What a Muddle

NT Wright, Marcus Borg, Fuller Seminary, and the God who is God

File: St. Paul MET DP817097.jpg - Wikimedia Commons ALSO St. Paul Trying To Read Christianity Today’s Reporting on Fuller

Yesterday, as you probably know, I had some thoughts about NT Wright’s views on abortion, and while I was doing that, many people were passing around a clip wherein Wright discusses the bodily resurrection of Jesus with Michael Bird. Is believing in the resurrection essential for the Christian?

I would have thought that it was for the simple reason that Saint Paul says so, and he would have known because he saw him with his own eyes on the road to Damascus. Later, answering that very question, do you have to believe in the resurrection to be a Christian, St. Paul said that yes, you do:

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

In more modern speak, what’s the point of trying to be a Christian at all if Christ has not been raised in his body? You’d still have to die forever for rejecting God in your body and your soul. You’d have nothing to look forward to. You might as well wander off and do almost anything else, like try to live more mindfully, or slog through Glennon Doyle’s new notebook, or develop a relationship with an AI who will eventually convince you that you’re god. So, yes, intellectual assent and heart trust in the bodily resurrection of Jesus are necessary and essential if you want to be a Christian.

NT Wright, though, because of a long, friendly association with Marcus Borg, doesn’t think so. Borg, says Wright, “loved Jesus” but was muddled. Borg had been “bullied” in early life by his Lutheran fundamentalist upbringing. As a result, he left faith behind altogether, but in middle age, wandered back. “Jesus,” says Wright, talking about Borg, “became enormously important to him again.” He came to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, “just not in his body.” After a while, he began to pray his own version of the Jesus Prayer. Instead of “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner,” Borg prayed something like “Lord Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world, fill my mind with your light and my heart with your love.” To leave out the sinner bit, it seems to me, is rather telling, because that is why you would most particularly be relieved and happy to hear about the resurrection of the dead. If you don’t know you’re a sinner, you probably don’t feel the weight of your own looming death in the way that you ought.

Anyway, Wright became good enough friends with Borg to co-write a book with him, and was not able to say to Borg, You are not a Christian, but would tease him that he ought to try harder to believe. Wright was much impressed with Borg’s seeking. He came to see him as merely muddled. “There are many people,” concludes Wright, who are “earnestly seeking Jesus for whom that penny hasn’t dropped.”

Meanwhile, over at Fuller Seminary, there is a similar sort of muddle taking place. According to Christianity Today, “Fuller Seminary Reaffirms Historic LGBTQ Stance: Some at the evangelical institution wanted to allow same-sex relationships, but trustees voted to maintain ‘historic theological understanding.’” That sounds very clever of them, except that that’s not quite what happened.