The Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith: Marcus Borg and N. T. Wright in Critical Dialogue - Hardcover

by George Demetrion (Author), Glen G. Scorgie (Foreword by)

The Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith examines the conflicting views of Marcus Borg and N. T. Wright on the long-standing question of the relationship between the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of faith as depicted in the New Testament. Demetrion has created a study designed to supplement and expand on the discussion laid out in Borg's and Wright's widely read, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Views. While the author is more empathetic to Wright's emphasis on the continuities between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, as illuminated throughout the New Testament, he is critical of Wright's overemphasis on history. In placing his interpretive emphasis on the revelatory dynamic of the canonical Scripture and the Great Tradition of Christian orthodoxy, Demetrion calls for a fourth quest for the historical Jesus that starts from a position firmly rooted in biblical faith and works backwards in search of historical roots. In this, he draws on the Pauline vision of "God . . . reconciling the world to himself in Christ" (2 Cor 5:19) as his underlying hermeneutics. In exploring the broad range of issues that underpins the continuity/discontinuity question, Demetrion has provided a resource designed to span a wide audience, from Christian adult study groups interested in tackling books like The Meaning of Jesus to graduate level seminary students and professors.

Author Biography

George Demetrion is a self-educated Christian scholar who has audited courses at Hartford and Bethel Seminaries. He is a writing tutor at Capital Community College and an Adult Basic Instructor at the 1199 Training Fund in Hartford, Connecticut. He formerly worked as an adult education program coordinator at the Saint Vincent de Paul Village in San Diego, California, and teaches courses in the Online Adult Literacy Certification Program at the Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition to his two books published by Wipf and Stock--In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center: An Ecumenical Evangelical Perspective (2014) and The Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith: Marcus Borg and N. T. Wright in Critical Dialogue (2017)--he is also the author of Conflicting Paradigms in Adult Literacy Education: In Quest of a US Democratic Politics of Literacy (2005).