There were about 10 of us from St. David's who attended an excellent talk by Marcus Borg at First St. Andrews United Church in London last night. He discussed the two different visions of Christianity which are currently prevalent in North America. The lecture was based on his book "The Heart of Christianity" which our St. David's study group explored a couple of years ago. Borg asked how many had read his book and about 1/3 of the people responded. For those of us who had read his book there was not much new, however it was delightful to hear Borg in person. He has a quiet, scholarly way of talking and a devilish sense of humour.

It was very encouraging to hear what he feels that the church needs to do in order survive in the 21st Century. He said that the most important task for the church today is "adult theological re-education at the congregational level". I felt particularly good about this because this is what we have been doing in our study groups at St. David's for the past few years.

He started by contrasting the two different ways of looking at Christianity - the two "paradigms" as he calls them - the "earlier paradigm" and the "emerging paradigm". The "earlier paradigm" is the conventional "conservative" Christianity of a generation or two ago. It is based on "believing" in certain things. It is also "after-life centered", with certain rewards and punishments if you don't toe the line or "believe" in certain doctrines. It sees Christianity as "the only way to salvation" and its literal interpretation of the Bible is in conflict with modern enlightenment (such as in the Creationism versus Evolution debate).

The "emerging paradigm" is a more "liberal" or "progressive" grass-roots movement which has taken wings in the past twenty years or so. It is about "a way, a path" rather than about a set of "beliefs". It is about a life-path of relationship and transformation. It is inclusive and recognizes that there are many paths to God, other than just Christianity. It sees beyond Biblical literalism to a more metaphorical understanding of the Bible, and hence finds no conflict between religion and science.
In the four years since his book was originally published he has introduced some new terms for describing the "earlier paradigm" and the "emerging paradigm". He describes them as "belief centered" contrasted with "transformation centered".

He then went on to describe how the two paradigms view the Bible. The earlier paradigm sees the Bible as a "divine product" coming directly from God, with the authority of God behind every word. Thus it must be considered as literally and factually true (or "inerrant"). In contrast, the emerging paradigm sees the Bible as a "human product" which tells us how God was experienced by our spiritual ancestors.

He pointed out that the Bible"was not written to us or for us, but was written for ancient communities and in ancient context". He also reminded us that "the documents making up the Bible were NOT sacred when they were written, but became sacred by a decision of our ancestors" (when the books of the Bible were canonized around the fourth century). He said that Paul probably would have been really surprised that his ordinary letters written to young churches were now considered to be the sacred word of God.

He gave us some very interesting information about the background of the more fundamentalist aspects of the earlier paradigm as contrasted with the emerging paradigm. There is a tendency to think of the earlier paradigm as "traditional Christianity" and the emerging paradigm as a "modern" or "post-modern" phenomenon. However the earlier paradigm, with its notions of biblical infallibility and inerrancy started in the 1600's in response to the enlightenment (e.g. the science of Copernicus and Galileo). In actual fact, scholars today are, in a sense, recovering the more "traditional" early forms of Christianity that have been diminished or overshadowed by the strident voice of fundamentalism (which is less than 100 years old).

He also reminded us that many"traditional" Christian concepts are actually fairly recent. For instance the Roman Catholic doctrine of Papal infallibility originated as late as 1870.

He concluded his formal talk by trying to bridge the differences between the earlier and emerging paradigms. He pointed out that there is nothing wrong with (or "less Christian") about those who espouse the earlier paradigm. Much of the goodness and decency of Christianity over the years has its roots in this earlier paradigm, and there is much in common in both paradigms.

At the heart of Christianity is God/The Sacred and following Jesus. Christianity is "The Way" - a path of transformation. These are all concepts which are shared by both paradigms and are more important than our differences.

In talking about how to bridge the gap between the two paradigms, he offered a question which he often uses when talking to a conservative fundamentalist to try and bridge the potential hostility gap which might exist. He would ask: "Would you agree with me that at the centre of the Christian life is a way, a path of transformation with God as known in Jesus?" Most Christians would answer yes to this question, and that can be the beginning of dialogue and understanding.

The final point he made was how the meaning of the words "believe" and "faith" had changed over the years. Prior to the year 1600 "to believe" meant "to belove" and meant a relationship of faithfulness (commitment, loyalty, allegiance and trust). In the 1600's "to believe" (and "faith") began to mean believing a set of statements to be true, whether they are persuasive or not. He says that "This is a distortion of the ancient meaning of believing and faith. It suggests that what God wants from us is to believe difficult statements to be true."

QUESTIONS DIRECTED TO BORG
There were three questions he answered at the end of his talk. I will try to summarize two of them (I forgot the third one!):

1. WHAT IS HIS INTERPRETATION OF "THE CROSS"
He said the worst distortion of the cross is the doctrine of substitutionary atonement - the "Jesus died for our sin" interpretation - that somehow the whole purpose and meaning of Jesus life was to die a bloody death for us. He said that this view of the cross was not the view of the early church, but originated less than 1000 years ago with Anselm of Canterbury. He said there were many better ways of viewing the cross. There is the political view that "the domination system of the time [the Romans] had Jesus killed, or the metaphorical view that the cross represents the spiritual path of transformation.

2. HOW DOES "PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY" IMPACT OUR CORPORATE WORSHIP?
Worship is for us - God does not need to be worshiped. (I think his actual words were something like "God doesn't give a damn about being worshiped"!). Worship is for us - to draw us out of ourselves; to form us, to shape us; to inform us (teach us) .

He quoted the leading Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann as saying that "Worship is profoundly subversive" because if we recognize God as our Lord, then the lords and power structures of this world are not our masters.

He also said that he would like to see more silence in our worship. He also recommended that when we do bible readings in church that they be done well, by people who are well trained, and not just casually spread around in order to get a number of different faces appearing at the front of the church on Sunday morning.

FINAL THOUGHTS
It was a great evening in a packed church and a wonderful opportunity to hear and meet one of the icons of contemporary Christian thinking. I find it very gratifying that in a city like London we can pack a church with people eager to hear words of hope for the future of Christianity in a post-modern world.