Mike – Thank you for being a person at an emergent event that I know I can sit by and not have ask me what church I go to, tell me how their church is different, or looking odd when I say “Bishop Spong saved my faith”. Hopefully more conversations coming.

Those scholars wouldn’t say “they’ve ‘proved’ that Jesus really didn’t rise from the dead”. They would say that the story was written after the eye witnesses were gone and it wasn’t meant to be proof of any event happening. These storytellers encased their truths into symbolic narratives (myths) so that they can stand the test of time. Just like every other culture always has.

Why draw a line around this one narrative and treat it different? If your argument for why it should be accepted as fact is that later christian communities accepted it as fact then you’ve forced yourself to accept a host of problems. How about all the other myths? How about mistreatment of women? How about flat earth? How about literal heaven and literal hell? Do you think Paul believed in a 6 day creation and demon posession? I bet he did. But should we adopt ancient worldviews just because the authors of our sacred texts did? The point of the text is not to preserve a particular ancient worldview. The texts are there to communicate powerful truths that transcend any worldview.

This is my point. We need to end the modernist arguments about “if” it “really” happened or if it didn’t. Believing in resurrection doesn’t need to be confined to belief that the event “really” happened the way one particular account tells the facts. If so, which account? Which facts?

Why can’t we start asking what the story means instead of forcing people to believe in the particular worldview of its author? This is the place where we can transcend the mistakes of modernity and take Christianity to a place where it can survive the next Galileo, Darwin, or archeological discovery. Isn’t Tony simply reacting the same way that the fundamentalists react to him? Isn’t he just refusing to go one step further with his deconstruction?

I’ll post something over on my blog so we can chat there instead of hogging the podcast blog.

I’d have to agree with Tony on this one…especially because he’s playing with the term “fundamentalism” to display a sort of reactive, knee-jerk kind of way of interpreting Scripture. The Bible is a historical book that dares to suggest that a transcendent God works through concrete, historical actions (immanence). If you wanted to talk about the tower of Babel or creation story in Genesis, then we could talk about the irrelevance of whether they “actually happened” or not, since there’s no way to know, no eyewitnesses, and the Jewish community self-confesses that the meaning is in the story, not in the concrete details.

Jesus’ resurrection, though, is a whole ‘nother animal. The concept of resurrection was strongly reinforced in the early Christian community not by some philosophical “meaning” reading, but by a concrete action with concrete witnesses. The New Testament, then can be followed in its response to this action in all its various documents as it carries this thread of resurrection hope through all the letters and gospels and apocalyptic. The historical facts are the meaning along with the meaning; they’re all wrapped up in each other

And of course Borg would say that (together with Crossan and Spong their other buds), since they’ve “proved” that Jesus really didn’t rise from the dead. It is irrelevant to them because 2,000 years after the point, they have enough confidence to say that they know better than those who walked with Jesus both pre- and post- resurrection.

1) Awsome. I’m glad to hear that. Will it have to be about believing in a literal resurrection? Will that topic be out of bounds?

2) I have no desire to put words in your mouth. If you didn’t mean that then I’d like to hear your clarification. Why did you paint such a negative picture of Marcus Borg if you don’t mean to insist his views are out of bounds?

Yes, I’m strident in my stance that we should never turn the whole point of the resurrection story into believing that it literally happened.

In the podcast you said “a lot of what emergent is about is trying to get beyond this language and tone of voice that communicates some kind of certainty … in a world where we are becoming aware about how little we really know”. All I’m asking is that you not become upset when someone questions something you feel certain about.

It is hard to make a case of fundamentalism against me when I’m suggesting a big tent faith that embraces our diffent views. I’m suggesting we can agree to disagree about the historical facts, but we can find unity in the deeper meanings. That is hardly a fundamentalist stance.

1) Emergent will never become a denomination as long as I’m drawing breath.

2) Where the hell did I “insist [the story's] historical facts are the point of the story and that [you] all must agree with [me]“?!? Please, quote me saying anything to that effect. You won’t find it because I never have.

And your “meaning hermeneutic” is starting to feel almost fundamentalistic to me. Do you really mean to be that strident about it?

I would NEVER ask you to let go of the resurrection. What I’ve said is that I wish you would let go of trying to insist its historical facts are the point of the story and we that we must all agree with you. I’ll say what Borg always says, “Believe what you want about if the story literally happened. Now, let’s talk about what it means”. We can find harmony in the meaning. In the facts, we will always find division.

I have hope that Emergent doesn’t become another denomination that simply draws new boundaries based on the limits of one person’s modern theological beliefs from left to right. I hope it becomes as Brian McLaren has suggested, completely off the line. I hope we can move beyond dogmatic beliefs and toward inclusive faith.