The Borg

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The Borg Mr. (w)Right?
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Borg/Wright We are both committed to the
vigorous practice of the Christian faith and the
rigorous study of its historical origins and to
the belief, which we find constantly reinforced,
that these two activities are not, as is often
supposed, ultimately hostile to each other.
Rather, we find them mutually informative and
supportive. To put this another way we both
acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as Lord, and we
regard a no-holds-barred study of his actual
history as a vital part of what we mean by that.
(The Meaning of Jesus, viii)
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N. T. Wright I think the critical thing to say
is that Jesus believed he was living at the
climactic moment of history. He wasn't just a
teacher of general timeless truths or even of a
general political agenda that might be applied
any time any place. He believed he was standing
at the corner of history - the corner of Israel's
history and hence because of Israel's calling,
the corner of world history. And he believed that
it was his vocation to announce God's Sovereign
Rule - God's Kingdom if you like - not just in
the ordinary Jewish sense of God is going to be
"King or the Romans are going to get their
come-uppance" but in the much more specific sense
that now at last God was going to be King of the
whole world, everything was going to be
different. And he believed that it was his
calling to take Israel and hence the world around
that corner once and for all time. And one of the
words that got attached to that in various senses
was this word "Messiah" or "Christ" but Jesus
redefined that around himself. He drew upon
himself the whole picture of Messiahship that
different Jews in that period might have been
sketching in different ways. And within that
again Jesus believed that he had the vocation to
deal with the radical evil that had infected the
world once and for all. And that is why he not
only announced the Kingdom of God, he lived it,
he enacted it symbolically, and ultimately he
died for it. And that is at the heart of what it
meant for Jesus to be the one who would bring the
world to its great climatic moment.
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Marcus Borg My image of Jesus actually combines
two images of Jesus in a dialectical relationship
- an image of the Pre-Easter Jesus and an image
of the Post-Easter Jesus. By the Pre-Easter Jesus
I mean of course, Jesus as a figure of history
before his death. And I see my image of the
Pre-Easter Jesus that he has a spirit dimension
to him, a wisdom dimension to him, a political
dimension to him. And of those three the one that
I highlight most in my own work is that he was a
spirit person, that is one of those people with
an experiential awareness of the sacred. A Jewish
mystic if you will. But to return to the three,
he was a God-intoxicated Jew who was a wisdom
teacher and a social prophet. And then by the
Post-Easter Jesus I mean what Jesus became after
his death. It's the Jesus of both Christian
tradition and experience. Both nouns are
important. By the Jesus of Christian tradition I
mean the Jesus who emerges in the New Testament
in the Gospels and ultimately also in the Creeds.
And of Christian experience I mean the
Post-Easter Jesus is actually experienced as a
living reality both then and now. And then in a
nutshell my image of the Post-Easter Jesus would
be th at the Post-Easter Jesus is the Son o f
God, the Wisdom of God, the Word of God, and
ultimately One with God. http//ntgateway.com/xtal
k/conversation.html
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Luke Timothy Johnson I begin with the belief
that Jesus is a living person. So the response to
that question is that Jesus is risen Lord, Jesus
is Lord. And as a living person, I think the
images that we have for Jesus are multiple, as
multiple as the experience of Jesus that
continues in the world. The sacramental
experience of Jesus. The experience of Jesus in
prayer. The reading of Jesus out of the pages of
the Gospels. So, thinking about Jesus as a living
person, I find it impossible to attach a single
image. Jesus is as richly diverse and
multifaceted as my wife Joy is - actually more
than my wife Joy is. No offence to Joy but an
honor to Jesus. When I first met my wife, I felt
fairly confident about being able to say who she
was. After 20 years of marriage I find that it's
less and less possible to reduce her to a simple
image or to a single story. She constantly
reveals herself in new ways. And when I read the
pages of the Gospels, I find the same
multi-faceted rendering of Jesus. Each of the
Gospels renders Jesus in different ways - Jesus
as Prophet, Jesus as Revealer. If I were to say
that there's some central governing image of
Jesus in the Gospels, that for me the most
telling, the most normative, I find it in the
narrative rendering of Jesus as the suffering
obedient Son of God who in radical obedience to
God gave his life in loving service to others.
That image of Jesus I find pervades the Gospels
and the other early Christian writings and gives
some kind of normative shape to the continuing
experience of Jesus in the Church.
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