism, particularly in
mainline congregations of the basic assumptions of the New Testament, which has
generated considerable fundamentalist and evangelical reaction in the
insistence in many quarters of both a biblical literalism and a claim of
scriptural inerrancy. This reaction, in
turn, is categorically rejected in some rather different ways within liberal
and neo-orthodox Protestantism. Borg’s embrace of faith without history has
its own problems, particularly when linked to his pluralistic assumptions that
religious traditions are metaphorical expressions for truths that are
ultimately inexpressible through language. This denies the fundamental claim
that Christ is the Incarnation of God
in human flesh without remainder or qualification, the core presupposition of
orthodox Christianity. Seeking to turn a
century of scholarship on its head Wright rejects the notion of a great divide
between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. In his massive project spanning several thick
books Wright seeks to demonstrate that there is much more continuity than
generally assumed between what historical evidence discloses and the claims of
the gospels and the letters of Paul. In
their respective ways, Borg and Wright have done much to deepen the discussion
on the relationship between faith and history.
Still, on both sides of the
equation, problems abound. Concerns with
Borg’s analysis have been noted. The
issue I take with Wright is not whether God acts in and through history, but
how. The issue might be less problematic
if in fact, Wright’s major contentions could be definitively proven. Even there the temptation would remain of
drawing on history too much to substantiate Christianity rather than relying on
faith itself as the substance of things hoped for. On this grounding point as the ultimate basis
for belief, history and other naturalistic modes of knowledge, such as science
and philosophy provide supplemental resources, more or less reliable, as well
as more or less essential, in any given context. The particularities of the debate between
Borg and Wright, in their more substantive work, as well as Crossan, are beyond
my expertise to examine on their merits.
The point for this discussion is that what history giveth, history can
also taketh.
The question posed rhetorically to
Wright is the location of faith if Borg and Crossan are even partially correct
in their core assumptions, particularly on their interpretations of the
resurrection narratives. Wright very
well may be correct in his postulation that the resurrection accounts given in
the gospels have a substantive basis in what really happened, and he has agued
well against scholarly perspectives which reject this view. However, even he
acknowledges that our knowledge of the period between 33-40 is very scant, in
which historians really cannot say for sure, what happened around the events
surrounding the stories of the empty tomb and the resurrection sightings. Wright also accepts the view of the New Testament
as a developing tradition in which God is the ultimate actor, not only in, but through history as well. Historical analysis is useful, and perhaps
essential if Christianity is to move out of the catacombs. Nonetheless, such knowledge as its study can
provide remains limited in terms of the fundamental matters of faith. Are there surer sources?
I build, in the final analysis, on J.I.
Packer, Lesslie Newbigin, Gabriel Fackre, and others, who, in their different
ways, maintain that the ultimate source of reliability is the revelation of God
as witnessed to throughout the entire Bible through its many gernres. Any such appropriation of this truth claim,
which requires the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit to come existentially
alive, necessitates subtle interpretation and critical exegesis with the
support of tradition, common and critical sense, and all the tools of modern
scholarship that may be available. These
resources, I argue, are ministerial to the magisterial grounding point of
biblical revelation. Following Packer
(1993), it is “God unchanging” which provides the critical linchpin in linking
history and faith as revealed most fully in and through the Bible. Packer notes the wide historical gulf between
the biblical era and our own in which the Bible may be viewed as “intensely
interesting,” while “seem[ing] very far away.”
As Packer states, from the perspective of history and culture the Bible
“belongs to that world not to this world.” (italics in original) (p.
76).
This distance between the biblical
world and our own reinforces among many churchgoers and ministers a spectral
view of the Bible as largely irrelevant to the conditions and issues
confronting the modern world in which, at best, its “stories” provide a paradigmatic
glimpse into the profound recesses of the human condition. As indicated in the approach to Bible study
offered by Walter Wink and others, and implicit in Borg, this is far from
unimportant work. However, it remains
insufficient for a more fully-orbed appreciation of the Bible to emerge in the
mainline congregations without which there remains something fundamentally
askew. Namely, the gap between then and
now creates a severe problem in which the core revelatory text of the Christian
faith can be simultaneously an indispensable resource and profound source of
alienation.
What means does Packer propose to
transcend this undeniable source of historical and cultural remoteness? His core argument is that the link between
the biblical text and us is not to be found at the level of history and
culture. Rather, “the link is God
himself” (p. 76). For it is “God who
does not change in the least particular” (p. 77) even if our understanding of
him does. Stated otherwise, that which bridges
the gulf between history and culture “is the truth of God’s immutability” (italics in original) (p.
77). This immutability refers to God as
revealed through the course of the biblical text, what Fackre (1997) refers to
as “an overarching narrative [from creation to consummation] that renders the
identity of the Christian God.” From
this vantagepoint “Jesus Christ,” revealed most fully in and through the New
Testament, is “the interpretive key to the whole narrative” (p. 5).
It is this hermeneutical dynamic
via the work of the Holy Spirit through fallible, finite, historically
conditioned human beings that bridges the gap; God speaking in and through the
text from the initial writers to readers across the centuries and from cultures
of origin to cultures of reception around the world. It is this biblical text through which God
“condescends to use human language” (Packer, 2000, p. 45) that Packer and
others view as utterly trustworthy, however opaque our own understanding
remains. The Word revealed through
inspiration, meditation, faith unrelenting in the midst even of the most
profound questioning, and ultimately grace, is the surer grounding of Christian
belief; one upon which in my view, mainline revitalization vitally depends
(Robinson, 2006). History, philosophy,
science, and other interpretative modalities in search of knowledge often can and
need to be drawn upon in a supplementary manner. It is, however, to a return to and a
rediscovery of a richer theology of Scripture which I am advocating as a
central pathway to mainline renewal. The
substance of this argument, that in the final analysis, “Jesus Christ is the
same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13:8), however much theological
reflection in response to the dynamics of cultural and historical change may
induce and require a great deal of amplification and justification is carried
out in the remainder of this book.
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