= new reply since forum marked as read
read of his and other Jesus Seminar writers as well as their responses to critics.
My understanding was that the Jesus Seminar did not deny the divinity, they were instead simply trying to do as modern as possible critical scholarship on the historical man Jesus. Questions of theology and belief must then be decided by the churches and the individuals in question. German scholarship in the 19th century presented a similar challenge then to belief as the critical level of scholarship on the Bible was raised to a new level. One response is the more modern forms of liberal Christianity and the other was the birth of fundamentalism - a reactionary form of abject literalism. Honestly, I almost see those two sides as two distinct types of Christianity now almost 200 years later.
Borg is a Canon Theologian at an Episcopal Cathedral in Oregon and definitely considers himself fully and completely a Christian. I can only summarize his many writings here, however, I do encourage you to read them yourself. Challenging or not, it is excellent scholarship and Christian apologetics.
Borg, therefore, recognizes the historical Jesus prior to the Resurrection, and a Risen Christ thereafter. He is looking at experiences of Christ as real, not simply as visions or hallucinations either. It helps to be able to read the Koine Greek for the subtleties of language used to describe those experiences. This is a little more on what he means in a response to a critic:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/marcusborg/2013/10/continuing-the-resurrection-conversation/
I recognize that Christianity as a religion with as many followers as it has and a history as long as it does surely continues to evolve and allows for many different takes on the central teachings therein. I think that each individual believer decides ultimately for themselves what is historical, what is allegorical, and what is mythological. Dogma and theology aside, I would no more say that Borg is more or less of a Christian than you are. Ultimately you both find meaning and purpose in the stories, teachings, and resurrection of Christ, even if you don't both agree on all of the specifics. That puts you both in a group of believers that share more in common than not.
theologians who share this modern viewpoint - John Sanford (Minister & Jungian Analyst), Morton Kelsey (Catholic Priest who directly communicated with Jung), Matthew Fox, Paul Tillich, and Bishop John Shelby Sponge come immediately to mind.
I am not familiar with Father Bruce Chilton. I will need to read him now. Thank you for the reference.
with both of those definitions.
The first would include Muslims, who believe that the Messenger Isa was conceived in exactly that way by Maryam, a virgin of the Jewish people.
The second has so much slack in it as to be virtually meaningless. Eg., it could be applied to me (though most definitely not by me) because I see Jesus and Mary as avatars of the divine masculine and the divine feminine, but my spiritual practice includes them only tangentially.
And probably neither one of them would have been accepted by Jesus himself and his Jewish followers, for whom "Son of.God" was a title of the King of Israel. (See Psalm 2, one of the "coronation psalms, : "You are my son; today I have begotten you."
In fact some variants of the gospels have those words in place of the better-
known "This is my beloved son. . . " in the
baptismal narratives.
And then, of course, thete are those who believe your first definition but don't follow through on putting Jesus's teachings into practice. Neither Jesus nor his brother James thought that was adequate.
It's a thornier question than it seems to be, isn't it?