In any case, thanks for the great conversation. It looks like there are real differences in our perspectives – probably more that could be worth exploring at some point – and that there are also big spaces of overlap, where our words and actions and fundamental desires might actually look a lot alike. This is hopeful to me, in a world where differences have often felt like chasms to me, and dialogue like this impossible in their midst.

“Physical life with only the positive end of the feeling or experiential spectrum feels so very discontinuous with our existence now.”

I agree. I think that is at the very heart of Christian hope as I understand it. I welcome the kind of existence you describe precisely because it is discontinuous with our existence now. I remain a bit confused about your idea that we somehow ‘need’ bad to make our experiences of good meaningful or distinguishable.

As to the inherent nature of decay within material existence and how that plays into ‘the world to come’ I confess that I haven’t given it a whole lot of thought. I certainly believe that whatever kind of existence that might be it will not be exactly the same as what we experience now. I imagine it as somehow beyond this life but not in a way that erases continuity.

My ideas about the future are borrowed a lot from C.S. Lewis and his idea that it will be both recognizable and unimaginable in light of our present experience. What seems critical to me, with respect to Christian hope, is the emphasis on the ultimate restoration of something initially intended to be good.

The barrier for me in understanding your view is the idea that good and evil are conterminous and that we somehow need evil in order to appreciate good. I would suggest that it is intrinsic to humanity to resist and struggle against evil and that a hope that takes this longing seriously is more plausible than one that attempts to escape the longing itself. I know that your particular response to evil is far more compassionate than this but I don’t see how the IDEA of good and evil being coterminous can avoid addressing actual evil by trying to explain its necessity.

Any further words you might say about where your imagination goes with these kinds of things?

A purely spiritual resurrection creates a view of humanity that looks exactly like you say: containers holding souls that are merely waiting for a purely spiritual afterlife and therefore doing virtually nothing here and now. For me it matters greatly that the Christian vision be one that emphasizes the physical nature of resurrection because it emphasizes the continuity between this world and the world that is to come.

I suspect that we might be coming to the real stalemate in the area of our view of history. If I read you right, you imagine some kind of ongoing coexistence of evil and goodness with no eventual resolution. Hope is found in the goodness that can be mined from within that process and the solidarity that can be experienced in the common human struggle toward that end.

I envision history as having a destination and goal, that goal being the eventual redemption of what is good in this world and the overthrow of what is not. Hope is found in the realization that the ambiguity and pain of life here and now will be overcome and that the joy (in the fullest sense of the word) of life here and now will find an ultimate and lasting consummation. It seems that you see hope as emerging from within the human struggle and I see it (in an ultimate sense) coming from beyond.

I too appreciate what you’ve said throughout this conversation. You hold your views in a way that avoids dogmatism and leaves room for real dialogue. Thank you.

I guess I wonder two things now. First (and maybe this question shows that I have not understood you well), how is the suffering we experience on earth made meaningful or less absurd by our physical bodies being raised again? In this scenario, suffering still seems a bit meaningless to me. Second, how is belief in a physical resurrection – of Jesus, but also of everyone else at some future point – hope-inducing in a way that spiritual resurrection is not? I grew up believing that our physical bodies went back into the ground after death (or our ashes into the sea or whatever), and that our spiritual bodies were the ones that lived forever. I believed that our physical bodies were merely the containers or homes-for-a-season of our eternal, spiritual bodies. That Jesus is a spiritual being now, rather than physical, I took for granted. Is this different from what you believe? Is it important for your sense of hope (and I guess this relates to the first question) for all the particles of everyone’s physical bodies to be put back together some day, in order that physical death is the thing that is conquered? I’m not familiar with this view (and again, maybe this isn’t your perspective), and would be very interested in hearing more.

The other comment I have is that there actually are other accounts of real people being raised back to life. In the Bible, Jesus performs some of these miracles, while Elijah, Elisha, Peter, and Paul do the others. Maybe there are more that I’m not familiar with. And the accounts of resurrection from other traditions likewise don’t all happen in some other, spiritual realm, or to gods alone. Some are accounts of real people, on earth, coming back to physical life.

Again, to clarify, my assessment is not that “the Christian story of Jesus is echoed in the same way in the myths of Mesopotamia, Greece etc.” My assessment is rather that “the painful journey toward death turning instead into the hope and triumph of resurrection” is echoed across traditions – sometimes by actual people, sometimes by gods or animals or plants, sometimes on earth, sometimes in other realms.

That Jesus’s story deserves attention in its own right is completely uncontested by me. In fact, for me, it is the whole of his story, rather than primarily his conquering of death, that inspires a lot of my views. I want to emulate him and I find in him a robust and compelling counter to so much that I see and experience of various ideologies and cultures (including religious ones). That his spirit lives on – however his spirit might be conceived – and speaks to us and teaches us brings me great hope, because his spirit seems so needed in our world, and is, as far as I can tell, such a powerful force of good and healing. That I am picking and choosing from his story, and not taking everything he says literally, I don’t deny. I’m not sure that anyone can rightfully deny either thing.

Ultimately, I think the place where you and I differ most is in the area of suffering. If I’ve heard you right, I think you need suffering to have a purpose or a meaning in order to have hope, and I do not. Without belief in an all-loving, sovereign, God-who-is-other-and-who-made-everything-with-intention, I’m okay (though definitely grievous at times) for suffering to just be what it is: awful, and for my hope to be more about the miracle, in light of this awfulness, that love and beauty and compassion and healing keep right on surviving – even flourishing – alongside of it.

The short answer is yes. I suppose that’s the heart of the matter for me because I think death is the ultimate shadow that we all live under. To me it feels like any kind of hope that can only offer the reassurance that things will always be this way, hope and goodness in the midst of suffering, is not a real hope. To me it renders too many experiences of real and unresolved suffering absurd and meaningless.

I did not mean to minimize the reality or meaning of the many different ‘resurrections’ you described. They are powerful examples of what makes life a source of joy and goodness and not despair. My comments about the ‘idea of resurrection’ have more to do with my apprehension of Borg’s perspective on the resurrection of Jesus.

Nor did I mean to accuse you of offering ‘theoretical’ answers to those experiencing real suffering. Your words on what is best in situations like those are wise and profound.

With respect I disagree with your assessment that the Christian story of Jesus is echoed in the same way in the myths of Mesopotamia, Greece etc. There are certainly points of contact and connections to be made, but what stands out about these myths is precisely the fact that they don’t happen within actual history and take place in some kind of spiritual realm instead. The Jesus of the gospels is very clearly situated in an actual time and an actual place and this seems to be distinctive.

I could qualify this view a lot of different ways but I think that’s what it boils down to for me. The hope of a real flesh and blood person beating death is something that I don’t see anywhere else. That might be wish fulfillment but I think it is the most plausible way of seeing both Jesus’ story and the Christian story as a whole. As for the stories told by others, that’s not for me to judge.

When you say, “The ‘idea’ of resurrection is not good enough for me because I don’t live in a world of ideas. I live within history with a real life and a real death to come,” I nod my head in agreement. This is what has made my experiences of what I define as real death – death of a history that I thought I understood (hidden truths have emerged in my adult life), death of hope, death of meaning, death of a career path I had spent my entire life preparing for, and therefore an identity – and the resurrections that have followed these deaths – not just *ideas* of resurrections, but viscerally experienced life-after-deaths: these are what have taken my hope beyond the realm of ideas, or things that are merely interesting to philosophize or theologize about, to actually seep into my bones. I have no idea what will happen to us after we die. I have no idea whether Jesus’s mangled body got put back together and his fluids restored and his heart made to beat again for a physical reappearance. But I DO know that people who have died in so many real ways have had their hope restored, have experienced love and joy and life again poignantly. I know this isn’t about literal, physical death, and that maybe literal death is the kind your hope most needs addressed. If this is the case, of course that’s fine. The fact that all these other kinds of death are involved in what it means to be human make them intensely important to me, however, and more intimately connected with hope for me than knowing what happens when we physically die. I have to live here every day. I need my hope to be connected to *this* reality.

The intensity of my own life’s suffering and the subsequent tunnel-vision I’ve had on the suffering of others have made me extremely allergic to attempts, in the midst of suffering, to give reasons why any of it is okay. So no, I cannot imagine telling someone any of this in the midst of their suffering. Just like I can’t imagine, were my hope based on what gives you hope, reassuring them with *those* things, either. Maybe I’m overstating things here, so I hope you get my real point. In my mind, suffering is to be honored for the awfulness that it is, and a quiet presence with those in the midst of it more hope-inducing than a thousand theories or words. It seems to me that a conversation such as this is in the realm of ideas, and therefore the appropriate place to ponder at a more theoretical level. Again, when push comes to shove, hope in the midst of suffering seems to come rather from felt expressions of love, presence, solidarity, than from abstract beliefs. Which is really why my abstract beliefs have come to be what they are, I think.

This cruciform pattern we’ve been talking about – “the painful journey toward death turning instead into the hope and triumph of resurrection” – is indeed found across traditions, though I did not mean to say that I think it’s found in every one, or, even less, is the true center point of every one. My claims aren’t really radical at all. Gods or humans who die and come back to life are found across ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, Egypt, in Native American myths, in Buddhist myths – even in the Christian canon, beyond Jesus. Initiation rites from many times and cultures involve enactments of a death and rebirth, and wisdom teachings from Christianity and Buddhism (probably others, too) speak of dying (to self, to ego, to clinging to desires) in order to live. These latter teachings segue well into psychological echoes of the theme, where aspects of the self or ego must die, or, conversely, be resurrected, in order for true healing to occur. The natural world echoes it, too: as seeds die to become plants, as seasons change, as the sun sets and rises again.

Anyway, I make no claim to know even half a dozen religions well, or to see a common message in them all. You write: “Any effort to say that all the traditions of the world are basically saying the same thing seems to be forced to ignore or rationalize away the real differences that exist between them. It could be that all of the traditions of the world are seeing partial impressions of a larger reality but I continue to be fascinated by the implicit assumption that there can be those who, looking down at all of these religious efforts to describe divinity, see the whole picture as it really is.” I heartily agree, and hope that I have not implied, even fractionally, that I am such a person. I am rather one who is eager to learn and to ponder the things I’ve discovered to try to make sense of them. I hope I do this humbly. I’m sure I have plenty of room for growth in this, too.

Gil, I was struck by your comment,

…” If I can be blunt, I find the idea that love and compassion will carry on in the face of never ending struggle and suffering to be a cause for despair and not hope.”…

Do you mean that apart from a resurrection climax love and compassion, in of themselves, are inadequate responses; a cause of despair?

The one thing I can’t get past with Borg is the sense that he has in his mind a very clearly defined idea of what a ‘compelling’ version of the Christian faith would look like and he is trying to fit the square peg of Christian belief into the round hole of his expectations and desires. In my opinion this forces him to say some things, particularly about Jesus and the pre-Enlightenment church, that are not historically sustainable.

Obviously my biggest issue is with his famous statement that the question of whether or not the resurrection actually happened is irrelevant. For me the Christian faith is primarily about an event, not a system of ideas or a belief in a cruciform pattern to human existence. For me these ideas only make sense if they are connected to reality; an actual triumph of life over death in history. The ‘idea’ of resurrection is not good enough for me because I don’t live in a world of ideas. I live within history with a real life and a real death to come.

This probably gets back to your thoughts on the nature of hope. If I can be blunt, I find the idea that love and compassion will carry on in the face of never ending struggle and suffering to be a cause for despair and not hope. I can’t imagine reassuring someone who was actually suffering to take solace in the fact that “as long as our species exists, the cruciform pattern will carry on - even when individual seasons or lives or whole groups experience only the death part of that pattern.” What is powerful about the story of Jesus is precisely that life DOES triumph over death, in an ultimate and permanent sense. To believe that crucifixion and resurrection are simply part of the endless ebb and flow of human existence with no final resolution seems like a hopeless scenario to me.

With regards to the question of the particularity of Jesus I can agree with your objection to the idea that the cruciform pattern is something that “he alone mediates.” I can agree that his teachings are echoed across history and place. I do have some doubts as to the universality of the cruciform pattern that you mention. My knowledge of modern psychology is limited but I feel like I understand the basic tenets of some of the great religious traditions of the world well enough to say that the cruciform pattern does not seem obviously self-evident in them all. I would welcome further clarity on what seems to be a very radical claim.

Any effort to say that all the traditions of the world are basically saying the same thing seems to be forced to ignore or rationalize away the real differences that exist between them. It could be that all of the traditions of the world are seeing partial impressions of a larger reality but I continue to be fascinated by the implicit assumption that there can be those who, looking down at all of these religious efforts to describe divinity, see the whole picture as it really is.

Because of this, and because of the ways that wisdom and mystic traditions from around the globe (that pre- and post-date Christ) find ways of speaking of this pattern – even the religion of psychology speaks of it – I, too, see Jesus – indeed, this whole pattern – as a clue to the meaning of history.

In my view, diving deep into Jesus – into the stories told of him in the Bible, and into his presence still with us today – seems indeed a leap into light. A leap into wisdom and wholeness and healing and joy.

What I personally cannot do with integrity is believe that this cruciform pattern is *owned* somehow by Christ, or that his teachings – which weren’t all overtly about the cruciform pattern – are things he alone mediates, or he and those who claim him as their inspiration. His teachings, too, are patterns I see echoed across history and place.

This cannot jive with a literal reading of the gospels, but it does with a mystical one. Though I differ in certain ways from Marcus Borg’s perspective, I think he paints a nice version of what I’m talking about in his “Heart of Christianity”. (Have you read this book? Impressions?)

Now, hope is something I need to think more about. I feel hope, but it isn’t based on faith that in the end, every tear will be wiped away, or every evil will be done with and accounted for, or that there is a God somehow directing history toward this end. Rather, as far as I can tell, I think it’s based on two things: 1) that as long as our species exists, the cruciform pattern will carry on – even when individual seasons or lives or whole groups experience only the death part of that pattern. I have tremendous hope in the tenacity of resurrection – in goodness following awfulness, in hope following utter despair; and 2) that love and kindness and compassion – all the things that make life as social creatures beautiful – will carry on, even through great darkness, even when their flickers are small or actually get snuffed out. This – these places of snuffing – is where my two bases of hope are joined.

Ultimately I cannot reason my way to this point either. My reason and intuition have only been able to go so far. During seminary and shortly thereafter I took a leap that was initially the most terrifying one of my life – one I did AND didn’t want to make. I actually felt little choice in the matter. But life on this side of that leap has been an enormous resurrection for me, one that makes me want to weep and worship and be very, very quiet at the very same time.

So at the end of this exchange, I’m left scratching my head, wondering whether leaps of many kinds are toward Light, and whether the fact that what we think we’ve leapt toward is different does not cancel out the reality or depth or brilliance of Light that both of us have found. Does this trivialize either of our perspectives? I have to think not.