The Meaning of Jesus: Borg versus Wright

Marcus Borg is not a writer that most of us read very often. N. T. Wright, on the other hand, is probably someone that we have at least heard of, if not read at least a selection of his writing. This book is a debate of a sort between Borg and Wright. Well, debate is too strong a word. As the subtitles says: Two visions. They disagree, but accept the validity of the other’s view (very postmodern of them). I have serious problems with Borg’s vision of Jesus (heretic would not be too weak a term, I don’t think), although he does have some good thoughts. Here are a few comments on the first few chapters of the book.

Borg makes one point in the first chapter with which I agree. First, he says that we have made Jesus too “divine” and ignored his humanity, which is one of my soapboxes. He was truly God, but he was also truly human. Borg and I disagree strongly on the implications of this belief about Jesus being truly human, but we can at least agree on that. Jesus did not do miracles because he was God, he did miracles because he was empowered by the Spirit.

Of course, I usually disagree with Borg. Borg has the idea that if any event in the life of Jesus is corresponds to prophecy or makes a narrative point, then it cannot be true (81). Why must this be the case? Only the utmost in suspicion will assume such a theory. Could not the gospel writers have seen various truths associated with events in the life of Jesus and constructed a gospel around those? But this idea is based on another idea which Borg mentions in passing later on. He says that he does not accept a “supernatural interventionist model of God” (66). He does not argue for this idea, he just assumes it. But this is the lynch pin for his entire system. If this point is wrong, his system collapses. The argument of Borg in the book is not an argument for something; it is an explication of an assumption.

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