Endorsements and Endnotes speak Volumes

Endorsements and endnotes speak volumes about authors and their books and the things they believe. For example, I was looking for something the other day in the used section of a local book store. I couldn’t find it, but I did pick up an old copy of Jesus A New Vision by Marcus Borg (1987). It was written just around the time that this new kind of Jesus was being “discovered” and talked about by some so called Bible scholars, and right around the time of the unfolding of the Jesus Seminar (aka club of heretics). And so I found it quite interesting that on the back cover of this book by Marcus Borg was the following endorsement, which I felt compelled to blog about today:

“A scholar who is alive in wonder and belief, Borg accomplishes the hardest task of all: he looks at the obvious and helps us to see it as if for the first time.” – Eugene Peterson, author of A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Working the Angles, and Reversed Thunder

Hmmm. This was before Eugene Petersen was well known, and just before the first publications of The Message came out in the early 90’s (see here).

Stay with me here...I’m not a professional researcher or anything, but one would have to then wonder if Peterson was influenced by Marcus Borg as he wrote his now famous paraphrase called The Message.

Consider these more recent Marcus Borg quotes (keeping in mind that Peterson said that Marcus Borg "is alive in wonder and belief"):

"Like Socrates, Jesus was a teacher of a subversive wisdom. Like the Buddha, he had an Enlightenment experience. Like a shaman, he was a healer. Like Gandhi, he protested against a purity system." - Marcus Borg

"I do not believe that Christianity is the only way of salvation, or that the Bible is the revealed will of God, or that Jesus was the unique Son of God." - Marcus Borg

-Source: The Paganization of Biblical Studies @ crossroad.to

Marcus Borg is a fellow (member) of the Jesus Seminar. To find out more about the shocking unbiblical beliefs of this group, see here:

A Brief Rebuttal to Borg and the Jesus Seminar
by Robert P. Wise
intotruth.org

What is the Jesus Seminar?
christiananswers.net

Sadly enough, Marcus Borg learned his belief system (of doubt) in seminary:

“Seminary also introduced me to the historical study of Jesus and Christian origins. I learned from my professors and the readings they assigned that Jesus almost certainly was not born of a virgin, did not think of himself as the Son of God, and did not see his purpose as dying for the sins of the world… I also found the claim that Jesus and Christianity were the only way of salvation to be troublesome.”
(Marcus Borg, pg. 25, The God We Never Knew)

Yet Eugene Peterson seemed to find this man to be a scholar alive in wonder and belief? Something is wrong with this picture.

By the way, did you know that RW quotes Marcus Borg twice on his website pastors.com? See here. And let's not forget Brian McLaren and his high view of Marcus Borg (see here).

And finally, there is Rob Bell and his book Velvet Elvis, in which he highly recommends his readers to learn from Marcus Borg (twice):

Marcus Borg explains this idea extremely well in his book The Heart of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003).
-Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, endnote 1, page 180

Once again, Marcus Borg does a great job of explaining this idea in The Heart of Christianity (San Fransisco: HarperSanFransisco, 2003)
-Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, endnote 57, page 184

In this book that Bell so highly recommends, Borg writes this:

“Thus "Jesus died for our sins" was originally a subversive metaphor, not a literal description of either God's purpose or Jesus' vocation. It was a metaphorical proclamation of radical grace; and properly understood, it still is. It is therefore ironic to realize that the religion that formed around Jesus would within four hundred years begin to claim for itself an institutional monopoly on grace and access to God."
[Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity]

Once again, endorsements and endnotes speak volumes. Today, more than ever, we need to do our homework.

*Related reading:

FOR BRIAN MCLAREN AND MARCUS BORG BEING “BORN AGAIN” IS REACHING “ENLIGHTENMENT”? @ apprising.org

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But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
2 Peter 2:1