At Christianity Today, some Christian scholars fondly remember the recently deceased Dr. Marcus Borg, liberal Bible scholar. Dr. Ben Witherington praises him as a “Christian churchman.” I guess I have no objection to that description, so long as we supplement it with this observation: Dr. Borg was a longtime atheist, who had moved from monotheism to agnosticism to atheism, like so many. It’s just that his atheism is not the naturalistic atheism which is has become so popular since about the mid 19th century. Let me clear that I’m not hereby criticizing him; my interests here are classification and understanding.

Here he is in a video posted in 2013, talking about what he means by “God.”

He starts with “God” – the word. Obviously, different people mean different things by this word. :50 two understandings his first 30 years – “God” refers to a super, person-like being , in some way separate from the universe – omnipotent, omniscient, loving, an authority who gives laws, someone who intervenes by miracles. “Supernatural theism”. Comment: This is what nearly all traditional Christians mean by “God.” This is what any New Testament author meant by “God” (ho theos). 3:00 By the end of his 20s, he’s moved from his young “Supernatural theism” to agnosticism – doesn’t believe that there or is not such a being. Comment: Why? 3:20 – He “now came to think of God very differently” – rather, a second understanding of “God.” Now “God” is “the encompassing reality” or “encompassing spirit” which infuses the cosmos. “The one in whom we live and move and have our being.” We are in God like fish are in water. Comment: by “spirit” I think he means a non-physical reality – he doesn’t mean to imply that it is a self. It is an It, not a He. It is the ultimate reality which as it were lies behind the cosmos, and is more real than it, or at least is somehow the source of it. 4:30 This was an insight gained in religious experiences in his early 30s, which he describes. Light infusing everything, “a kind of falling away of the sharp boundaries between the self and the world,” strong feelings of amazement, wonder, joy, feeling that he has a better insight. Comment: these experience are fairly common, and there’s a large literature on them. They are especially common with “mystics” in the monotheistic traditions, and notably in neoplatonism, Zen Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta Hinduism. They are sometimes described as “unitive” – where all is seen as, or as in, One, one indescribable ultimate. It is problematic, actually, how one draws any substantial, metaphysical or theological conclusions from them, given the contents of the experiences, as described by the people who have them. 6:00 what he inferred from these experiences. They were experiences of “God” , as with the mystics. He’s never doubted the existence of “God” since then. Comment: It is interesting that he invested these experiences with such epistemic weight; he’s sure they were perceptions, not hallucinations, imaginations, brain farts, etc. I wonder on what grounds he dismissed people who claim to have experienced the ultimate as a glorious self? 7:00 “God” is a name that points at this wondrous reality. This dissolves all the problems with the first, super-being meaning of “God.” Unlike it (!!) this experience reality is sacred, wondrous. Comment: The super-being concept of God is literally boring to him. It is a mere relic of childhood. I’m not sure what all the “problems” are he’s referring too… perhaps he thinks there is something incoherent in “Supernatural theism,” and perhaps he think that we all know now that miracles do not occur. But I’m just guessing. 7:45 What kind of reality does he mean by “God”? He tells us there are 2 ways of thinking about what God is like , his character. God loves us, but we can’t take that love for granted. If we reject him, he might send us to hell. God is basically punitive here. (!?) God is gracious, compassionate, loves all creation. 9:45 These produce, respectively, fear-based, and love-based Christianity. These use similar language, but are profoundly different. Comment: If I understand him, he thinks of himself as in the second camp. Not being a self, his “God” can’t disapprove of anyone or anything. Thus, we can (and this is natural, in his view) imagine that this ultimate looks kindly upon us. 10:30 evil is real. But the problem of evil disappears when we realize that God never “intervenes.” Sure, we can pray for interventions, but this is a just a natural expression of caring for friends, and of my own dependence on God. Comment: God, not being a self, can’t be praised or blamed for anything at all. So, he can’t be held accountable for evil. “God” doesn’t intentionally do anything at all – that is the domain of selves. This ultimate, Borg’s “God” just is. “When I pray, I address God as if God were a person.” Because even though God is not a person, my relationship to him is “ personal .” This personification of God is natural. Comment: Note the “as if.” Pretending is fun, natural, perhaps beneficial. But it doesn’t involve any human-God communication or fellowship; there is no I-Thou relationship is taking place in any prayer. This relationship is “personal” in the way that a child’s love for her pet rock is “personal” – it involves exactly one self, not two. 12:45 – His childhood mistake was to literalize Christian personifications, leading to the super-being understanding of “God.” 14:00 faith /trust (properly understood, knowing that God is not a person) is like “floating on the surface of the void” i.e. fear-free resting in “God” Comment: no worries, all is OK. There is no one to hold us accountable. How freeing! No one to help us, either. Hence, political action is everything – it is everything that can really help our troubled world. Still, it can help, a little, to turn one’s mind towards this glorious reality – that can help you to be a nicer person.



It is no wonder then, that he wanted to see Jesus as primarily about politics. About Jesus’s actual interest – the heavenly Father – Borg couldn’t care less. That was a natural but juvenile interest, for Borg, something that he’d long grown out of.

This is atheism to be sure – the number of perfect beings is zero. The number of intentional creators of the cosmos is zero. But it is not naturalistic atheism. It is similar in some ways to Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, on which the ultimate reality is an inconceivable something, which is rarely experienced. For them too, any devotional religion is for the uneducated, the unenlightened. The actions of devotional religion, for both, are easily accommodated, so long as we keep in mind that it’s all play-acting, not real interaction with the ultimate. The ultimate don’t do dat.

This is, historically, the much more important kind of atheism. Naturalistic atheism was always a tiny minority view until after Darwin. This, what I call ultimist atheism, has long been among the heartiest competitors with belief in the heavenly Father.

Relatedly, here’s a presentation of mine in which I attempt to clarify this family of concepts. I still agree with most of this analysis, but I’ve since changed my terminology a bit, trying to find terms which are less confusing. But that’s another paper and another post.