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

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

41 " Thus any and every claim about what a passage of scripture means involves interpretation. There is no such thing as a noninterpretive reading of the Bible, unless our reading consists simply of making sounds in the air. As we read the Bible, then, we should ask not, “What is God saying?” but “What is the ancient author or community saying?”11 "

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

42 " I begin by noting that the books of the Bible were not sacred when they were written. Paul, for example, would have been amazed to know that his letters to his communities were to become sacred scripture. Rather, the various parts of the Bible became sacred through a process that took several centuries. "

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

43 " Jim Crace’s Quarantine [1997] and Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son [1997]. "

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

44 " The modern worldview yields a material understanding of reality. What is real is the space-time world of matter and energy. Reality is made up of tiny bits and pieces of “stuff,” all of them interacting with each other in accord with “natural laws.” The result is a picture of the universe as a closed system of cause and effect. Although this worldview has already been superseded in theoretical physics, it continues to operate powerfully in our minds. "

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

45 " The result: the monarchical model of biblical authority is replaced by a dialogical model of biblical authority. In other words, the biblical canon names the primary collection of ancient documents with which Christians are to be in a continuing dialogue. "

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

46 " Thus the authority of the Bible is its status as our primary ancient conversational partner. "

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

47 " Jesus 2000. "

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

48 " The modern preoccupation with factuality has had a pervasive and distorting effect on how we see the Bible and Christianity. "

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

49 " To be Christian means to live within the world created by the Bible. We are to listen to it well and let its central stories shape our vision of God, our identity, and our sense of what faithfulness to God means. It is to shape our imagination, that part of our psyches in which our foundational images of reality and life reside. We are to be a community shaped by scripture. The purpose of our continuing dialogue with the Bible as sacred scripture is nothing less than that.14 "

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

50 " Christianity in the modern period became preoccupied with the dynamic of believing or not believing. For many people, believing “iffy” claims to be true became the central meaning of Christian faith. It is an odd notion—as if what God most wants from us is believing highly problematic statements to be factually true. And if one can’t believe them, then one doesn’t have faith and isn’t a Christian "

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

51 " 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

52 " The thoroughly modern character of this notion of faith can be seen by comparing what faith meant in the Christian Middle Ages. During those centuries, basically everybody in Christian culture thought the Bible to be true. They had no reason to think otherwise; the Bible’s stories from creation through the end of the world were part of the conventional wisdom of the time. Accepting them did not require “faith.” Faith had to do with one’s relationship to God, not with whether one thought the Bible to be true.12 "

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