What do we really mean when we say we are a "people of faith"? What are we saying as individuals when we say we "have faith"? Is faith primarily about believing certain things to be true? On the face of it, these sound like pretty straightforward questions with relatively straightforward answers. When we go just a little deeper, however, we begin to discover in these questions a complexity that is well worth exploring.
This coming Sunday I will be offering a presentation based on Marcus Borg’s book The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith. Specifically, I will be focusing on the second chapter of the book entitled “Faith: The Way of the Heart”. This book was published over twenty years ago, but I believe it remains highly relevant today. I first read it myself about eight years ago.
Some of you have probably heard of Borg. He was a professor of religion at Oregon State University and was an active participant in “The Jesus Seminar”, the somewhat controversial group of biblical scholars who started meeting in the mid-1980s to try and form a collective opinion on the historicity of Jesus’s deeds and sayings. Borg became one of the preeminent voices for progressive Christianity following the 1994 publication of his book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. He died in 2015, but his voice continues to hold sway among many Christians.
In The Heart of Christianity Borg addresses the existence of what he calls an “emerging paradigm” of Christianity, which he sees as challenging a number of the assumptions of the “earlier paradigm” of Christianity. Within the context of that discussion, in the second chapter of the book, Borg offers some thought-provoking and fruitful reflections on what we mean when we talk about “faith”. He invites us to consider whether we have placed too much emphasis on faith as belief: as being primarily a “head matter” to the exclusion of “the way of the heart”. Borg offers “four meanings of faith”, providing a more holistic perspective on what it means to be people of faith.
My presentation, like Borg’s book, is not intended to provide easy answers, but rather to invite deeper reflection about the life of faith. I plan for us to have at least 10-15 minutes for questions and conversation. Hope to see you there!
Grace & Peace,
Kevin+