Bull?
“People tend to ignore the obvious if it conflicts with the orthodoxy of their early training.” Richard K. Bernstein
One of my highest grades in the three-year Master of Divinity program was in Christian Theology, the study of Christian faith and practice. I had been taught much of this since being brought up in the church from birth. I had recited the creeds, sung the hymns, and prayed the prayers for as long as I could remember. I took it for granted that there was a God and that “he” created the universe and all within it, that he sent his only son Jesus to earth conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, that he was killed but rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, and would come again to judge the living and the dead, and that those who believed in him would be forgiven of their sins and have life everlasting.1 I just assumed most folks believed these things as well. Ironically enough, I didn’t really question these beliefs until just before going to divinity school.
It was my Methodist mentor back in Mississippi that first encouraged me to re-examine some of the Christian claims and story. Jack had been my pastor in Meridian before I left for college and I asked him to be my mentor for what is known in the United Methodist Church as the candidacy process for vocational discernment. I remained in touch with him throughout my time in Alabama and North Carolina, often meeting with him during holiday visits to Mississippi. I remember one early visit in my candidacy process, reading together the Old Testament story of Moses and the burning bush, and Jack asking me if I thought this story literally occurred this way. I don’t remember my response in the moment to this invitation to biblical criticism. But I do remember feeling that it was now okay, even important, to question.
I don’t think it was Jack who recommended it, but somehow, I came upon the book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time2 by the New Testament scholar and theologian Marcus Borg. Borg’s exploration of the historical Jesus, the “Pre-Easter Jesus” as he termed it, in contrast to the Jesus of faith or the “Post-Easter Jesus,” offered even more support and permission for me to question the literal teachings of the church. Some of Borg’s determinations were that Jesus had a human father, did not perform miracles, and was not raised bodily from the dead. He was however a Jewish itinerant apocalyptic3 teacher who challenged the status quo and the powers that be.
I was excited to learn during my first semester of divinity school that Dr. Borg was to debate the renowned Dean of Duke Chapel in the basement of the large structure. As I listened to the two men, they represented for me the juxtaposition of my current thinking. On one side was the Dean with his orthodox, somewhat provocative, but mostly familiar stances. On the other side was the professor from Oregon, with his unorthodox, more provocative, not so familiar, yet refreshingly persuasive observations.
It was a bit of an awakening for me when an opinionated, I thought arrogant, classmate left the event following an early statement by Borg, uttering “This is bullshit!” loud enough for a number of us around him to hear. Although at that time I never would have said it out loud, I was beginning to consider that the Dean’s perspective, the one I had been taught to believe since birth, was the one perhaps most laden with bull.
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The Apostles' Creed (more or less), most likely originating in the 5th-century.
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith by Marcus J. Borg (1995)
Heralding the imminent coming of the end of the present world and the coming of the kingdom of God.