Days of Awe and Wonder

How To Be A Christian In The Twenty-First Century

Marcus Borg, Marcus J. Borg

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780281078257
• eBook ISBN: 9780281078264
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Distilled into a single volume, here is the essence of Marcus J. Borg, one of the most widely respected and influential theologians of our time. In his many critically acclaimed books, Borg pioneered a new kind of Christianity - one that resonates with progressive, socially engaged Christians throughout the world. Now, two years after his death, comes Days of Awe and Wonder, a selection of his most important works, some of them hitherto unpublished, in which he explores what it means to be a Christian in the twenty-first century. Provocative and uplifting, this anthology will enlighten all who are meeting Borg for the first time and amply reward those who would like to renew their acquaintance with one of the world's finest theological writers.

Chapter 1

Listening to the Spirit

When I was a young teacher in my mid-twenties, an older colleague delighted in characterizing modern theology as “flat-tire” theology: “All of the pneuma has gone out of it.” The irony of his comment depended on the double meaning of pneuma, a Greek word meaning both “air” and “spirit.”1 I understood his point, but I wasn’t sure I agreed with it. For me, modern theology was a joy: insightful, challenging, liberating.

Though I still see modern theology as a treasure of great value for both church and culture, I also see that my colleague’s statement was (and is) largely correct, not only about theology in general, but also about biblical scholarship and historical Jesus studies in particular.2 Within scholarly circles, Jesus’s relationship to the world of Spirit is seldom taken seriously.3 Attention is directed to what he said, and sometimes even to what he did, but seldom is attention paid to what he was.

What Jesus was, historically speaking, was a Spirit-filled person in the charismatic stream of Judaism. This is the key to understanding what he was like as a historical figure. In an important sense, all that he was, taught, and did flowed out of his own intimate experience of the “world of Spirit.”

The “World of Spirit”

The notion of a “world of Spirit” is a vague and difficult notion in the contemporary world. By it I mean another dimension or layer or level of reality in addition to the visible world of our ordinary experience. This notion of “another world,” understood as actual even though nonmaterial, is quite alien to the modern way of thinking. The modern worldview, or “picture of reality,” sees reality as having essentially one dimension, the visible and material realm.4 Deeply ingrained in all of us who have grown up in modern Western culture, this worldview makes us skeptical about another reality. For most contemporary people, believing in another reality requires “faith,” understood as affirming that which on other grounds is doubtful.5 The “world of Spirit” is not part of our taken-for-granted understanding of reality, not part of our worldview.

But the notion of another reality, a world of Spirit, was the common property of virtually every culture before ours, constituting what has been called the “primordial tradition.”6 Appearing in a multiplicity of cultural forms, indeed in virtually as many forms as there are cultures, it was almost a “cultural universal,” the “human unanimity” prior to the modern period. Essential to it are two claims.

First, in addition to the visible material world disclosed to us by ordinary sense perception (and modern science), there is another level of reality, a second world of nonmaterial reality, charged with energy and power. This basic division of reality into two levels can be spoken of in many ways—as the sacred and the profane, the holy (or “numinous”) and the mundane, God and “this world,” and so forth.7 What is most important is the notion of another level or levels of reality rather than any particular set of terms. Moreover, the “other world”—the world of Spirit—is seen as “more” real than “this world.” Indeed, the “other reality” is the source or ground of “this world.”

Second, and very important, the “other world” is not simply an article of belief, but an element of experience. That is, the notion of another reality does not have its origin in prescientific speculation about the origin of things, primal anxiety about death, or the need for protection, but is grounded in the religious experience of humankind.8 It is not merely believed in, but known.

To put this second claim somewhat differently, the world of Spirit and the world of ordinary experience are seen as not completely separate, but as intersecting at a number of points.9 Many cultures speak of a particular place as the “navel of the earth,” the umbilical cord connecting the two worlds.10 Some cultures speak of the two worlds intersecting in particular historical events. But it is especially in the experience of individuals that the “other world” is known. In every culture known to us, there are men and women who experience union or communion with the world of Spirit, either “entering” it or experiencing it coming upon them. Those who experience it frequently and vividly often become mediators between the two worlds in a variety of cultural forms: as healers, prophets, lawgivers, shamans, mystics. Such men and women are charismatics in the proper sense of the word: people who know the world of Spirit firsthand.

The Primordial Tradition in the Biblical Tradition

The cultural tradition in which Jesus lived took for granted the central claims of the primordial tradition: there are minimally two worlds, and the other world can be known. At the heart of the Jewish tradition, indeed constituting it, was Israel’s story of the intersection between the world of Spirit and the world of ordinary experience. That is what Israel’s scriptures were about. The Hebrew Bible is Israel’s story of events that were seen as disclosures of Spirit, of people who were experienced as mediators of Spirit, of laws and prophetic utterances believed to have been given by the Spirit.

This multilayered picture of reality runs throughout the Bible. The opening verse of Genesis portrays the visible world as having its origin in Spirit, in God: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Importantly, Spirit is not seen as abstract and remote, as a hypothetical first cause.11 Rather, the world of Spirit is seen as alive and “personal,” populated by a variety of beings: angels, archangels, cherubim, seraphim. At its center (or height or depth) is God, often spoken of as personal: as father, mother, king, shepherd, lover. Nonanthropomorphic terms can also be used: fire, light, Spirit.

It is difficult to know how literally we should take this language. Language about the “other world” is necessarily metaphorical and analogical, simply because we must use language drawn from the visible world to try to speak of another world constituted by very different realities and energies. If anything is to be communicated at all, it must be by analogy to what we know in the ordinary world or in images drawn from the ordinary world. Thus God is like a father or mother, like a king, like a shepherd, like fire; but God is not literally any of these things. Yet, though the language is metaphorical, the realities are not.

Moreover, this other world is not literally somewhere else. It is not the localized heaven of the popular imagination. Though God can be spoken of as a being “up in heaven,” the tradition makes it clear that God and the world of Spirit are not literally elsewhere. Rather, according to the tradition, God is everywhere present. To use somewhat technical but useful theological language, for the biblical tradition God is immanent (everywhere present, omnipresent), even as God is also transcendent (not to be identified with any particular thing, not even with the sum total of things). As omnipresent and immanent, God and the world of Spirit are all around us, including within us. Rather than God being somewhere else, we (and everything that is) are in God.12 We live in Spirit, even though we are typically unaware of this reality.13

Biblical Mediators Between the Two Worlds

Israel affirmed that the world of Spirit was known. It intersected with “this world” at many points: historically, especially in the exodus and the return from exile, though also in other central events of its history; culticly, in the Temple in Jerusalem, which was seen as the navel of the earth connecting this world to the other world, which was its source; and personally, in the devotional and spiritual experiences of ordinary people and especially in Spirit-filled mediators such as Moses and the prophets. It is this tradition of Spirit-filled mediators that is most significant for understanding the historical Jesus.

From start to end, the Bible is dominated by such figures, beginning with the Genesis stories of the patriarchs, the “fathers” of Israel. Abraham saw visions and entertained heavenly visitors. Jacob had a vision of a fiery ladder connecting the two worlds, with angels ascending and descending on it. Afterwards he exclaimed, “This is the gate of heaven”—that is, the doorway into the other world (Gen. 28:17).14 In the last book of the Bible, the vision of John begins with a similar image: “After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open!” (Rev. 4:1).15 What is true of the beginning and end of the Bible is also true of its great figures throughout the tradition.

The first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch) center on Moses, the main human figure of Israel’s history, indeed its “founder.” According to the brief obituary at the end of Deuteronomy, he knew God “face to face.” According to Exodus, he repeatedly ascended the mountain of God (symbolizing the connection between the two worlds?) and there was given the words he imparted to his followers as “divine law.” On one occasion after coming down from the mountain, we are told, his face actually glowed with the radiance of the holy, which he had encountered (Exod. 34:29–35). Throughout the Pentateuch, Moses functions as a mediator between the two worlds: as divine lawgiver, as channel of power from the world of Spirit, and as intercessor on behalf of his people (Exod. 32:7–14; Num. 14:13–19).

The experience of the other world and the role of mediation are also central to the prophets, including Elijah, as well as the classical prophets. Though a much more shadowy figure than Moses, Elijah was one of the central heroes of the Jewish tradition. Like Moses, he was frequently in the wilderness and sojourned to the sacred mountain, where he also experienced a theophany (an experience of God or “the holy”). Even as the stories about him emphasize the issues of social justice and loyalty to God that characterize the later prophets, he is also clearly portrayed as a “man of Spirit”: he traveled “in the Spirit” and was a channel for the power of Spirit as both a healer and rainmaker. At the end of his life he was carried into the other world by “chariots of fire.”16

One hundred years later, in the eighth century bce, the mission of the prophet Isaiah began with an overwhelming experience of the other world:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. (6:1–4)

In the Temple, the sacred place connecting the earth to the other realm, Isaiah momentarily “saw” into the other world: a vision of God upon the divine throne, surrounded by strange, unearthly six-winged creatures. But he did not simply “see” into the other world; he was, in a sense, in it, for he became a participant in the scene:

Then one of t...

Table of contents

• 1. Listening to the Spirit
• 2. Faith: A Journey of Trust
• 3. My Conversion to Mysticism
• 4. Jesus, Our Model for Being Spirit-Filled
• 5. Reclaiming Mysticism
• 6. Awe, Wonder, and Jesus
• 7. Is Jesus God?
• 8. Taking Jesus Seriously: Mystic, Wisdom Teacher, Social Prophet
• 9. Stand with Jesus
• 10. Renewing Our Image of Jesus
• 11. Healing Our Image of God
• 12. Living God’s Passion
• 13. Facing Today’s Challenges: An Interview
• 14. The Heart and Soul of Christianity
• 15. Encountering the Wisdom of Other Faiths
• 16. Listening for the Voice of God
• Afterword by Barbara Brown Taylor
• Notes
• Search terms