by Marcus J. Borg (Get the Book)A participant in the Jesus Seminar, the group of biblical scholars whose studies to ascertain what Jesus really said eventuated in The Five Gospels [BKL Ja 1 94], Borg is further concerned with how Jesus' original message may remain at "the heart of contemporary faith." In the six chapters of this book, he first presents his own journey of faith from childhood's trusting belief through young adult skepticism to mature apprehension that a "Christian is one who lives out his or her relationship to God within the framework of the Christian tradition." That tradition, subsequent chapters argue, arises out of four aspects of the "pre-Easter Jesus": Jesus as a "spirit person" (i.e., one who had an "experiential awareness of the reality of God"), a teacher of wisdom, a social prophet, and a movement founder. Further, the tradition calls upon Christians to follow Jesus "from life under the lordship of culture to the life of companionship with God" and from belief not in fixed doctrines but in giving one's heart to the "living Lord, the side of God turned toward us." First-class argumentation for experiential as opposed to institutional Christianity. --Booklist
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