Books
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…the question of whether there is a point or purpose to the universe is not answered simply be reference to evidence for or against a designer. Purpose is a much wider notion than design, and it can live much more comfortably with chance, disorder, and the abyss of cosmic time than can the all too Read more
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From Michael Ramsey’s God, Christ, and the World (p. 85): So the righteousness of Jesus is the righteousness of a Godward relationship of trust, dependence, receptivity. It is a terribly hard kind of righteousness. It is sometimes hard because it involves the calls of sacrifice and self-renunciation which Jesus gives. But it is more often Read more
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One of the chapters of God, Christ and the World is a critical appreciation of the thought of Rudolf Bultmann. (The earlier quote on demythologization was taken from the same chapter.) Bultmann’s project of demythologization was tied to his desire to unearth the essential message – the kerygma – of Christian faith. He reinterpreted the Read more
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More from Archbishop Michael Ramsey’s God, Christ and the World (p. 78): The Resurrection is something which ‘happened’ a few days after the death of Jesus. The apostles became convinced that Jesus was alive and that God had raised him to life. It is not historically scientific to say only that the apostles came to Read more
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I have several books going now, and I always feel guilty if I don’t finish a book I’ve started. But I also have a bad habit of borrowing books from the library before I’ve finished other books I’ve started (or buying books at used bookstores, or from online vendors…). Anyway, here are the books I Read more
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Marcus Borg made his name as a scholar (and popularizer) of the “historical Jesus,” so it’s not surprising that his chapter on Jesus has some rich material. (His book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time is well worth reading, though hardly the last word on the topic.) One common way to talk about the Read more
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In chapter 4, “God: The Heart of Reality,” Borg continues his now tried-and-true approach of contrasting aspects of the earlier paradigm and the emerging paradigm. Here he discusses the nature and character of God. Borg calls the earlier paradigm’s concept of God supernatural theism. This concept identifies God as a transcendent, personal being who created Read more
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Unlike his take on faith, I found Borg’s treatment of the Bible surprisingly weak. He starts out by saying that Christianity is centered on the Bible because it points to God, but that the Bible has become a stumbling block for many because of biblical literalism. Literalism, according to Borg, puts an undue emphasis on Read more
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I liked chapter two, “Faith: The Way of the Heart,” not so much because it breaks any new ground, but because it clearly lays out what I (at any rate) find to be a helpful understanding of the nature of faith. Borg notes that some people criticize Christianity for being more about believing than being Read more
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Taking a break from the denizens of the deep, I started reading Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity. This is a kind of Mere Christianity for liberal Christians, and something that people at my church have found helpful, so I thought I’d give it a read. (I’ve been critical of Borg in the past, but Read more
A Thinking Reed 