Distinguishing history from metaphor

Marcus Borg is widely-known and influential voices in progressive Christianity and is a major figure in scholarship related to the search for the Historical Jesus. I first encountered his works through the book The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, which he co-authored with his friend N.T. Wright.


I bought his book The God We Never Knew,  as a Christmas gift for myself last year because I found myself agreeing with a lot of his insights in his conversation with N.T. Wright in The Meaning of Jesus. In The God We Never Knew,  Borg was able to write a semi-biographical account of responding to our present time's need to hear about the distinction between history and metaphor because there are many parts in the gospels that a lot of people these days can't take literally. Because when literalized, the story of Jesus becomes literally incredible.



However, Borg argues that it’s not meant to be incredible; as good news, it is meant to be compelling.

And it is from there that he develops his point that the gospels contain two voices: the voice of Jesus and the voice of the Christian community. Both layers are important. The former tells us about the pre-Easter Jesus; the latter are the witness and testimony of the Christian community to what Jesus had become in their experience in the decades after Easter, which provides us with a connection that takes into account and still emphasizes our evangelical values of conversion, transformation and the rightful place of scripture in as the way in which God speaks and makes his will known in our lives.