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Episcopalian Bishop, John Spong

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Episcopalian Bishop, John Spong SPONG, THE BIBLE AND TRUTH by Nick Hawkes (May, 2002) Episcopalian Bishop, John Spong, (now retired) wrote a book, "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" in which he sought to rid the Christian faith of all things that were hard to believe, (relegating these things to myth). In doing this, he hoped to redefine Christian belief, making it acceptable to more people outside the church. It is a noble sentiment and he does well to challenge the idea that Christianity requires people to commit intellectual suicide and believe twelve impossible things before breakfast. However, Spong wants to cut so much that is definitive of the Christian faith away that all that is left is universal moralism that features the current values of society. Spong is a passionate and compelling writer and orator who is very well practised in his arguments. He follows the tradition of the 19th century rationalists and sees himself as the spiritual heir of John A.T. Robinson, English bishop and Cambridge New Testament scholar whose 1963 book Honest to God caused such a stir. It is not always apparent from his lectures what Spong actually believes and his insistence on loving and accepting everyone can cause people to wonder what the fuss is all about. The real shape of Spong's radical ideas can be seen in his 'Twelve Theses'. It should be noted that it is easier to state what it is that Spong doesn't believe rather than what he actually affirms as eleven out of his twelve 'theses' are negative. Only the final statement is positive. John Shelby Spong: Twelve Theses (from "A Call for a New Reformation") 1.Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found. 2.Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt. 3.The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense. 4.The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible. 5.The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post- Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity. 6.The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed. 7.Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history. 8.The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age. 1 9.There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time. 10.Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way. 11.The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior. 12.All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination. The essential content of his Twelve Theses and his books can be summarised in seven points:1 1."God" has no identity, and does not exist in any form in which a relationship can be established. "God" is merely the source of life, love and meaning (which he defines using Tillich's term "Ground of Being."). God does not engage with us in any way but we can "turn inward to meet God" within us and so have an expanded transcendent consciousness.2 2.If "God" cannot and has not entered history or the realm of human experience, it follows that any notion of God entering our world as Christ Jesus must be dismissed. "The Christology of the ages is bankrupt." (Spong's Article 2). There is no virgin birth, no miracle stories, and no ascension (Articles 4,5,8). 3.There is nothing unique about Jesus of Nazareth. The 'deity' evident in Christ is within all humanity. Jesus has simply allowed it to be seen more than any one else, as such, he sets a 'benchmark' by which everyone else's experience of God can be measured. "Jesus is "a channel for transcendence, a person at one with the source of life, the revealer of the source of love, a new being who makes plain the Ground of all Being."3 4.The death of Jesus on the cross has no significance for Spong. Any notion of "sin" or "guilt" is the result of ancient mythological frameworks no longer credible to the modern mind. 5.The Trinity, whether understood as "Father, Son and Holy Spirit", or as "Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier" is flawed in that it is tied to 'theism' and implies that "God" has an identity of being. Rather, "we locate God in every person, and we call this God the Holy Spirit."4 1I am grateful to Rev. Tim Harris of St. Mathew's Anglican Church, (Kensington, Adelaide,) for his synthesis of these seven points which I have simplified slightly. 2John Spong, "The God Beyond Theism", The Voice October 1999 3John Spong, "Reforming Christology: "He Did not Die for My Sins", The Bishop's Voice, May, 1999 4Spong, Why Christianity must change or die , 220-225 2 6.There is no reality or point to prayer.5 7.The resurrection should not be understood as a physical event. It was "an action of God whereby Jesus was "raised into the meaning of God" (Article 7). The resurrection was simply the Apostle Peter's dawning realisation of the purpose of Jesus. The bulk of Spong's writings attempt to separate the Biblical accounts of the gospel from any notion of truth, except where the Bishop finds a saying or thought helpful to his gospel of tolerance. The virgin birth, the deity of Christ, the atoning death on the cross, the resurrection, the miracles, everything that would verify the biblical claims of Christ's authority and uniqueness, are discounted. The words of the Bible are not the words of God.6 Scholarly concerns Spong is not considered to be a reputable biblical scholar in academic circles. Despite this, he passes comment and judgment on those who are (in so doing, incurring the wrath of eminent scholars such as N.T. Wright (who lectured for twenty years at Oxford, McGill and Cambridge universities)7 and Gerald O'Collins who wrote of Spong's book Resurrection - Myth or Reality that it did "not belong in the world of international scholarship."8 One of the reasons why Spong is not considered to be a reputable scholar by many in the academic world is that Spong replaces responsible historical inquiry with speculation. For example, Spong writes: "So enter with me into the realm of speculation as we probe the life of Paul, using his words not as literal objects but as doorways into his psyche, where alone truth that changes life can be processed."9 This is an invitation for us to ignore what Paul actually wrote and accept what the Bishop speculates. Spong has also been castigated for believing that the gospel accounts in the Bible are all a Jewish "midrash" where convictions held in the present were translated by writers into the sacred symbols and stories from their history to lend them credibility and respectibility.10 Whilst this appears to set the gospels within an accepted literary style, it is, in reality an unrestrained use of a poorly understood Jewish technique of biblical interpretation which Spong has pressed into service to support his ideas, regardless of scholastic integrity.11 Spong's other particular weakness is that he grossly misrepresents the views of those with orthodox traditional Christian faith. These he savagely caricatures as people 5Ibid. 140 6John Spong, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism (San Francisco, CA: Harper SanFranscisco, 1992), 249. See also a good synthesis of Spong's belief in: Don Closson, "Rescuing the Gospel from Bishop Spong" http://www.probe.org/docs/spong.html 7N.T. Wright, Who Was Jesus? (Eerdmans, 1993) 8Gerald O'Collins, Tablet 30 April, 1994 Father O'Collins teaches at the Gregorian University of Rome and is the author of over 30 books. 9Spong, Rescuing the Bible p.107 10Ibid. 8-9 11See: Wright, Who Was Jesus? 3 who believe impossible things, who lack intellectual credibility, and who are intolerant of others. In his book Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, he speaks of "hysterical literalism." Whilst these misrepresentations makes it easier for him to win his own argument, it in no way represents reality. He does not address the views of evangelical Christians who have both academic integrity and social compassion. Following on from this weakness, comes Spong's difficulty in being gracious to those who differ from his opinions. He savaged the Episcopalian Bishops of Africa with barely disguised elitism (intimating that they were backward) because they opposed the acceptance of homosexual leaders at the 1998 Lambeth conference. He said, "They've moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity.
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