N.T. Wright Says Jesus’ Bodily Resurrection Is An Optional Christian Belief, Not Needed For Salvation
Fresh off of suggesting that abortion may be a tragic yet best allowable option in cases of rape, incest, or for the mental health of the mother who can’t deal with a child with physical and mental deformities, famed New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has waded back into a previous controversy, claiming that belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ is not necessary to be a Christian and that his famously heretical friend who denied nearly every aspect of core Christian doctrine was a genuine Christian, albeit a “muddled” one.
Speaking on a recent episode of the Premiere Unbelievable? podcast, N.T. Wright addresses controversial comments he made to The Australian in 2006. At the time he said:
I have friends who I am quite sure are Christians who do not believe in the bodily resurrection. But the view I take of them – and they know this – is that they are very, very muddled. They would probably return the compliment.
Marcus Borg really does not believe Jesus Christ was bodily raised from the dead. But I know Marcus well: he loves Jesus and believes in him passionately. The philosophical and cultural world he has lived in has made it very, very difficult for him to believe in the bodily resurrection. I actually think that’s a major problem and it affects most of whatever else he does, and I think that it means he has all sorts of flaws as a teacher, but I don’t want to say he isn’t a Christian.
I do think, however, that churches that lose their grip on the bodily resurrection are in deep trouble and that for healthy Christian life individually and corporately, belief in the bodily resurrection is foundational.
His friend who “loved Jesus” was Marcus Borg, the leader of the controversial Jesus Seminar, who was on a quest for “the historical Jesus.”
Notoriously, believing the Bible was neither inspired nor inerrant, the Jesus Seminar concluded that only 18% of the sayings of Jesus and 16% of the deeds and actions attributed to Jesus in the Gospels were authentic.
Borg explicitly denied that Jesus was God (both here and here), saying things like “Was Jesus God? No. Not even the New Testament says that” and “Jesus of Nazareth was completely human. He did not have a divine component that made him different in kind from the rest of us.” Naturally, he also denied the virgin birth and Jesus’ supernatural miracles.
Commenting on the quote and context surrounding it, Wright explains:
“Mark had come from a very fundamentalist Lutheran background where you had to believe this and this and this this and this and he’d found it all completely deadening and didn’t do anything for him and so on. And then he gave it all up. But then in early middle life, through a series of extraordinary spiritual experiences, he came back into faith and Jesus became enormously important to him and his prayer life took off again.
But because he had been kind of bullied as a young person by a kind of dogmatic ‘you got to believe this, that and the other,’ he had got into the position where anything like bodily resurrection, that was simply unspiritual. He was basically some kind of a Christian Platonist. And there have been many, many Christian Platonists who just don’t think that the body matters that much.”
He continues:
And Mark and I, one time when we were writing this book together, we were talking about prayer and Mark told me, quite humbly and quietly about his practice when he said he suffered from insomnia from time to time. And I said, ‘so what do do if you can’t sleep?’ he said, ‘I pray my own version of the Jesus prayer with the rhythm of my breathing. I lie there and I’m praying, Lord Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world. Fill my mind with your light and my heart with your love.’
And I’ll never forget that, the thought of him praying that- ‘Lord Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world. Fill my mind with your light and my heart with your love.’
Now, someone who prays like that and someone who is earnestly claiming Jesus as the light of the world and seeking to make Jesus truth and life, his own truth and life, I want to say this man is a Christian. So why didn’t he believe in the bodily resurrection? I want to say he’s a muddled Christian.
Apparently, that’s all that’s needed, despite denying that Jesus Christ was God and that he rose bodily.
And I suspect that Marcus would probably have said the same about me, ‘Tom, you’re muddled because you think that the body actually matters.’ And I would say, well, yeah, that’s because I think the whole Judeo-Christian worldview is about God loving bodies and resurrecting bodies and doing new creation.
But where Marcus was coming from personally, pastorally, theologically, that was a bridge he was never going to cross. I have known other people cross that bridge.
So I have in my mind a category of muddled Christian, and I don’t want that to sound patronizing because I know when people come from difficult backgrounds, often there are things they just can’t get their heads around. Marcus would say, ‘I believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead.’ And he would then say, ‘I just don’t think this involved his body.’ And so I would say, we need to talk about the meaning of the word ‘resurrection’ in the first century.’ And he and I would go around the tracks having that conversation. And it was out of conversations like that, that I wrote my big book, The Resurrection of the Son of God.
He concludes that the man who denied nearly every core doctrine and foundational element of the Christian faith, who openly repudiated them and taught others to do likewise, was merely “muddled.”
So I want to say normal Christian life involves believing that God raised Jesus bodily from the dead. But there are many people who are earnestly seeking Jesus and are claiming him as the light of the world or as their Lord for whom that penny hasn’t dropped yet.
So I was not prepared to say that Marcus Borg praying like that was not a Christian, but I would say and did say, and I would tease him about it, that I think he was a muddled Christian and that I would love and hope and pray that he would come through that muddle.
I don’t think Marcus ever did. Does that mean in the great last assize that God will say this to him or that to him? That’s God’s business. But someone praying that prayer, I was not prepared to say ‘this man is in no sense a Christian.’
Paul says, ‘if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised you from the dead, you will be saved.’ Those are the promises.
Now, if somebody confesses that Jesus is Lord, but wants to say that when Paul says God raised him from the dead, what that meant was a purely spiritual thing. I would say that’s a classic 20th century muddle invoking Platonism accidentally.
Many, many people have been struggling to follow Jesus with that muddle in their heads. Are they therefore not real followers of Jesus? When you get to know them, maybe you want to say, like I would say of Mark Borg, that this man is really invoking the living Lord Jesus, just that there’s a bit of a huge intellectual muddle way back somewhere.
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It’s not a “muddle” its called heresy and unbelief.
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The novel, A Prayer For Owen Meany, was written by someone who is, at best, a nominal Christian and it contains this:
“Anyone can be sentimental about the nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer.”
How is NT Wright missing this? Farewell, N.T. Wright.
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The only nonbodily resurrection view that I would say is ok is actually a bodily resurrection. I.e. the physical body being transmogrified into spirit. But that would not leave a body in the tomb, so its still a bodily resurrection.
So to me the question is, did Marcus Borg believe a body was left in the tomb or that Jesus’ body just became spirit? I asked AI and it says Borg never explicitely said Jesus’ body was left in the tomb. This was also my inpression reading Borg in the past, i.e. that he thought Jesus’ body became spirit but didn’t want to fully commit to saying that explicetely either for fear academics would laugh at him. So NT Wright is probably right about Borg being a “muddled Christian.” Just don’t let Marcus of Borg assimilate you; resistence is not futile.
If you love your brother, you will speak the truth to your brother.
N.T. Wright….. no it’s N.T. Wrong…….
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Can the publisher of this article be reprimanded for making claims in the headline that are not supported in the article itself? It reduces to cheap journalism with click bait headlines…
Nowhere in the article is NT Wright quoted as saying belief in a bodily resurrection is “not needed for salvation”
In fact, if you read the segments of the interview from the article, NT Wright is essentially distinguishing himself from more liberal friends of his who still refer to themselves as Christians, not propping up their belief.
Shabby journalism. The author should take a serious look at their standard for professional work.
Can the publisher of this article be reprimanded for making claims in the headline that are not supported in the article itself? It reduces to cheap journalism with click bait headlines…
Nowhere in the article is NT Wright quoted as saying belief in a bodily resurrection is “not needed for salvation”
In fact, if you read the segments of the interview from the article, NT Wright is essentially distinguishing himself from more liberal friends of his who still refer to themselves as Christians, not propping up their belief.
Shabby journalism. The author should take a serious look at their standard for professional work.