—and its existence serve as proof that religious beliefs in general is to be dismissed out of hand and be declared irrelevant to our lives.—
Where does Spong say that religious beliefs are in generally to be dismissed as irrelevant? That seems to be the exact opposite of much of what he says.
Could you restate and expand this some, Capacitor. I think I disagree, and can demonstrate where the problem in your argument lies, working from a Christian perspective. But I want to be sure that I’m clear on what it is that you’re saying, before I essay an argument against something that you may not mean.
FWIW, my comments, Poly:
Actually, I’ve found most theological talk to be meaningless. I also suspect that if God exists, He, She or It must necessarily be beyond human comprehension and human language.
Without Jesus, of what worth is Christianity? It seems to me that without the concept of a Savior who died to save the world, Paul of Tarsus and the Apostles become a collection of charlatans and madmen; much of the Old Testament is reduced to mythology, beautiful poetry, and the dubious history of a minor Mediterranean people; and who cares what the prophets think? If you & Spong really believe this, perhaps you should considering switching to a religion that lacks a Savior, Buddhism, for example.
To my mind, you can interpret Genesis 1 as an allegory for the establishment of the universe. Note that “In the Beginning God said let there be light and there was light.” I imagine the Big Bang produced a great deal of light in addition to other kinds of electro-magnetic radiation. Then you have a universe without life – and earth was without life for a few hundred million years – and lifeforms emerging gradually with humans last of all. Genesis 2 could be interpreted as an allegory for the predetory nature of mankind.
Granted, although a Being capable of miracles should be able to transcend biology.
Why can’t miracles be interpreted as supernatural events? Frankly, a being who can turn water into wine is my kind of deity. 
Alternatively, one can view Jesus as the continuation of various pagan beliefs, i.e., Mithraism, and argue that the Crucifixion, like the myths of Adonis, Tammuz, Osiris & Baldur is an allegory for the procession of the seasons. The King must die so that the earth will be fertile. I refer you to Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, specifically Chapter 2, where she discusses Dionysius. Look for the parallels between Christianity and Dionysius’ followers’ beliefs. Also, compare the Christian notions of forgiveness with Orestes’ declaration to the Eumenides that he can transcend his mother’s execution; that he can rise above the past and speak with purified lips.
Again, why can’t you have a physical resuscitation if you assume God is capable of transcending nature? It seems to me that a diety who cannot transcend nature is hardly worthy of worship. Could you explain the phrase “raised into the meaning of God” as it has no meaning to me?
[quote9.) There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time. [/quote]
I myself think the Decalogue is the most practical moral code ever offered in Western civilization. Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t perjure yourself, don’t covet, honor your parents, treat yourself well by giving yourself a day of rest. That strikes me as a moral code that’s pretty practical and relevant for today and the other commandents can be taken as the tokens of respect you must pay to a God you worship. On a side note, I deplore the tendency of too many academics and other moderns to assert there was no meaningful culture, philosophies or ideas offered before John Lennon became famous. I think there is a great deal in ancient texts – not only the Bible, but the writings of Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Homer & and the Epic of Gilgamesh – that is relevant to today (consider Antigone’s rebellion against Creon, for example, or Euripides’ Medea). Human nature hasn’t changed that much in 6,000 years.
Why can’t it be? On a personal note, when I went down with a herniated disc several years ago, I found prayer & marijuana far more helpful than the painkillers prescribed by the doctors.
What will the Church use then as motivators? I quote Robert A. Heinlein: “Never appeal to a man’s better nature. He may not have one.”
Personally, I see no need to respect tyrants like Hussein, would-be tyrants like Ashcroft, people who prey on the helpless and the elderly, and many other people. Respect must be earned; it is not an automatic.
You have my response, Poly; feel free to fire away.
I think you need to read #12 again, PC, Spong is only talking about biological characteristics, not behavioral one. He’s saying that such external characteristsics as race, gender, ethnicity, etc. are illegimate as the basis for any kind of moral judgement or discrimination. IOW, it’s wrong to judge Hussein because of his ethnicity alone, it is perfectly fine to judge him because he is a psychopathic asshole.
Thank you for the clarification. I wondered about that because of the phrase “no external description of one’s being,” but I assumed the phrase “must be respected for what each person is” also applied to a person’s behaviorial characteristics.
Of course, many Christians would argue that we are not to judge anybody in this world.
not for my characterization of Mr. Spong, but for the Mormon-hijack. I had just an hour before listened to a talk about the LDS Church & it was fresh in my mind as a point of comparison. If I’d been listening to a discussion of Jehovah’s Witness teaching, I’d probably have said used their view of Jesus as the First Creation of Jehovah closer to closer to classic Biblical C’nity than Mr Spong’s views.
This is one of the more interesting debate threads on Christianity. Thankyou Diogenes. I’ve only heard and read little about Bishop Spong and dismissed him outright without really articulating within my mind as to exactly why. I’ve learned more studying this thread, frequently resorting to the dictionary to define words and even in one case, dictionary definition lacking, had to turn to the internet to define a word. I have an easier time reading the King James Version. We must have a lot of divinity scholars here, which brings me to my first point. If one must be a divinity student to have a better grasp on the nature of God including His program for us then why did Jesus not choose the Essenes, or Pharisees rather than fishermen for example to be his disciples? Is whatever Spong is advancing compliant with God’s will? Must Christianity adopt Spong’s views to be correct?
Secondly, I question a spokesperson for Jesus who does not refer to scripture for authority. I’m not a biblical literalist (as exactly per Polycarp), but if one just ignores the bible as authority, on what basis can we believe that Christ is the Son of God? Just what the hell is our hope for the future? That is far more important to me than to lock onto an understanding of the true nature of God.
Now to answer Spong best as I can
Why? Says who? To me Theism is merely incomplete(I think I’m panentheistic), but to communicate with the cognizant focus or focii that is identified in scripture as God/Jesus is as relevant today as it ever was.
I find this statement condescending(like FriarTed on LDS), the underlying premise incorrect(unsupported and contrary to scripture), and the conclusion insofar as it relates to the premise only, incorrect as well.
While I agree with the mythology claim, to label it as nonsense just goes to far. There are concepts in this story that have relevance to God’s plan for mankind that can not be dismissed so cavalierly. In fact Spong himself draws a conclusion from this story as outlined in point 12.
Not for me, or for countless others. But then I have no problem with the idea that now and then God transcends the limits of known science.
I don’t know why we have to make an issue out of this. What is the harm in believing in the miracles?
The hair on the back of my neck rises. The voluntary sacrifice is so fundamentally presented in scripture, so integral to my understanding about God’s plan for us, that to dismiss it is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Why is this so important to Spong?
Scripture is quite clear on the physical resurrection. Just as the concept of virgin birth, why is it so damn important to deny it. How does that improve “christianity”.
Well you would have to be an ultra literalist to not be capable of rationalizing a modern conception of the Ascension with scripture.
But there is. Love God, love your neighbour, do unto others, comes to my mind.
Need clarification to respond, but I suspect that the assertion is largely irrelevant to me.
I think I agree with most of the statement, particularly the separation aspect, but I don’t think that guilt should be abandoned. It is integral in my mind to establish a reliable ethical code.
I agree, but that leaves me with a couple of questions.
Spong asserts that all humans bear God’s image. By what authority? The creation myth? 
Given the original premise, why limit the rejection/discrimination prohibition to external descriptions?
I admire Spong’s guts to come out as he has, but I wonder as to exactly what his agenda is. His words devoid of any external authority speak little to me as a Christian. I can see why his works are of interest to philosophers ,academics, and theologians, but he has little to offer the masses. I suspect, given his (and mine) objection to the some of the manifestations of the fundamentalist mindset, that he does damage to the acceptance of Christianity based on Jesus and His Commandment within the large and powerful fundamentalist community.
I keep coming back to this thread, but unable to articulate what it is that I need to say. So this is a sort of interim Phaedrus-like post to say that I am thinking about this, and trying to put the right words together.
This is certainly one of the most radical of all Spong’s assertions and seems to draw the most ire from Christians. Personally, though, I think it’s one of his most reassuring challenges. I don’t think it’s clear at all (from a purely historical standpoint) that there was anything “voluntary” at all about the crucifixion and i think that the pascal-surrogate interpretation was developed by Christians after the fact to explain what seemed to be an inexplicable end for someone they believed was the Messiah. I think the idea of Christ-as-sacrifice is rooted in archaic practices of animal sacrifice and is absurd by rationalist standards. I know that attempts can be made (and some very thoughful ones) to make more sophisticated and less “babaric” interpretations of what is meant by “sacrifice,” but I think that these attempts are starting with a preconceived conclusion and trying to construct a more modern argument to get to it.
I also have never bought into the idea that humans are born into any kind inherent corruption or “original sin” from which they need salvation (This is a uniquely Christian position, btw. Jewish theology does not put the same spin on Adam’s fall that Christians do) so I really fail to see why any sacrifice is needed. This is especially true if it is conceded that "Adam and Eve are purely mythological and that there was no Garden, no serpent, no fruit and no fall. At this point, it becomes necessary to try to find a completely new meaning for original sin and that’s difficult to do without stretching some things just to fit a conclusion that is wanted rather than warranted.
I don’t have a problem removing soteriology from Christianity and proceeding with gthe ethical teachings of Jesus in its place, in fact I find that much more appealing as a rationalist. I don’t believe that the central message of Jesus’ ministryb was “worship me or burn,” (in fact, I think it’s questionable whether he ever saw himself as divine) his message was “Love God and love thy neighbor.” In Matthew 25, he defined those two commandments as synonymous. So the essence, the very center of Jesus’ message was love. I also think that this love, both of neighbor and of God, had to be genuine and not a means to an end. Do not give alms to the poor to score points with God. Do not pray in public “like the hypocrites do” to score points with other people. (Jesus’ repeated condemnation of hypocrites is interesting in itself in that it did not have quite the nuance that we infer from it. Hypocrite was the Greek word for “stage actor.” Jesus was condemning grandstanding, over pious, attention seeking shows of religion – kind of like what you see on the 700 Club.)
I think that if we preserve this central ethos and discard the anachronistic notions of sacrifice, we have, at least, a workable proposition for a “New Christianity” which can still take its pedigree from the historical figure of Jesus yet not be devoured by rationalistic inquiry.
Diogenes: An equally valid, unless of course you believe the Bible, explanation of Christ-as-sacrifice is that it represents the progression of the seasons – Christ is the ultimate Corn King.
I really think you ought to read the Bible more closely. Who mentions hell the most? It isn’t some stern Old Testiment prophet nor a genocidal Jehovah nor fanatical Paul of Tarsus. It’s “meek & mild” Jesus Christ. I think C.S. Lewis once observed that all the really scary teachings of Christianity came from Christ.
Frankly, I think you & Spong like the part of Christ’s teachings about love your neighbor & turning the other cheek & charity, but you don’t want the rest of the package
Man, I’m getting tired of saying this in thread after thread, but Jesus does not mention Hell. Every instance of the word “hell” being attributed to Jesus is a mistranslation of Hinnon or Hades, neither of which has any relationship to Christian hell.
Matthew 5:22
But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
Matthew 5:20
For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
13:36-42
Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.
He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;
The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;
The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.
As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this worl
The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.
The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Diogenes: I spent about six minutes of searching, in just one of the books of the Gospel, and found those quotes.
I grant you those verses could describe part of the Grecian Hades, although in that case I don’t understand why the original writer(s) did not use Tartarus instead of Hades, since I understand that is where the evil were punished.
However, all three verses clearly imply there is a judgement and those found to be unrighteous will be separated from God. If I wanted to spend more time tonight, I could find even more verses, especially if I searched in Revelations and the writings of Paul.
You can contend that Jesus is talking about a separation from God rather than a literal hell of fire and brimstone. If I understood correctly a recent pronouncement by Pope John Paul II, this is what the Catholic Church conceives of as hell. However, such a separation clearly implies judgement, guilt, punishment, and reward.
You can contend that later writers put words in Jesus’ mouth. You may be correct. An agnostic like myself does not pay too much attention to theology. However, in that case, I ask you: why should anyone convert to Christianity? If the Gospels cannot be trusted at least as a general indication of God’s purposes and will, of what worth are they? Why not seek the Ultimate Mystery under the auspices of Buddhism, Islam, Wiccaism, or some other religion that does not purport to be based on the direct teachings of the Creator of the Universe?
Hell fire in the Greek is [symbol]geenan tou puros[/symbol] (Geenan tou pyros) “fire of Gehenna.” The very real valley southwest of Jerusalem. Gehenna was a garbage dump and a disposal site for animal carcasses and the bodies of crimonals. Fires burned there continuosly to try to destroy all the roting flesh. Gehenna was also believed to be God forsaken because it had once been a site for human sacrifice. Gehenna symbolized death and annihilation, not eternal torment.
In your second verse the “furnace of fire” is simply part of the analogy of the weeds in the field. The evil will be annihilated just as the weeds of the field are separated from the yield and burned in the fire.
But, Diogenes, this still implies guilt, judgement, punishment and reward.
They’re reference to Gehenna, as I said, which was a place of annihilation not of torment.
Revelation and Paul are of no consequence if we are going to build a theology based solely on an ethos of love but they don’t mention hell either. As for judgement, once again, Jesus was using analogies. I think that the “unrighteous” could simply be read as those who do not love. Those who don’t love cannot “live” in the “Kingdom of Heaven” (which is simply a life spent in the ecstasy of love). These are metaphors for immediate reality, not otherworldly compensators or consequences.
I think we can extract a fairly reliable core of authentic sayings of Jesus from the gospels (comprising less than half of what is attributed to him) and use them as the basis for a new ethos. The reason to convert would be the ecstasy (the “God intoxication” expressed by Spong) which would be evident in its adherents. I grant that this ecstasy is accessible by other religions as well, but I’m not proposing an exclusive sytem, just an alternative one for people (like me) who are attracted to the teachings and “personality” of Christ but have problems with (what they say) as some anachronistic elements of the theology.
As a matter of fact, I would welcome (as the new Pope of the Cyno-Christian Church) any and all other religious perspecives into the mix. If you love Krishna or Buddhist meditation, or lighting candles for peace or contemplating the moon you are welcome in my church. My only commandment is love as much as you can. Belief is irrelevant.
This is the sticking point, right at the very beginning. On what basis does Spong declare portions of scripture “problematic”? Inconvenience? And if he then is picking and choosing scripture, a smorgasbord of easy listening Christianity, why does this retain any semblance of credibility for anyone?
Jesus was more than clear that God declares himself to man, not vice versa. God also made it quite clear that He was God, and there is no other. If you disregard the Bible as the word of God in this respect, you’re certainly free to make up any God you like. But at that point, you can hardly claim that yours is the same as the God of the Bible, can you?
Diogenes, I’m quite puzzled by your POV. If you take out of Christianity the very foundations of belief, what, then, is left? And why do you address this as if it were a new and improved version, the Microsoft 2003 Christianity? You’ve still to address the essential question I asked earlier: does God impart His nature to man, or does man declare the nature of God? If the latter, why?
One thing I’d like to interject is that there’s often a big gap between church doctrine and what people in the pews (or even their ministers, for that matter) believe. For instance, the bad cop/good cop relationship of the OT God/God the Father and Jesus/God the Son, which seems to be in the background of Spong’s point #6, his odd redefinition of ‘theism’ in #1&2, seems to be a bit of Christian folklore that won’t go away. But if it’s any major denomination’s doctrine, I’m unaware of it. So it appears to me that Spong is conflating popular misunderstandings of doctrine with doctrine itself. And I wish I could say that this is the only point where Spong appears to be guilty of that particular sin, but it’s not; the whole God-is-up-in-the-sky bit is another for-instance.
I think emarkp has succinctly stated most of my objections with Spong’s list, particularly #3, 4, 5, 7, and 10.
On #4 I’ll weigh in and point out that traditional Church doctrine has Christ being both wholly God and wholly man. I’m not sure what problem that (and modern biology) creates for the Virgin Birth. Divine sperm boinking a human egg gets you…?
Well, we don’t know what it gets you, since that isn’t covered in any reputable scientific journals, let alone high-school biology classes. But a wholly divine, yet wholly human offspring seems to be as legitimate a possibility as any.
I have nothing to add to emarkp’s discussion of points 5, 7 and 10 individually. But his more general comment about Spong’s completely unjustified (IMHO) conclusion that the Christian God doesn’t and can’t intervene in human history is worth some further development.
The Bible is overwhelmingly the story of a relationship between God and His people. That relationship takes place, in large part, through God’s alleged intervention in human history: guiding Abraham to Canaan, leading the Israelites out of Egypt, choosing Israel’s first two kings, speaking to Israel and Judah through the prophets, and on and on. If one removes God’s intervention in the world from the Bible, what’s left is hardly worth keeping. (I could be cynical and suggest that that’s what Spong wants, but I’ll try to be good. :))
This is one area where one has to wonder, if that’s how Spong feels, why does he remain a Christian? The Judaeo-Christian God is a God who intervenes in human history. If we remove that aspect of the Christian faith, all we’ve got left is a little bit of theology without any meaningful foundation. (Spong agrees: in Why Christianity Must Change Or Die (WCMCOD), p. 48, he says: “I must be prepared to throw out most of the God content of the ages.”
Getting back to theism: in WCMCOD, after quoting the OED and the Encyclopedia Britannica definitions, Bishop Spong defines theism as “belief in an external, personal, supernatural, and potentially invasive Being.” (p. 46.) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defines Bishop Spong as…gotcha there for a second, didn’t I? 
Spong seems to particularly think the idea of God as a Person of some sort is a leftover from primitive man’s efforts to create a deity in his own image, as he makes clear in a long discussion in pp.47-55 of WCMCOD, involving far too much Freud. As he summarizes on p. 59, “Can we come out of our exile with a God who has been transformed from the theistic concepts of antiquity?..Can God be real if all images of God as…a personalistic deity, are dismissed?” His answer is clearly a ringing “Yes.”
But the understanding of God as a Person is part and parcel of Christianity, and of BCE Judaism as well. Whether it’s true or rooted in primitive error, it’s what we believe: that, as emarkp has already said, when we pray, there is Someone on the other end of the line who we can, in some manner and in some part, get to know. Just as our faith involves a long history with an intervening God, it also posits that that intervening God is not a nonpersonal Force of some sort. That is certainly what I believe I find, when I go to God in prayer. (Maybe I’m making the whole thing up, of course, but if I am, then why should I stay a Christian at all?)
If Spong believes his own spirituality requires that he make such a radical reordering of his understanding of God, that’s fine. (I’ll leave alone the question of whether he should consider himself a Christian, though I suppose my answer is already obvious.)
But in declaring that Christendom as a whole needs to go through the same reordering, well, you know, it’s the same old same old. When we’re young, we tend to assume either that everyone else is just like us, or that we’re a freak and nobody is anything like us. Eventually, most of us find out the truth is somewhere in between, but Spong seems to have stayed behind Door #1. If it’s true for him, then it’s true for the whole friggin’ universe.
But as Dinsdale reminds us:
I’d add that it’s the most conservative elements of Christianity that seem to be doing best here in North America as well.
If Spong were to say, “Yeah, but Christianity needs to be saved from those people,” that would be a reasonable position to take. But he seems to overlook their success entirely, and see Christianity in its current form as a dying faith. As he says on p. 45 of WCMCOD: “There is an increasing sense even among believers that the word God now rings with a hollow emptiness. Clergy in the exercise of their pastoral duties discover that the pious phrases they have dispensed so frequently are increasingly empty. They are received by the people without either enthusiasm or comment, as meaningless cliches.”
Maybe his corner of Christendom is like this. But that hardly seems to be universal.
So if I understand you and Spong correctly, Diogenes, there is no eternal life or damnation in your thelogy, but the evil – whom I would interpret to be the loveless – suffer the fruits of their evil and the blessed are those who spend their lives in the “ectasy of love,” all in this Einsteinian space-time continuum. Is this correct?
If so, I am afraid I am unlikely to convert to your and Spong’s way of thinking. I far prefer the ectasy of marijuana & alcohol to that of religion.
BTW, allow me to congratulate you on starting one of the most interesting threads GD has seen in some time. This has been fascinating, especially to an infidel like me.
I would say, RTFirefly, that that might be because fundamentalist religions, for all their faults, offer their worshippers a personal God, not an abstraction capable of being understood only by those well-versed in theology. Fundamentalist Jesus or Allah may condem you to hell if you are rotten enough, but they also care about you personally.