Marcus Borg Has Had Huge Impact on ELCA Leaders

2/5/2015

One of the ELCA's favorite theologians, Marcus Borg, died a couple of weeks ago. Exposing the ELCA has written about the heretical teachings of Marcus Borg and his extensive connection with the ELCA in the past. (see here) Here is just one quote from Borg, an example of the heresy taught by this “teacher's teacher.” “I learned from my professors and the readings they assigned that Jesus almost certainly was not born of a virgin, did not think of himself as the Son of God, and did not see his purpose as dying for the sins of the world."

As you might imagine, many ELCA leaders were saddened to hear of Borg's death. A thread on an ELCA clergy facebook page contained the following comments -

“Such sad news. I learned so much from this man! He had a brilliant mind and a gentle spirit. Glad I got the chance to meet him and hear him teach in person.”

“Wonderful thinker, writer, and scholar! He will be missed.”

“How sad! I just started reading 'convictions' tonight. He made such a huge impact on my faith.”

“Rest in peace good and faithful servant. Will cherish the books and lessons learned...”

“He added so much to my understanding of scripture.”

“A very important figure in modern day Christianity.”

“Oh no, this is indeed sad news. His writing was the beginning of a whole new way of living Jesus for me.”

“What a brilliant man and gift through his writing and his teaching.”

“I love his thinking and writing.”

“His writings changed my life and ministry.”

“His writing has been influential in my remaining in ministry. Eternal light......”

Link to the closed group ELCA clergy page here.

7 Comments

Didaskalos link

2/5/2015 09:55:12 pm

Of course Marcus Borg was lionized by the ELCA, which has a lot in common with Borg and the Jesus Seminar, of which he and John Dominic Crossan were the two most prominent spokesmen. Voting with colored beads, the Jesus Seminarians proudly harrumphed that only 18 percent of the sayings and only 16 percent of the deeds attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are authentic. Voting by ballot in its 2009 churchwide convention, the ELCA proudly harrumphed that it had overruled the Bible on the matter of Bible-proscribed sexual sin.

Dr. Al Mohler has aptly noted about the ELCA, Marcus Borg, the Jesus Seminar, and other ear-tickling backpedalers from the Bible: “As J. Gresham Machen rightly observed almost a century ago, we do not really face two rival versions of Christianity. We face Christianity on the one hand and, on the other hand, some other religion that selectively uses Christian words, but is not Christianity.”

http://juicyecumenism.com/2015/01/26/death-marcus-borg-christian-panentheist/ — The Death of Marcus Borg, Christian Panentheist

". . .Even though he professed Christianity, Borg was frank about rejecting nearly all core Christian beliefs. The “pre-Easter Jesus is a figure of the past, dead and gone. He isn’t anywhere,” with talk about his corpse or an empty tomb merely “irrelevant distractions.” Only an arrogant, delusional Jesus would have claimed divinity or predicted resurrection, Borg noted, adding, “We have categories of psychology for people who talk that way about themselves.”

"Accordingly Borg didn’t think God answered prayer, didn’t believe in a specific afterlife, didn’t think Christianity was uniquely true or would even necessarily persist, and did not believe in a creator God or even a personal God, concepts more suitable for children who lack “critical thinking” than for adults.

"Raised in a traditional Lutheran home, Borg apparently first gained enlightenment through liberal theology at Union Seminary in New York. He at times recalled that he once believed in the Christmas story as literally involving a virgin birth, a “magic star,” and Wise Men, when he lacked the “mental equipment” in his youth to think otherwise. Only with education and post-adolescent critical thinking did he reject “childlike literalization of the personifications of God.”

"Rejecting God as a personal creator who presides over creation, Borg hailed panentheism for recognizing “we and everything that is are in God. God is not something else. God is right here and all around us. We are within God.” He explained: “The best way to refer to God is You, the You who is right here.”

http://www.albertmohler.com/2009/10/26/the-idolatrous-religion-of-conscience-a-lutheran-lesson-for-us-all/ -- "The Idolatrous Religion of Conscience — A Lutheran Lesson for Us All"

", , ,Those who would claim a bound conscience but pervert, deny, subvert, or relativize the Word may indeed be bound by conscience. But a conscience bound by anything other than the Word of God is a conscience given over to idolatry.

This is a Lutheran lesson we all desperately need to learn. And Martin Luther himself deserves the last word:

“It is the nature of all hypocrites and false prophets to create a conscience where there is none, and to cause conscience to disappear where it does exist.”

Noah Rieken

2/12/2015 01:48:46 pm

"No one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12:3)

"[Faith is] not from yourselves, it is the gift of God." (Ephesians 2:8)

"I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him." (Small Catechism, Pt. 2 [The Creed], Sec.6)

So much for Borg's suggestion that orthodox Christians are all simpletons who uncritically accept the doctrines of childhood.

Ken

2/6/2015 04:25:39 am

In his book MERE CHRISTIANITY, C.S. Lewis discussed the view that Jesus was a great moral teacher, but not the Son of God:

"One part of [Jesus'] claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toes and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences.... In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history."

"Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers...."

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.... [L]et us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (MERE CHRISTIANITY, Book 2, Chapter 3)

A. W.

2/8/2015 05:02:20 am

Dear friends, ...I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." (Jude 3)

That faith, stated briefly, is this:

"What I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve." (Romans 15:3-5)

A similar brief oral proclamation of the basic gospel message is given in Acts 2:14-36; 3:12-26; 4:8-12; 5:29-32; 10:34-43; 13:16-41.

2/8/2015 05:29:21 am

THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION, ARTICLE 3

"Our churches also teach that the Word--that is, the Son of God--took on man's nature in the womb of the blessed virgin Mary. So there are two natures, divine and human, inseparably conjoined in the unity of his person, one Christ, true God and true man, who was born of the virgin Mary, truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, that he might reconcile the Father to us and be a sacrifice not only for original guilt but also for all actual sins of men. He also descended into hell, and on the third day truly rose again. Afterward he ascended into heaven to sit on the right hand of the Father, forever reign and have dominion over all creatures, and sanctify those who believe in him by sending the Holy Spirit into their hearts to rule, comfort, and quicken them and defend them against the devil and the power of sin. The same Christ will openly come again to judge the living and the dead, etc., according to the Apostles' Creed."

George

2/8/2015 07:51:58 am

1 Cor 15 not Romans

2/9/2015 02:13:43 am

Sorry about my mix-up.

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Marcus Borg Has Had Huge Impact on ELCA Leaders

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Dan Skogen

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