Our church, an evangelical congregation (Vineyard), had a Lenten book study with an Episcopal church in town this past spring. We studied three books: this one, "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard, and "A Generous Orthodoxy" by Brian McLaren. Our pastor introduced the books to our congregation in this way: "'The Divine Conspiracy' goes right to the heart of our beliefs at this Vineyard church; 'The Heart Of Christianity' is something that our friends at the Episcopal church would feel at home with, and 'A Generous Orthodoxy' is somewhere inbetween the two."
This is the second book that I can remember reading by a liberal Christian. The first book, which I also read this year and read before this one, was "A New Christianity For A New World" by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong. I found that book to be heretical, turning Christianity into something completely unrecognizable in light of the Bible. I feared that "The Heart Of Christianity" would get me worked up, too, especially coming from an author of The Jesus Seminar. I was surprised that I found some things in this book that I really liked, and overall, I got more out of this book than McLaren's "A Generous Orthodoxy," even though I was most excited about reading that book.
You know how some CDs you buy have some really great songs and some songs that you find either boring or you can't stand them, so you always skip them? Yet, overall the CD is worth buying because the good songs are so good. Well, that's how I feel about this book. Some chapters I was mesmerized by the incredibly enlightening message; other chapters I found to be way off the mark.
The first chapter that impressed me was chapter 2, "Faith: The Way Of The Heart." The author highlighted four kinds of faith, using Latin terms to help differentiate (kind of like the way we use the four different terms to more carefully define love). The first is assensus, close to the English word assent: "a propositional understanding of faith." The second is fiducia, which he translated in English as trust. The third is fidelitas, like the English word fidelity. He emphasized that it's not fidelity to propositional statements, but to the person of God. The fourth is visio, like vision, "a way of seeing." As Borg described each of these facets of faith, I was driven to a deeper understanding of what faith in God means.
Another chapter I especially liked was chapter 7, "The Kingdom of God: The Heart of Justice." While this interpretation of the Kingdom of God takes a stance commonly associated with liberal churches, I think he supported his views very well, convincing me that the liberals have something here about God's heart that conservatives tend to miss.
One more chapter was especially meaningful to me, chapter 8's "Thin Places: Opening the Heart." In this chapter, "thin places" refers to those places, times, or situations where you sense God right there with you, not as he typically seems to us in daily life, where getting to him requires some clearing out of the daily hustle and bustle, like clearing away weeds and forest to make a path. This chapter was an invitation to open your heart to God.
Some other chapters had some interesting thoughts, but were not as compelling as the three stellar chapters noted above. Then there were some chapters that I found to contain views that I could not adopt. One was his view of religious pluralism (like many liberal Christians, he has real trouble with the idea that Jesus is the only way to salvation), and another was his view of the Bible. It was good for me to read this to get a better understanding of how a liberal Christian might view the Bible, and gave me a respect for their viewpoint, but still it's not something I can agree with. For example, the author appears to not believe the miracles in the Bible really happened, such as Jesus turning the water into wine. He instead reads a metaphorical meaning into it (as do other liberals who cannot accept Biblical miracles as literal). Borg claims that when we read the Bible as a literal document, we miss the metaphorical meaning (the meaning for life). The metaphorical interpretation he gave for the water into wine story was rich in meaning, and I think he has a valid point that we may miss such rich meanings by only reading them as a literal reporting of events, but I don't think it has to be either/or; we can believe the miracles happened as stated, and learn to read the metaphorical meanings from them also.
So, as a theologically conservative Christian (or am I middle of the road?), I cannot agree with some things in this book; nevertheless, I found it to be worthwhile reading. Some things in the book provided great enlightenment and some spiritual growth for me. Other parts helped me gain a better understanding of how a liberal Christian approaches the Bible, Christianity, and faith in God; understanding others who are different from you and disagree with you is always a plus.
