I guess the best way to express what I feel is to say that I sense a strong sentiment of bigotry against the Bible: that because it was completed about two thousand years ago it’s the product of ignorance; that since the writers were Jewish–and I admit I’m reaching here–an anti-Semitic attitude colors some people’s perception of it; that although they won’t admit it, persons opposed to the Bible refuse to accept the existence of a Supreme Being and base their conclusions accordingly. (Doing a quick verbal shuffle.) And for many years I’ve heard the feeble catchall phrase “interpret literally” attaached to the Bible by such ctritics, who would not dream of interrpreting other than “literally” anything stated under the aegis of a science, until, of course, a newer “scientific” discovery supplants it. How convenient.
Well, it’s the product of an ancient culture. It’s pre-scientific. It expresses an ancient percerption of cosmology. It’s naive in some ways, but that doesn’t mean that it’s ignorant in its essentials. It’s a record of an evolving religious consciousness as expressed through a variety of different genres. If Genesis says that God made the heavens and the Earth, what was important to the author was not that the physical particulars of the heavens and the earth, but the fact that God made them. Genesis is mythology, and mythology is not to be read as if it’s journalism. Mythology uses allegorical language to explain transcendent truths. Insisting on the literal truth of a myth is missing the point of the myth. To paraphrase Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, “If someone is pointing at the moon, do not look at the finger.”
Have you detected anti-Semitism anywhere in Spong or in this thread? If so, cough up a cite, if not, then let’s keep the crimson fish out of this discussion please.
What do you mean by “opposed to the Bible?” Do you think that anyone who does not read the Bible literally is hostile to it? How do you explain all those non-literalist Christians out there? Do you think that Polycarp is secretly an atheist?
Also, do you think that a rationial person should start by assuming that everything in the Bible is literally true and then “base their conclusions accordingly?”
Huh? 
Scientific data is not open to “interpretation” in any subjective sense. Science presumes no conclusions and is self-correcting. The harshest test for scientific conclusions is peer review by other scientists. You mentioned Piltdown man in one of your earlier post, a favorite old chestnut for those who don’t like evolution. Piltdown was expose as a hoax by guess who…other scientists. Bad science is treated unmercifully by good science. In fact, if you’ve ever read much in the way of scientific journals, I think you’ll find that evolutionary scientists are much tougher on each other than they ever are on creationists.
The two most well known figures of evolutionary science were Charles Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould. Both of these guys took great exception to any suggestion that evolution disproved the existence of God. They both expressed a general belief that the existence of God was outside the bounds of science. Gould wrote a book about this subject called Rock of Ages in which he claimed that science and religion were what he termed “NOMA” (non-overlapping magisteria). He claimed that each endeavor explored aspects of existence that the other could not. Gould asserted that science was not able to provide answers about ultimate meaning or moral values and that those questions were the province of religion. To quote Gould: “we get the age of the rocks, and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven.”
There is no conflict between science and religion unless you insist on taking a very narrow view of both.
If I were attempting to learn something of the history of France prior to Charlemagne, my sources would be, predominantly, annals kept by monasteries and court scribes, and the legendaria attached to them. I will need to read these with some degree of criticality, realizing that those who wrote them believed in the truth of what they put down on paper, but that it was inevitably skewed by their personal worldviews. E.g., if in a given month in 644 a given scribe notes that the nights were disturbed by the flight of a great dragon across the sky, while 100 miles away another scribe notes that the death of King Balderic was presaged by the apparition of a comet, I can apply Occam’s Razor to this and assume that the “dragon” was actually the comet – and I need not accept with the second scribe that God so structured this particular comet’s orbit that it would pass by Earth as a predictive prophecy of the death of that particular king. Efforts to tie the genealogy of the local monarchs to the great figures of the past by showing the former’s descent from the latter will abound, and one key element of any such chronicle will be the importance of what happens locally. This latter I have coined the term of the “Jacob Brown Effect” for, in tribute to the general who won the War of 1812 – or so you were taught if you grew up within a few miles of his home, as I did.
In large measure, that’s the sort of scholarship that one brings to the Bible. Reference to a regional map of the Middle East in O.T. times will show you that Israel and Judah were relatively small potatoes compared to Egypt, the Hittite Empire in earliest days, and whoever happened to hold Mesopotamia at the time, and especially compared to Rome and Persia. They appear to have had the same importance as Belgium in the first half of the 20th Century – a small kingdom functioning as a buffer state between two large powers and regular invasion route between them.
And it is human nature to attribute to events a supernatural intervention (which may or may not be valid – the person who firmly believes with the Bible that Joshua was divinely commissioned and aided to conquer the Canaanites will not accept that about half the Greek pantheon took the field during the Trojan War, as the Iliad reports). To me, this means that any event that might be considered a miracle should be examined carefully and critically with an eye to “non-miraculous” explanations for what is alleged to have happened. The actual texts in the four Gospels of the feeding of the 5,000 is consonant with an explanation that Jesus used the generosity of the young boy to shame the assembled multitude into sharing what they themselves had brought as a sign of generous, compassionate love for neighbor, as well as the traditional “multiplication of the loaves and fishes.” (By this I’m saying that the actual words before us could imply either one, or yet a third explanation – neither is actually stated as what happened.)
The problem is compounded by the insistence of most who call themselves Christians or Jews (as a religion) that the text is “inspired.” But that word will mean quite different things to different people. I myself believe that every word in the Bible is there because God intended it to be – but not necessarily as an infallible guide to history, science, His nature, and human conduct. I think a significant minority of it is there to show, through the faults and foibles of individuals, an incisive view of fallen human nature as an underscoring of our need for His hand in the shaping of our lives.
And much of it has been elevated to a position the human authors never intended. Paul was no more intentionally writing Scripture than I am; he was writing letters of instruction and advice to churches he had founded or had a hand in the growth of, in response to local needs that moved him to send counsel.
To be sure, the words of Scripture will strike chords in the hearts of those believers who read them, and take on wonderful additional “flavor” that is as much a part of the reader’s psyche as it is the objective content of the text. I’ve felt this myself, and it testifies to me of the value of Scripture. But I’ve also seen people using their Bibles as metaphorical blunt instruments – examples abound on this board alone, if you leaf back through Great Debates, or care to wade through the works of Jerry Falwell (don’t forget to bring hip waders and get a tetanus shot first!) – and together they underscore to me the importance of undertaking a critical reading of any part of Scripture, looking at it in the greater context of the entire Bible. (Interestingly, this is something on which His4Ever and I agree! ;))
And, as I pointed out to RT with my Heinlein quote, sometimes it’s important to have someone, like Heinlein or Spong, challenge one’s preconceptions, to ask the questions that deserve to be asked. You need not agree with the stance of the questioner – but it’s important to think through the implications of the questions. Perhaps nobody believes in the cartoon version of God I mentioned above – but how close, really is the mental imagery you have of the real God (or the one you think the Bible speaks of whom you reject) to that caricature? How much of what He really is are you rejecting because of your adherence to that imagery?
Sometimes the questions are more important than their answers.
Originally posted by Polycarp
Does this mean you believe that because the countries surrounding Israel and Judah were greater in terms of area, population, or military might, or perhaps all of the above, the “small potatoes” are inconsequential?
Sorry, I prefer quality to quantity. Just because the Wehrmacht numbered many thousands of people and Anne Frank was only one person doesn’t make the Nazis right and Anne Frank wrong.
I sense a talk-out-of-both-sides-of-your-mouth philosophy here. So the Bible is to be “interpreted” but scientific writings are not. Why the double standard? I am not at home as I write this, so I don’t have immediate access to some sources concerning ancient writings.
I don’t believe that the identity of who exposed Piltdown Man as a fake is relevant, any more than I would ignore a hurricane warning because I heard it on a cheap dime-store radio rather than a $5000 stereo system. I had a government teacher who was a graduate student just before and after the fraud was exposed. He had a biology professor who had smugly assured the class that Eoanthropus dawsonii was what is popularly styled a “missing link.” When the fake was publicly exposed the class jeered the professor for quite a while with, “Tell us about Piltdown Man!”
And the sad part of that is that, as I found in a biography of Clarence Darrow–perhaps the Johnnie Cochran of his time–that Darrow actually adduced Piltdown Man as proof of evolution in the famous Scopes Trial–more than 20 years before the expose.
One last question: How do you feel about libertinism and suicide?
You’re drawing a false analogy. Science is a method, not a text. Science, unlike the Bible, is actually testable If you think a scientific conclusion is false, you can test it for yourself. Nothing in “scientific writings” is taken on faith. Science stands or falls by empirical evidence. Interpretation has nothing to with it.
No biology prof would ever use the term “missing link.” That is not a term which has any meaning in evolutionary science. There actually is no missing link as it is conceived of in popular culture and on creationist web sites. The fossil record is not complete, but there are plenty of intermediary specimans as it is. Science is not seeking some dramatic half ape/half man to prove evolution. evolution is already proven.
Piltdown man, or any other frauds or false alarms which have been turned up by scientific investigation, do not, in any way, jeopardize or disprove evolution. In fact, the information that evolutionary theory has already provided us can also give us the ammunition to debunk frauds or to correct erroneous theories. More significantly, even if it were possible to disprove evolution, that would still not constitute one shred of evidence for Biblical creationism. Trying to shoot holes in one theory does not equal evidence for another hypothesis.
So what? Evolutionary theory is quite solid without Piltdown man, and it does not need Clarence Darrow to defend it. Medical theory has also changed since the days of Clarence Darrow, does that mean all medicine is therefore suspect? Can you cite a single textbook which tries to use Piltdown man to bolster evolution? It’s a total red herring.
You should also know that nobody gets the facts wrong like creationists do. I could give cite after cite after cite of not only factual errors made by creationists, but outright deliberate fraud and dishonesty. I’ll direct you to the Talkorigins FAQ on creationism which can provide plenty of examples, but I’ll doubt you’ll read them.
What the hell is “libertinism?” I mean specifically, how doy you define it? that’s a very subjective word, so you’ll have to clarify what you mean by it.
As to suicide…well…gain, I don’t really know what you mean. Are you asking in a vaccuum if i think that suicide is good or bad. I think that it’s often a manifestation of depression or mental illness, in those circumstances, I think it’s tragic, but I don’t pass moral judgement. Other times, it is sought as a release from physical illness which is no longer bearable. If someone is dying of bone cancer, and he has pain which the meds can’t reach, and he no longer has any quality of life, I think it is absolutely that person’s right to end his own life with dignity and on hos own terms.
There are also circumstance (which I think are the minority) where suicide can be a selfish or cowardly act which hurts others unneccesarily. In those cases I may think ill of the person who did it, but so what? They’re dead, what am I supposed to do about it?
Now, I’ve humored your little digressions to this point, but now I’d really like you to connect a few dots and show what any of this has to do with Spong. I really have no idea what your point is. Are you saying that Spong is not a Biblical literalist, therefore he’s anti-Christian? Please articulate a coherent thesis for us.
All I am saying is that if Sprong, or anybody else, does not accept the Bible as divine revelation, he has no business being a “Bishop,” or having any religious status at all. As I mentioned earlier, it’s the fox guarding the chickens.
I note that your footline quotes H. L. Mencken, whom I consider to be one of the worst literary/role models for anyone to follow. Mencken was an enemy sympathizer in World War I; and, in an article from the South Bay Daily Breeze about 20 years ago (I still have it), he included a secret provision his his will, which he had directed not to be divulged for 25 years after his death in 1956. When I post that quote you will see what I mean, and why in other posts I have said I would spit on Mencken’s grave.
It’s clear to me you and I, and perhaps Polycarp and others who have posted here, are worlds apart on this issue. I doubt this difference can be reconciled, and if it can’t, perhaps you can forget you ever had any contact with me.
Dougie_monty
I don’t know bout any “death threats” - (ever a cite for those?)
but I read somewhere online that Spong was hit in the face at his wife’s funeral - he has been on the receiving end of behavior that was not good.
IMO, he has dished out a lotta theology that is not good (dished it out of Bultmann’s cold bowls)
but the positives for him were that he didn’t want people to feel disenfranchised from the church
The one book I read by Spong – he confused Diocletian with Domitian (honestly!)
These are two Roman Emperors about two centuries apart…
But everybody makes mistakes.
“About the year 80 C. E. the Emperor Diocletian came to power, ruling unitl the year 96.”
RESCUING THE BIBLE FROM FUNDAMENTALISM, Bishop John Shelby Spong, HarperSan Francisco, p. 175
No, sorry – that was
Domitian.
so i"ll go back through that book and say what I think Spong got RIGHT
On page 7 he correctly denotes the error of Sodom’s people to “gang rape” rather than sexual orientation.
oh – almost forgot --page 4
[quote]
“It is an interesting exercise, when viewing television evangelists, to turn off the sound and watch the facial contortions and violent gestures.”/quote]
He’s absolutely right – it is HILARIOUS to do this – but better than sound off totally is to watch the Spanish broadcasts of these guys (I don’t understand Spanish).
dougie,
I suppose you’re referring to the anti-Semitism revealed in Mencken’s diary. That’s certainly true and regrettable, but it doesn’t represent the totality of Mencken as a writer or a person. I chose that particular quote as a temporary sig because I think it speaks to our current situation with Iraq. Mencken was also agnostic and fairly critical of organized religion, so I suppose that doesn’t bolster him any in your estimation.
Back to Spong: is it possible, in your estimation, to believe that the Bible is divinely inspired without taking it literally?
Also, I’m still curious about your “libertinism and suicide” question. Why did you ask about those?
And hey, it doesn’t bother me if people don’t see the world the way I do. I specifically asked for the opinions of those who disagreed with Spong. RTFirefly has presented an opposing view of Spong in a very informed, thoughtful and cordial way. I think that you’ve just been a little cryptic in your posts. I’m trying to find out more specifically where you’re coming from. Are you, personally, a Biblical inerrantist? I think it would help us to know more specifically what your own religious perspective is.
Ronin, I’ll have to try the silent evangelist thing. It sounds like it would be pretty funny. 
I’m curious, Polycarp- do you consider all of Jesus’ supposed miracles (other than the Resurrection) to be non-miraculous? For example, what about the resurrection of Lazarus? And what about that little girl- was she really just sleeping? 
Also, what’s your take on Jeremiah? Why did God want that book to be in the Bible?
And, if you’ll forgive me giving my curiosity further reign, I was wondering how you decided that a particular omnibus edition of ancient books was “the Bible, as edited by God” rather than any other omnibus edition? For example, why aren’t Bel and the Dragon or the Book of Enoch in your Bible?
More from:
RESCUING THE BIBLE FROM FUNDAMENTALISM, Bishop John Shelby Spong, HarperSan Francisco, p. xiv :
“I wrote this book in the confidence that if I can succeed in lifting up the Christ so that the unique figure can be seen by people living in our century, then this Christ will complete the process by drawing all of God’s people into that holy presence where God can be experienced as real.”
A good statement - that…
in “all of God’s people” I would just say “all people”
Spong’s aspirations are good
the biblical image is that if Christ is “lifted up” He (Christ) will “draw ALL PEOPLE unto Himself”
spoken before He was actually lifted up on a cross, the Old Testament reference was to a weird almost magical-like event concerning – of all things to be used as an object of salvation – a brass image of a serpent
Christ literally compared Himself to that bronze serpent
Gosh this thread is going all over everywhere - I might not even have to apologize for rambling – seems to be the norm…
.
.
"Ronin, I’ll have to try the silent evangelist thing. It sounds like it would be pretty funny. "
heh
HINT: Jimmy Swaggart on the early a.m. Spanish stations – tops!
Ben, to be quite frank, I don’t have a clue. I can speculate about God’s purposes in the writing and canonization of Jeremiah, but it’s not a book that has ever been something I felt called to study at any length.
I stand with John the Evangelist – Jesus’s miracles were “signs” confirmatory of who He was and what He was trying to do. Exactly what was the detailed physical cause of any one of them, including the Resurrection, and whether it was “miraculous” in the modern “break the laws of nature” definition, is something that frankly doesn’t seem horribly important to me. I know it’s a common argument here and elsewhere, and I’ve tried to put in my opinion when such come up, but for me the main point to them was the compassion behind most of them and the fact that they point to Him as someone out of the ordinary, someone to be listened to.
And, as it happens, out of about seven Bibles in this house, two are Catholic (Jerusalem and New Jerusalem Versions) with Bel right where it belongs in Daniel and one is a New English Bible with Apocrypha. As for Enoch, what we have is a late pseudonymous work attributed to the patriarch of which one passage is quoted by Jude, and I have very little interest in studying it at any great length.
And, Dougie, you might try reading what Spong has said about the Bible and the scholarship he’s put into trying to get a handle on what Jesus really said and did, particularly in examining the Gospel narratives in terms of the Jewish faith. And he is a bishop of my church, albeit retired from administering a diocese and always quite controversial. I might do a tu quoque at you about people who add into their opinion of Scripture “three other books written by a mountebank in Ontario County, NY, which he claimed to be the remnants of a lost civilization” – but that would be casting aspersions on your faith, so I only say it, placing it in quotes to distance myself from it, to give you as a loyal LDS member a feeling of how it feels to me to have the ministry of a man I highly respect judged on superficial comments about whether or not he agrees with you on the highly volatile subject of Biblical inspiration. (Spong believes the Bible “inspired” in a sense – he just has a definition of “inspiration” that would not please the vast majority of us.) [Let me emphasize that I’m not engaging in LDS-bashing, merely taking a rather classic remark from one of them as an illustration by example of how your remark offends me.]
Oh, dougie is LDS. Ok, now I have a better idea of where he’s coming from.
dougie, I think that Poly has a point about the analogy between the criticism that Spong has received and that which Joseph Smith and the Mormons, et al have received. I’m not comparing Spong to Smith as a prophet, I’m just pointing out that the founder of the LDS church was branded as a heretic and a fraud in his own time, he made some assertions which radically reinterpreted the very heart of Christian theology and There are many still today (I’ve seen them on these boards) who deny that Mormons are Christians. I can remember spending several pages defending the LDS church against this charge in a thread a few months ago. I would think that someone who knows what it feels like to have to defend his Christian credentials would be a little more patient with others. I’m not saying you have any obligation whatever to agree with Bishop Spong (of course you don’t) but I don’t think it’s fair to take the word “Christian” away from him just because he defines it differently than you do. Do you like it when people say that the CJCLDS is not Christian?
I guess I don’t understand your logic here. It appears to me that you’re saying that Jeremiah is definitely part of your God-chosen Biblical canon. But how did you decide that God chose it?
OTOH, you seem to reject Enoch as canonical, and you do so using logic.
Have I misread your position? I’m afraid you’re being kind of vague. Instead of saying, “Here’s what I believe God intended to be canonical, and here’s why,” you say, “here’s what books I have in my house,” leaving me to guess what you actually think of, say, the Apocrypha.
Having thought about this a minute, I think I should point out that you haven’t really answered my question, Poly. I’m not asking which books you have in your house. I’m asking how you decide which books are part of God’s canon.
I must admit that I find your evasiveness frustrating. This isn’t the only thread in which I’ve felt that you’ve squirmed on a fairly simple question. In the thread on Paine’s “Examination of the Prophecies,” for example, you spent a great deal of time discussing what other Christians believe, but you only made some brief, rather vague remarks about your own beliefs- and even then, you only did so when pressed.
Ben, I think you’ve raised some very compelling questions here. In fact I think a discussion of how non-literalists Christians define or view the authority of Biblical canon is broad enough to merit its own thread. In fairness to Polycarp, I think you’re asking some pretty challenging questions on that subject, and it may be possible that Poly needs to ponder the issue some more and get his thoughts in order before he can post a thorough response. It’s a good and insightful question, Ben, and I don’t know if Poly’s being deliberately evasive, so much, as perhaps just a little caught off guard by a question that he doesn’t have a quick and ready-made answer for.
Poly, I hope I’m not completely out of the ballpark on my perception of your response. Please correct me if I am. I get the feeling that you may not necessarily have an ironclad view of what constitutes canon, but do you have a definite opinion on which works are “God-breathed” and which ones aren’t? If so, do you base your opinion on a subjective reading of the material or do you defer to a more organizational authority? I think these are fair questions and I’m sure that you can formulate a response which will be satisfying to both Ben and me. 
Ronin - interesting posts, and interesting points. I didn’t know Spong habs mistaken those two Emperors - that’s kind of a major gaffe for a scholar! It would be like if Cervaise the movie reviewer got the name of a movie wrong, like instead of Dances with Wolves, he said Dances with…
well, never mind. You get what I mean.
Cheers,
Mars
who believes he needs to go read a certain book
Good post, NaSultainne. We can’t change God’s word or what it says or pick out just parts we like because supposedly "it doesn’t work in this modern day and age. If the bishop doesn’t believe what the word says, then what does he base his truth and authority on? We seem to be getting an epidemic of Christians (?) appear to want to totally change the word of God and rearrange it so as to be palatable to people today. In answer to your question, it’s God who defines Himself and what truth is, not us. Sounds like the bishop has decided to make up his own religion using bits and pieces of the Bible that please him. Unfortunately, it’s not the faith taught in the scriptures in my humble opinion.