St. Mark’s Adult Education Meeting Summary
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, by Marcus Borg
Preface and Chapters 2 and 3:
“Faith: The Way of the Heart” and
“The Bible: The Heart of the Tradition”
> Learn more about Marcus Borg: click HERE
Discussion Led By Mike Kreutzer
Sunday, April 10, 2005
GROUP DISCUSSION:
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus Borg
(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004)
Session 2, April 10 and 13, 2005
Chapter Two — Faith: the Way of the Heart
25 “Christianity is about a way of life, a path, and it has been from the very beginning.”;
“the Way”
27 the centrality of faith
28-37 four meanings of the word “faith”
28 “assensus”: “believing that a claim or statement is true”; dominant in modern Western Christianity
31 “fiducia”: “radical trust in God”
32 “fidelitas”: “faithfulness to our relationship with God”
34 “visio”: “faith as a way of seeing”; how we see the whole of what is; three ways:
(1) hostile and threatening
(2) indifferent
(3) life-giving and nourishing; seeing reality as gracious
37 “Returning to Faith as Assensus”: “affirmations that are central to Christian faith”:
“Being a Christian means affirming the reality of God.”
“Christian faith means affirming the utter centrality of Jesus.”
“Christian faith means affirming the centrality of the Bible.”
39 “Returning to Faith as Believing”: “credo” = “I give my heart to”
The last three of these senses of “faith” are relational.
Chapter Three — The Bible: the Heart of the Tradition
43 the Bible as our sacred story
45-46 “The Bible as Historical Product”
46 “Within the emerging paradigm, inspiration refers to the movement of the Spirit in the lives of the people who produced the Bible.”
47-48 “The Bible as Sacred Scripture”: refers to both its status and its function
48-49 historical context: “the historical approach can ask about the history behind a text. Did the reported event really happen? But the question is not always important and is seldom ultimately important.”
49-55 The truth of metaphor
A metaphor is “a more-than-literal” meaning.
50 Thomas Mann described a myth as “a story about the was things never were, but always are.”
56-57 “Metaphor as a Bridge” between the two paradigms
57-59 “The Bible as Sacrament”; “a means by which the sacred becomes present to us”
59-60 “The Bible and the Christian Life”; the three relational meanings of faith; “The Christian life is about a relationship with the one whom the Bible both points to and mediates – namely, a relationship with God as disclosed through the Bible as metaphor and sacrament. To be Christian is to live within this tradition and let it do its transforming work among us.”
