Buoyancy

“So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don’t have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.”

Marcus Borg wrote this in one of his more recent books, Speaking Christian. Borg was a leading American New Testament scholar and a theologian. He and his writings are beloved by many in St. James’s and throughout more liberally minded Christian circles, especially, and yesterday Marcus died at the age of 72.

Known for his work with the Jesus Seminar, a group of theologians who attempted to separate historical fact from imaginative myth regarding the life of Jesus, he truly left his mark on Christian thinking. What most impressed me about Borg was the way he seemed to be so committed to the struggle between his conviction that God existed—however mysteriously—and his deliberate and academic way of approaching this faith.

More is said of Borg on his website and in an article from the Religious News Service, and his books may be found in almost any decent book store, or Amazon’s Borg Page, if you’re into that sort of thing. One I would recommend is The Meaning of Jesus, which he co-wrote with the more conservative theologian N.T. Wright, the Anglican former Bishop of Durham.