Reading the Bible again for the First Time

by Marcus J. Borg

  Rome and the beast have an ancient lineage. “Babylon the Great” is not simply a symbolic name for Rome, but for domination systems organized around power, wealth, seduction, intimidation, and violence. In whatever ancient or modern forms they take, domination systems are the opposite of the lordship and kingdom of God as disclosed in Jesus. Thus John’s indictment of empire sounds the same theme as the central voices of the biblical tradition. As with Moses, the prophets, Jesus, the gospel writers, and Paul, his claim is stark and compelling: God is Lord; the kingdoms and cultures of this world are not.

  John’s vision of the New Jerusalem has both historical and trans-historical elements. Indeed, its power as a trans-historical vision may be the primary reason that Revelation ultimately made it into the Bible. Its speaks of the reunion of God with humankind, thereby overcoming the exile that began in Eden. There every tear shall be wiped away. The river of life flows through it and the tree of life is in it. There we will see God. It is difficult to imagine a more powerful ending to the Bible.

  Epilogue

  I close with some personal reflections. Of course, the whole book reflects my personal perceptions. I do not have an objective vantage point outside of my own history. All any of us can do is to say, “Here’s how I see it.” We can muster our reasons for seeing in a certain way, of course. But ultimately it is always personal. For me, this book comes down to what I have been able to see thus far about how to read the Bible.

  So the whole book has been personal. Nevertheless, in this epilogue, I give myself permission to speak about how it all comes together for me—about how I see “the whole” of the Bible and “the whole” of the Christian life at a very elemental level. And if what I say perhaps has application to other religions as well, that is lagniappe, a bonus.

  It is clear to me that the Bible speaks with more than one voice. I do not mean simply that many authors, communities, and storytellers speak in it, though this is true. Nor do I mean simply that in, with, and under these human voices the voice of the Spirit sometimes speaks to us, though this is also true. In addition to all of that, I mean that the Bible contains different voices (and thus different visions) of what life is about. And for each of the speakers, “what life is about” meant “what life with God” is about. Thus the Bible contains different voices responding to this central question.

  These different voices are found throughout the history of the biblical period, as well as in the postbiblical history of Christianity. The conflict between them shapes both testaments. We hear the different voices in the conflict between the royal theology of pharaohs and kings and caesars, and prophetic protest against it by Moses, the prophets, Jesus, and in their own ways Paul and John of Patmos. Royal theology, whether in biblical or postbiblical forms, legitimates domination systems. Prophetic theology opposes them.

  The tension between these voices continues into the present day in both religious and secular forms. Within Christianity, we see an acceptance of royal theology in the alliance between some forms of Christianity and a politics of radical individualism. The emphasis of these belief-forms upon individual responsibility and accountability, though good in itself, ignores the way that systems affect people’s lives and leaves the domination systems of our day intact. Secular forms of individualism perform the same legitimation. Other Christians, especially (though not only) in marginalized communities, hear the voice of radical critique of domination systems that sounds through so much of the biblical tradition.

  We also hear the different voices in the central conflict within the wisdom tradition. Some voices affirm a confident conventional wisdom that makes life “safe” by domesticating it. Other voices subvert the easy confidence of convention and affirm an alternative wisdom much more in touch with the wildness of life.

  The tension between these voices also continues into the present day. Systems of conventional wisdom, both secular and religious, not only domesticate reality but put us in bondage to the internalized messages we acquire in our socialization. But does convention—even religious convention—come from God? Or is it like a grid that we lay over reality—a grid that in fact estranges us from “what is”? Is conventional wisdom to be blessed? Or is it to be let go of for the sake of following the road not taken? Is conventional wisdom an accurate map of how things are? Or is it a rough guide and a pointer to a sacred Mystery that lies right behind it?

  Affirmations of both ways of seeing life are found in the Bible and in postbiblical Christianity. Much of Christianity through the centuries and into the present has simply been conventional wisdom in Christian form: a domestication of reality with Christian language and directives for how to live one’s life—“Follow this way and all will go well.” The second way is the common voice of Job, Ecclesiastes, Jesus, and Paul. It surfaces again and again in the more experiential and spiritual stream of the Bible. Experience, and the experience of the Spirit, make it clear that convention is just that: convention.

  From these paragraphs and this book as a whole, it is clear that among these voices I have favorites. I think I can make a decent case that the voices I favor are the major voices of the Bible, and that I am “hearing” them reasonably accurately (at least at a very general level).

  Nevertheless, as I now suggest what I think I hear these voices saying, I want to acknowledge again that I am aware of how subjective all this is. But subjectivity in this arena is unavoidable.

  The major voices of the biblical tradition, as I hear them, share three primary convictions in common:

  First, there is a deep sense of the reality of the sacred. God is not only real, but knowable. Moreover, the sacred is known not in a set of statements about God, but experientially, as a Mystery beyond all language. This Mystery—God—transcends all of our domestications of reality, including those generated by theology and even the Bible itself. God also transcends empires and emperors, nations and kings. These humans and their creations are not lords; God alone is. God also transcends peoples and religions, and thus a unity is possible in the God who made heaven and earth that is not possible when lesser lords of cultures and religions rule.

  Second, there is a strong conviction that our lives are made “whole” and “right” by living in a conscious relationship with the Mystery who is alone Lord. Life with God is not about believing certain teachings about God. It is about a covenant—a relationship. More specifically, it is about becoming conscious of a relationship that already exists, for the God of the Bible has been in relationship with us from our beginning, whether we know it or not, believe it or not. And we are not simply to become conscious of it; we are to become intentional about deepening the relationship. Christian faith is not about believing, but about faithfulness—fidelity—to the relationship. To use the relational metaphor at the center of both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: we are in a covenant with the sacred. Taking that covenant seriously is the path of life.

  As the path of life, this relationship is the path of personal transformation. It is the path of liberation from existential, psychological, and spiritual bondage to the lords of convention and culture. It involves dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being. It is life lived in accord with radical monotheism: centering one’s life in God rather than in the rival lords of culture and convention.

  Third, these voices are convinced that God is a God of justice and compassion. The God of the Bible is full of compassion and passionate about justice. God’s passion for justice flows out of the very character of God. God cares about suffering, and the single greatest source of unnecessary human misery is unjust and oppressive cultural systems. These systems range from a few that have been relatively benign and humane to more that have been demonically destructive, with many in the middle range of mildly to severely oppressive. The God about whom these voices speak wills human well-being and rages against all humanly constructed systems that inflict unnecessary wounds. They speak about God’s passion for life on earth—for the dream o
f God in the world of the everyday.

  God’s passion is the ground of a biblical ethic centered in justice and compassion. Both words—“justice” and “compassion”—are needed. Justice without compassion easily sounds like “just politics”; compassion without justice too easily becomes individualized and systemically acquiescent.

  By justice, as mentioned earlier in this book, I do not mean primarily criminal justice or procedural justice, but substantive or systemic justice: a justice judged by its results. But to emphasize God’s passion for systemic and structural justice alone, as some theologies do, makes it sound as if the biblical message is primarily about politics and public morality and not very much about individuals at all. The message of the Bible’s passion for social justice should always be grounded in the reality of God and accompanied by the message of personal liberation.

  Yet the word “justice” is utterly essential, for to speak of compassion without justice easily turns the Bible’s passion for the victims of systems into the importance of individual kind deeds and charity. Charity and kind deeds are always good; there will always be need for help. But the individualization of compassion means that one does not ask how many of the suffering are in fact victims. Compassion without justice can mean caring for victims while quietly acquiescing to a system that creates ever more victims. Justice means asking why there are so many victims and then doing something about it.

  So these three, I am suggesting, are at the core of the biblical vision of life with God: a sacred Mystery at the center of life, with whom we are to be in a conscious relationship and who is passionate about the well-being of the whole creation. We are called to participate in the passion of God. This is what I perceive when I use the Bible as a lens for seeing life with God, when I think of it as a finger pointing to the moon, when I hear it as the foundation of the Christian cultural-linguistic world, and when I listen to it as a sacrament of the sacred.

  From these three core elements flows a remarkably simple vision of the Christian life. It is not complicated, though it is challenging. It is crystallized in the very familiar twofold “great commandment” attributed to Jesus. I prefer to think of it as the “great relationship,” and I thus paraphrase it as follows:1*

  The first relationship is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” This is the great and first relationship. And a second relationship is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two relationships depend all theLaw and the Prophets.

  The two primary relationships are common to Judaism and Christianity. Central to the Christian tradition and spoken by Jesus, they are also both quotations from and central to the Hebrew Bible. The first is the Shema, the classic Jewish expression of faith through the centuries; the second is from the book of Leviticus.2 Judaism and Christianity share this elemental core in common.

  Thus at the center of a life grounded in the Bible is the twofold focus of the great relationship. Of course, being Christian means more than this. It means living within Christian community and letting one’s life be shaped by that community’s scriptures, stories, songs, rituals, and practices. Community is not only central to the biblical vision (the New Jerusalem, after all, is a city); it also mediates the internalization of a new identity and vision. At its best, Christian community nourishes the alternative life of centering in God and instills a passion for compassion and justice for the whole creation.

  In this process of shaping Christian identity and vision in community, the Bible has a central role, perhaps second only to that of the Spirit. As the foundation of the Christian tradition, the Bible is the source of our images and stories for speaking of God’s passion. Thus its interpretation shapes our vision of what it means to take the God of the Bible seriously. The Bible is also a sacrament of the same sacred Mystery, a means whereby God speaks to us still today. Through and within the Bible’s many voices, we are called to discern the voice that addresses us in our time. And listen: what we hear matters greatly. It makes all the difference.

  Seriously But Not Literally:

  An Interview with Marcus J. Borg

  From his home in Portland, Oregon, the author spoke by phone with Sean Abbott, a senior editor at HarperCollins, on May 30, 2001.

  SA: Marcus, your books invite a personal response. So let me just say, briefly, that I’m descended from a long line of ministers and church people on one side — people with names like John Calvin Knox Milligan — but my family has since traveled a vast distance from the church, in two ways: one set, the people I’m from, have no church affiliation and no formalized or shared spiritual life. Another bunch of us are end-timers, and have fallen away from the churches they grew up in and have gone to the fringes of contemporary Christianity. Needless to say, we don’t have a lot to do with each other, and, for that matter, I’ve never had much to do socially with people who are active churchgoers — with no malice aforethought, of course.

  But then I got older and started wondering more about Western history in general and I read the two important mainstream Jesus novels of recent years, Jim Crace’s Quarantine [1997] and Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son [1997]. I started paying attention to the goings-on at and controversies surrounding the Jesus Seminar. And then I met you and Marianne [Marianne Borg, Marcus’s wife, an Episcopal priest and Canon at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, officiated at a wedding the interviewer attended] and I started reading your books. I really became electrified by the historical-metaphorical approach that you employ and by the idea of “taking the Bible seriously but not literally,” to quote your excellent subtitle for this book.

  And while I can’t say I’ve experienced any kind of spiritual awakening, I will say that I’m more interested in the idea of a spiritual life and in religion generally than I could ever have imagined being. I’ve also recently joined a church — not just because it’s the thing to do in the community I moved to last year (it is!), but also because of, or I should say, especially because of, your books.

  And now reading this latest book of yours reinforces all of the above. So tell me, I take it this is not the first time you’ve heard this sort of story?

  MJB: No, not at all. [Laughs] I hear this kind of thing primarily in two ways: one is face to face when I’m on the road, signing books for people, and also in both email and postal correspondence. I haven’t kept track of the number of emails I get but I probably get about a thousand letters a year.

  SA: Through the mail.

  MJB: Yes. Cards and letters from people who have read one or more of my books. And of those thousand maybe five are angry because they think that I’m an enemy of the faith or the Bible or whatever, but the other 995, let’s say, are all variations on one of two themes: either, “You’ve made it possible for me to be a Christian again, to come back to the church,” or, alternatively, “You’ve made it possible for me to be a whole-hearted Christian.” People tell me that it is so liberating to realize they don’t have to be a literalist in order to be a Christian. I see that in many ways my vocation as a writer is basically writing for people who can’t be literalists, and by literalist of course I mean Biblical literalists but there are also doctrinal literalists as well — people who emphasize taking the language of the Creeds literally, or taking their denomination’s theological statements literally. And many who take these things literally then reject them, because they can’t believe they’re literally true.

  SA: I think it’s a natural tendency in people to think literally and not metaphorically, and there’s actually some history here. But before you tell us about that, let me ask you: do biblical scholars think that early Jewish and Christian communities thought in metaphorical terms, or were more inclined to think metaphorically than we are today?

  MJB: An emphasis upon literal interpretation is modern. In the Christian Middle Ages, biblical scholars spoke of four
levels of interpretation. The first was the literal, the other three were all metaphorical. And because the literal was taken for granted, all of the emphasis was on the non-literal or metaphorical. Moreover, we have good reasons to think that the Bible’s authors themselves were aware that they were often writing symbolically or metaphorically. But since the Enlightenment, modern Western culture has identified truthfulness with factuality to such an extent that if something isn’t factual, people think it’s not true. And because they have trouble taking many parts of the Bible factually, people think it’s not true. So my vocation really is to help people to hear the language of the Bible as well as the Creed and the doctrine of the church in a non-literal but nevertheless truthful way.

  SA: And this way of reading the Bible and thinking about one’s modern place in an ancient faith is really starting to catch on, isn’t it?

  MJB: It is. An acquaintance of mine sent me a wonderful email recently. He wrote, “My priest said a great thing in his homily this morning: ‘The Bible is true and some of it happened.’ ” And I like that line very much, as you might imagine.

  SA: Let’s talk about this phrase “fact fundamentalism,” which, as you observe in this book, can be said to apply to both biblical fundamentalists and Christian liberals — and to an unfortunate way of thinking about things in general.

  MJB: I owe that phrase to Huston Smith, and I’m not sure when he first used it, but the first time I heard him use it was in a question-and-response period following his lecture at Jesus 2000. He used the term “fact fundamentalists” to refer to people who couldn’t say the Creed if they couldn’t think of it as literally and factually true. I realized how much sense this phrase made in terms of my own intellectual journey.