Nicholas Gilman Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time Understanding the Bible

07/15/2022 Marcus J. Borg Dr. Marty Bell

My first impression of the Marcus J. Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time was that it was

a lot different than I expected. The author’s interest in studying the historical Jesus, deciphering what is

historical vice editorial, and presenting the sociopolitical figure of Jesus as the community saw him and

as he saw himself, has always been a point of interest for me.

He begins his book with a reflection on a lecture he was asked to give to an Episcopal

men’s group about Jesus and to make it personal. These instructions led him to explain his relationship

with God, Jesus, faith, and the church from his early childhood through seminary school. His story was

incredibly relatable for me personally. He describes how easy it was as a child to believe in the image

Jesus presented by the church due to, what he now understands as, a state of precritical naiveté – the

notion that whatever concepts or information we are presented by an authoritative figure we perceive

to be true. We are bombarded with ideas in or adolescence that we are told to be true without ever

being taught to practice our own process of critical thinking. Reflecting on my own experience and what

I have observed, I would say that we are not taught how to practice this type of critical thinking, to

question authority, established belief/social/economic systems, and construct our own objective truths

until we enter university level education. This portion of Borg’s book I found to be especially fitting to

the question Professor Bell presented in our first lecture for Understanding the Bible, the question of,

“how much of what you believe, do you believe?” As the author’s belief in God waned through his teens

on into his entry to a midwestern Lutheran College, he was exposed to the scholarly study of theology

that provided the framework he needed to begin to understand and process the perplexity of his own

beliefs.

Borg concludes his journey through undergraduate studies as a self-described “closet agnostic.”

He then continued to seminary school which did not help the faith component of his belief or

understanding of Christianity. The narration through his journey made me pause here because I felt it
Nicholas Gilman Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time Understanding the Bible
07/15/2022 Marcus J. Borg Dr. Marty Bell

was missing so much exposition as to the why he was on this path. While I have never pursued theology

in a professional or scholastic manner, I have certainly been in the same position of questioning my own

beliefs in God, Jesus, and religion. As an undergraduate student who will be a few months shy of forty

years young upon graduation, I have given great thought as to how I give meaning to my life and how

that meaning correlates to my pursuit of education and profession. So what drove a “closet agnostic” to

pursue seminary as a graduate study program? Was it a subconscious fear that he couldn’t abandon a

belief system that had been so integral to his development despite his current doubts? Was it pressure

from family or friends? Was it a genuine interest is the scholastic pursuit of the historical significance of

Jesus? And how are these possible explanations relative to his own desire for personal meaning?

Perhaps it was the doubt itself that drove his desire to discern the greater meaning of the universe. I

suppose that, while these questions are of personal interests to me, they did not require further

explanation for the intent of the author’s message.

Regardless of how he arrived at seminary, his first revelation during his first New Testament

course I found to be fascinating. He contends that the image of Jesus as the divine savior who knew

himself to be the Son of God, the image of Jesus I grew up with, was not historically accurate based on

an understanding of the gospels over the past couple centuries through biblical scholarship. Borg

explains that, through a process of careful comparative study, the gospels illustrate the developing

traditions of the early Christian movement. They are neither divine documents nor precise eyewitness

accounts written by those who accompanied Jesus. The gospel stories were passed down through oral

tradition until second or third generation authors transcribed them into their current form, which then

evolved with the growing Christian movement through the Mediterranean world. During this growth in

the Christian movement, Jesus was increasingly talked about as divine or having the qualities of God,

resulting in the creation of the doctrine of the Trinity a few centuries later. This process of insight and
Nicholas Gilman Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time Understanding the Bible
07/15/2022 Marcus J. Borg Dr. Marty Bell

knowledge of the gospels resulted in what Borg describes as, “the well-known scholarly distinction

between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.” The concept of Jesus’ divinity is something I cannot

reconcile beyond idea that it was predicated by men through the growth of the Christian movement.

The author carries in this moment, and I carry now, an opinion that “religions in general…were

manifestly cultural products…their readily identifiable psychological and social functions served human

needs and cultural ends.” I don’t have any disdain for the concept of religion and God. Given the

severely different standard of life, lack of education or scientific understanding of the physical world,

and the oppression and subjugation of much of the world’s population, it is easy to understand why

religion and all that comes with it, would be appealing to anybody. I contend that since man became

aware of its own existence, we have pondered the question of why. Everybody is looking for meaning,

and religion provides a very attractive answer. An answer that we are special, and that through our

devotion we can overcome an impossibly insurmountable certainty of our existence. We can defeat our

mortality and be rewarded with life eternal.

Once again, I find myself with scores of remaining notes and interesting topics set aside from

this book that I will not have time to discuss in this reflection, but I wanted to conclude with my own

thoughts on how we derive meaning in our lives without religion. I would start by saying that we can

find meaning within ourselves through our achievements, not as egotistical monuments to our success

but through the self-satisfaction of realizing our own potential and taking pride in our accomplishments.

Second, by acting in a manner that has a positive impact on those we encounter. If justice is the equal

access of God’s creation of all people, then we should all act in a manner that is just. For meaning

beyond this we simply need to look around. We exist within the most unique and fragile of

circumstances in our universe. If it is said that human’s simply lack the capacity to fully understand God

in all His infinity wisdom and glory, I say the same of our ability to understand the infinity expanse and
Nicholas Gilman Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time Understanding the Bible
07/15/2022 Marcus J. Borg Dr. Marty Bell

glory of our universe. To paraphrase a quote from physicist Brain Cox, “the ingredients in our bodies

were assembled in the hearts of long dead stars over billions of years. And have assembled themselves

spontaneously into temporary structure that can think and feel and explore. And those structures will

decay away again. And sometime in the very far future there will be no structures left. What more could

you want?” We exist for an incomprehensibly brief moment of existence within the incomprehensible

expanse of our universe. For within that moment, we have the unique ability to observe the wonders of

our universe, to share in cathartic experiences by bearing witness to beauty that our universe provides.