Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally QUOTES

1 " The word “sacrament” also has a broader meaning. In the study of religion, a sacrament is commonly defined as a mediator of the sacred, a vehicle by which God becomes present, a means through which the Spirit is experienced. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

2 " Fundamentalism itself—whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim—is modern. It is a reaction to modern culture.7 Christian fundamentalism as an identifiable religious movement originated early in the twentieth century in the United States, with its immediate roots in the second half of the nineteenth century.8 It stressed the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible in every respect, especially against Darwinism and what it called “the higher criticism” (by which it meant the scholarly study of the Bible as it had developed primarily in Germany in the nineteenth century). The roots of the evangelical understanding of the Bible are older, going back to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. The Reformation replaced the authority of the church and church tradition with the sole authority of scripture. John Calvin and Martin Luther, the two most important leaders of the Reformation, both had a strong sense of biblical authority. But it was in the second and third generation of the Reformation that claims for the infallible truth of the Bible were made. “Plenary inspiration”—the notion that the words of the Bible were dictated by God and are therefore free from error—was emphasized by those later Reformers.9 The realization that these developments are relatively recent is important. The explicit description of the Bible as inerrant and infallible by fundamentalists and some conservative-evangelicals cannot claim to be the ancient and traditional voice of the church. Yet both fundamentalism and the notion of the Bible as “God’s truth” (and thus without error) have their roots in an older, conventional way of seeing the Bible widely shared by most Christians for a long time. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

3 " being Christian is about a relationship to the God who is mediated by the Christian tradition as sacrament. To be Christian is to live within the Christian tradition as a sacrament and let it do its transforming work within and among us. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

4 " The way of Jesus is thus not a set of beliefs about Jesus. That people ever thought it was is strange, when we think about it — as if one entered new life by believing certain things to be true, or as if the only people who can be saved are those who know the word "Jesus". Thinking that way virtually amounts to salvation by syllables.

Rather, the way of Jesus is the way of death and resurrection — the path of transition and transformation from an old way of being to a new way of being. To use the language of incarnation that is so central to John, Jesus incarnates the way. Incarnation means embodiment. Jesus is what the way embodied in a human life looks like. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

5 " Postmodernity knows that someday the Newtonian worldview will seem as quaint and archaic as the Ptolemaic worldview, a development that has already occurred among theoretical physicists. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

6 " Yet because the Bible is a human product as well as sacred scripture, the continuing dialogue needs to be a critical conversation. There are parts of the Bible that we will decide need not or should not be honored, either because we discern that they were relevant to ancient times but not to our own, or because we discern that they were never the will of God.13* "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

7 " In a time when traditional religious teachings have become suspect, we tend to trust that which can be known in our own experience. This turn to experience is seen in the remarkable resurgence of interest in spirituality within mainline churches and beyond. Spirituality is the experiential dimension of religion. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

8 " As we read the Bible, we are not only to bring our critical intelligence with us, but also to listen. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

9 " Namely, Christianity is the only major religion that finds the decisive disclosure of God in a person. Islam finds it in a book, the Koran. Judaism in a sense finds it in a book, the Torah. Buddhism finds it in the teaching of the Buddha and not necessarily in the person of the Buddha. But Christianity finds the decisive disclosure of God in Jesus. And that’s something that’s very interesting about Christianity. I also think that suggests something about the primacy of Jesus, even over the Bible itself. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

10 " Because our socialization intrinsically leads to that kind of self-preoccupation, with how well the self is doing, the path of release and liberation from that self-preoccupation intrinsically involves dying to that way of being and being born to a life that is centered in the spirit, or in what William James in his wonderfully generic term for God called “the more. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

11 " in “the more” and not in the standards of my culture, not in the standards of my religious tradition, not in myself and how “well” I’m doing. To use Christian language once again, the primary fruit of centering in “the more,” according to St. Paul, are the four gifts of the spirit: peace, joy, freedom, and love. Now, who wouldn’t want a life filled with those things? And I see those fruits of the spirit to be the fruits of the spiritual life, in all of the major religious traditions. So, no, I don’t see this as peculiar to Christianity. I see Christianity as the revelation of a universal path, rather than its being the revelation or disclosure of a unique path. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

12 " John Dominic Crossan wrote in the concluding chapter, “Mine Eyes Decline the Glory,” of his wonderful memoir, A Long Way From Tipperary [2000]. I’ll just read this: "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

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

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

14 " 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. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

15 " A recent study suggests that the majority of Christians were still Jewish in origin as late as the middle of the third century.3 "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

16 " 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. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

17 " 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. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

18 " The meaning of “history remembered” or “historical memories” is obvious. Some events reported in the Bible really happened, and the ancient communities of Israel and the early Christian movement preserved the memory of their having happened. Indeed, the biblical story is grounded in the history of these two communities. The meaning of “metaphorical narratives” requires more explanation. In the Bible, such narratives fall into two categories. The first encompasses narratives in which an event that happened (or may have happened) is given a metaphorical meaning. The second covers purely metaphorical narratives. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

19 " The recognition that the Bible contains both history and metaphor has an immediate implication: the ancient communities that produced the Bible often metaphorized their history. Indeed, this is the way they invested their stories with meaning. But we, especially in the modern period, have often historicized their metaphors. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

20 " No longer are the riches of the Bible known only to an educated elite. But it has also had negative consequences. It has made possible individualistic interpretation of the Bible; and that, coupled with the elevated status given to the Bible by the Protestant Reformation, has led to the fragmentation of Christianity into a multitude of denominations and sectarian movements, each grounded in different interpretations of the Bible. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally