N.T. Wright Now Says You Can Deny the Bodily Resurrection and Still Be a Christian
Last week, we reported that British theologian, who is well known for his “new perspective on Paul” teaching, N.T. Wright refused to call a transgender-identifying listener to repentance, choosing instead to affirm her feelings while cloaking biblical clarity under a blanket of evasive language. It was a tragic example of what happens when theologians lose their nerve—when pastoral ministry becomes little more than empathetic vagueness, and the gospel is reduced to a choose-your-own-adventure story.
This week, Wright has taken yet another dangerous step—this time, not just softening his tone on biblical sexual ethics, but denying the necessity of believing in the very foundation of the Christian faith.
In a recent interview on the Premiere Unbelievable podcast, Wright spoke about his late friend Marcus Borg, a man who not only denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ but also rejected His divinity. Rather than identifying Borg as a false teacher—as Scripture clearly demands—Wright offered this astonishing assessment:
“I was not prepared to say that Marcus Borg praying like that was not a Christian, but I would say and did say… that I think he was a muddled Christian and that I would love and hope and pray that he would come through that muddle.”
He continued, describing Borg’s deeply spiritual-sounding bedtime prayer:
“Lord Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world. Fill my mind with your light and my heart with your love.”
Wright reflects on this and concludes:
“Now, someone who prays like that and someone who is earnestly claiming Jesus as the light of the world… I want to say this man is a Christian.”
To be clear, Marcus Borg explicitly denied that Jesus rose bodily from the grave. He rejected the literal, physical resurrection—a doctrine without which, Paul says, the Christian faith is “in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14). But according to Wright, that wasn’t enough to disqualify him from the faith—it simply made him “muddled.”
“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.’ … So I have in my mind a category of muddled Christian…”
This is not a harmless academic distinction, this is a flat-out contradiction of Scripture.
Paul does not leave room for a “spiritual-only” resurrection. He writes that Jesus was buried and was raised and appeared—bodily, physically, to eyewitnesses (1 Cor. 15:4–6). He even anticipates and rebukes those who suggest a resurrection that doesn’t involve the body: