56 Quotes by Marcus J. Borg

Modern biblical literalism with its emphasis on factuality is not only very different from what “the literal meaning of a text” has meant for most of Christian history; it also has consequences that minimally are unfortunate and unnecessary and more seriously obscure and distort what the Bible and being Christian are about. Indeed, it discredits the Bible and Christianity in the minds of many people.

You can believe all the right things and still be in bondage. You can believe all the right things and still be miserable. You can believe all the right things and still be relatively unchanged. Believing a set of claims to be true has very little transforming power.

The political vision of the religious right is for the most part an individualistic politics of righteousness, not a communal politics of compassion.

Our images of God matter. Just as how we conceptualize God affects what we think the Christian life is about, so do our images of God.

How can women be in the image of God if God cannot be imaged in female form?

More than half described Christians as literalistic, anti-intellectual, judgmental, self-righteous, and bigoted.

This book might also be seen as “a Christian primer.” A primer teaches us how to read. Reading is not just about learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also about how to hear and understand them. This book’s purpose is to help us to read, hear, and inwardly digest Christian language without preconceived understandings getting in the way.

The heaven-and-hell framework has four central elements: the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus’s dying for our sins, and believing.

Participatory eschatology involves a twofold affirmation: we are to do it with God, and we cannot do it without God. In St. Augustine’s brilliant aphorism, God without us will not; we without God cannot. We who have seen the star and heard the angels sing are called to participate in the new birth and new world proclaimed by these stories.