Beware the Enemy Inside the Gate

http://your.sydneyanglicans.net/indepth/articles/beware_the_enemy_inside_the_gate/

[your.sydneyanglicans.net] 27 May 2007--Recently I read a web article that outlined views expressed by Marcus Borg from the group called The Jesus Seminar. At the ‘Church for the 21st Century’ Conference held at the Episcopal Church’s Washington National Cathedral, Borg argued that people today need to be re-educated about Christianity because the common understanding of Christianity of a generation or two ago has become “hugely unpersuasive” in our time. At first glance that seems plausible. We are all looking for ways to communicate the gospel effectively in today’s world.

But Borg told his audience that today’s need was for Christians to leave behind the ‘belief-centred paradigm’ of the past and commit to a ‘transformation-centred paradigm’of faith. For Borg, ‘belief-centred’ means assenting to a set of specific beliefs, while ‘transformation-centred’ means primarily to be on a path, a way of being, for the individual and the world.

He said the belief-centred view sees the Bible as inerrant, infallible and directly from God’s hand. In contrast, in the transformation-centred view the Bible is a human product and a social construction representative of particular people or peoples, place or time. “What we have in the Bible is how our spiritual ancestors saw things, not how God sees them,” Borg said.

If we listen to him the Bible is thrown away, replaced by our experience.

Beside Borg we can place another internal attack on Biblical Christianity, one possibly more persuasive, but highly inimical to Biblical understanding.