Meeting Jesus Again
The author tries to harmonize the view of Christians based on the fideistic and moralistic images with his concept the Christianity is a relationship whose objective is to gradually transform the Christian. This is in contrast with fideistic and moralistic images. The fideistic Christian about his position as the son of God, his dying purposely to save mankind and the reason why one must believe in him, and currently forms the core foundation of the Christian faith as it states the mission of Jesus and its significance to mankind. There is also has a moralistic image of Christian life. The moralistic image of Christ leads many Christians to be good and to be good seeking as Jesus taught.
The author argues that besides these images being incomplete representations of the historical Jesus, they also lead to incomplete images of the Christian life (Borg 3). He claims that life is not about being good or believing in Jesus, but it is about a relationship with God that engages us in a journey of transformation.The author’s personal experience gave him the opportunity to encounter the different images of Christ over time. In the first chapter of the book, Borg discusses his personal life and his view of Jesus at every stage of life. The fideistic image was what he understood in childhood.
Through the intervening years his earlier held believes were challenged (Borg 2008, 2), argues that the foundational claim of the book is that there is a strong correlation between images of Jesus and that of the Christian life; that our image of Jesus will give Christianity its shape and will determine whether Christianity will be credible or incredible. While at seminary his pursuit of knowing God ended up in two consensus positions. At every stage the position he held before was challenged, giving him impetus to search further. These personal experiences help him realize that God lives within and that in him we live and move and draw strength; and that he is not identified with any particular thing.The pre Easter Jesus is the Jesus before his death and whom people believe in, but does not and differs from the Jesus of faith in that the latter is the one people experience as reality.
Borg says that he ‘found a sharp discontinuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of the Christian tradition’. The gospel books give the detail the life of Jesus from the birth to his death. Some materials in the gospels go back to the pre-easter Jesus while others are the consequence of early Christian movement. The reaction and memories of the community to Jesus in the post-easter context is also evident in the gospels. The last part of chapter two explores the Jewishness of Jesus.
Borg argues that Jesus was absolutely Jewish, by birth and socialization and that he remained so the rest of his life. Christians do not dwell much on Judaism and have been guilty of conscious or unconscious anti Semitism. Christians have often associated the Christianity with Jesus and his opponents with Judaism. The post Easter Jesus is real to those who accept him.Jesus valued spirit and compassion and this formed what was central to him as he always acted in and was moved by compassion.
Compassion summarized the teaching of Jesus as far as God and ethics are concerned. The teaching on compassion as taught by Jesus is recorded in the bible that, ‘be compassionate as God is compassionate’. Jesus in his teaching grounded believers in imitating God. In the same way he encouraged his followers to be compassionate just like God is. (Borg 2008, 48), argues that the word compassion means giving life, nourishing, caring, perhaps embracing and encompassing, is deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition.
