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Of Speaking Christi Why Christian Words And How They Can Be Restored By Marcus Borg

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“Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power- And How They Can Be Restored” is a powerful and intellectual book written by Marcus Borg. In this book, Borg explores many ideas and thoughts of the Christian faith that have been twisted or have lost their historical meaning overtime. Words such as salvation, God, Jesus, believing, faith, sin, forgiveness, and more are taken apart to find the true meaning and interpretation. Borg believes that Christians have lost the true, ancient meanings of their language and the modern world has literalized much of the Christian language. Through this book, Borg helps the reader to see the Christian language from a different perspective, a perspective that ignores the literalization …show more content…

Mentioned multiple times throughout the entire book, Borg explains how these common ways of viewing Christianity might not be the original context that they came from. The Heaven and Hell Framework has four key elements: the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus died for our sins, and believing. Breaking them down even further, Borg explains how each of these key elements are commonly mistaken. Borg has a problem that some people and churches think that the afterlife is the sole purpose of being a Christian. The promise of heaven and the threat of hell is how many people live their life and view the whole point of Christianity. Sin and Forgiveness is the main focus in churches in the world today and many people think this is what the relationship with God should be: sinners that confess to God to be forgiven. While later Borg dives much deeper into the meanings of sin and forgiveness, he explains in the very beginning that Christianity is not all about confessing one’s sins. The next element of the Heaven and Hell framework is Jesus died for our sins. Many churches today teach that Jesus was a substitution for all of the world and that his death makes up for their sins. Borg has a problem with this being the only way to view Jesus and completely missing the whole point of his life and his death. Lastly, the Heaven and Hell Framework speaks about believing, most importantly, believing that certain things are true. Believing to many people is absolutely necessary in their understanding of Christianity, but Borg thinks there is much more than “having faith”. With all of these elements, Borg explains that there is much more that is missing and takes the next 200 pages of the book to indulge in his

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