Quotes from Marcus J. Borg

Then it became a biological metaphor in the birth stories: Jesus as Son of God was conceived by the Spirit of God, not by a human father. Ultimately, it became a metaphysical or ontological claim: Jesus as the only begotten Son of God is of one substance with God. But initially, to see Jesus as the Son of God points to a relationship of special intimacy and agency.

Finally, then, I conclude with an iconic image of that foundational reconciliation from the later fourth century. It is a bronze hanging lamp from the villa of the aristocratic Valerii on the Celian Hill in Rome, now preserved in the National Archaeological Museum in Florence. The lamp is shaped like a boat. Peter is seated in the stern at the tiller. Paul is standing in the prow looking forward. Peter steers. Paul guides. And the boat sails full before the wind.

To see Jesus as "the Wisdom of God" and "Son of God" and "messiah" means to take very seriously what we see in him as a disclosure of God.

As early Christianity developed, the post-Easter Jesus increasingly functioned as a divine reality within the community. Even before the gospels were written, prayers were addressed to Jesus as if to God, and hymns praised Jesus as divine. By the early second century, Ignatius could speak of "our God, Jesus Christ.

To see the Bible as a human product does not in any way deny the reality of God.

What was going on at the time? What were the circumstances that the author addressed? What did the author's words and allusions mean in their ancient historical and literary setting? Without context, one can imagine that a text means almost anything.

And faith came to mean what Bishop Robinson called it some thirty-five years ago: believing forty-nine impossible things before breakfast.

At the risk of repetition, I mean that God (or "the sacred" or "Spirit," terms that I use synonymously) is a reality known in human experience, and not simply a human creation or projection.

Diana Eck, a professor at Harvard University and director of the Pluralism Project. The title of the book is A New Religious America.

And yet another word for infidelity in the biblical tradition is idolatry, namely, to be faithful to something other than God.

They are soon gone, and we fly away. . . . So teach us to count our days / that we may gain a wise heart" (90.12).

Two statements about the nature of the gospels are crucial for grasping the historical task: (1) They are a developing tradition. (2) They are a mixture of history remembered and history metaphorized.

The bottom line is it is going to get us all; we're all going to die"—then your response is likely to be one of self-protection in various ways. You will try to find security against the devouring power that will consume us all.

The contemporary author Frederick Buechner writes powerfully about the way God speaks to us in the events of our lives: Listen to your life. Listen to what happens to you because it is through what happens to you that God speaks. . . . It's in language that's not always easy to decipher, but it's there powerfully, memorably, unforgettably.14

If they mean, "Do you think Jesus saw his own death as a sacrifice for sin?" or "Do you think that God can forgive sins only because of Jesus' sacrifice?," my answer is no. But if they mean, "Is the statement a powerfully true metaphor of the grace of God?," then my answer is yes. Let me explain.

When we emphasize his divinity at the expense of his humanity, we lose track of the utterly remarkable human being he was.

South African Jesus scholar Albert Nolan makes the same point when he says in a quotation that I've grown very fond of: "Jesus is a much underrated man. When we deprive him of his humanity, we deprive him of his greatness.

the classic and traditional Christian affirmation about Jesus, namely, that Jesus is for us as Christians the decisive revelation of what a life full of God is like.

The human Jesus is the Word made flesh. The human Jesus is the wisdom of God. The human Jesus is the Spirit of God embodied in human life. In short, the meaning of all the statements about Jesus show us what a life full of God is like.

Williams James, in his magnificent book The Varieties of Religious Experience—now one hundred years old.

To put that threefold summary into three phases, there was to Jesus, first, a Spirit dimension, second, a wisdom dimension, and, third, a justice dimension.

Metaphorical language is intrinsically nonliteral. It simultaneously affirms and negates: x is y, and x is not y. The statement "My love is a red, red rose" affirms that my beloved is a rose even as it negates it. My beloved is not a rose, unless I am literally in love with a flower. Rather, there is something about my beloved that is like a rose.

back in 1999 when lists were being compiled of the most important books of the twentieth century, William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience appeared at number two on the list of the one hundred most important nonfiction

it has more than one nuance or resonance of meaning. In terms of its Greek roots, "metaphor" means "to carry with," and what metaphor carries or bears is resonances or associations of meaning.