Spong's Twelve Theses

Great Debates
1

Controversial Episcopal Church Bishop John Shelby Spong came up with the following twelve theses stating the negatives that need to be gotten out of the way before, in his view, the Christian Church can again reform itself to deal with modern times. Comments are invited.

[list=1][li]Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. God can no longer be understood with credibility as a Being, supernatural in power, dwelling above the sky and prepared to invade human history periodically to enforce the divine will. So, most theological God-talk today is meaningless unless we find a new way to speak of God.[/li]
[li]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.[/li]
[li]The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.[/li]
[li]The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes the divinity of Christ, as traditionally understood, impossible.[/li]
[li]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.[/li]
[li]The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God that must be dismissed.[/li]
[li]Resurrection is an action of God, who raised Jesus into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.[/li]
[li]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.[/li]
[li]There is no external, objective revealed standard writ in Scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.[/li]
[li]Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.[/li]
[li]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.[/li]
[li]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.[/li][/list=1]
[sub][Note: I typed these from a copy of Spong’s autobiography, Here I Stand, copyright © 2000 by John Shelby Spong. However, in the book and elsewhere, he freely releases these as the basis for theological debate. So their reproduction here is not in violation of copyright law.][/sub]

{edited list per Poly’s request. --Gaudere}

[Edited by Gaudere on 12-18-2000 at 09:37 AM]

2

It seems to me as though Spong is seeking to destroy Christianity in order to save it. What ideas would he advocate as distinctively Christian?

Also, what does it mean to say “all human beings bear God’s image” (from the last thesis) in light of thesis one?

Which is not to say that Unitarian-Universalist-verging-on- Secular-Humanist Christians aren’t a good bit easier to live with than Pat Robertson.

3

I wish you used a numbered list instead :frowning:

  1. What?!? Is he serious? Does this mean religion shouldn’t be viewed as religion anymore? I can’t understand that statement at all.
  2. See (1)
  3. Agreed, but none-the-less a possible parable. I have no qualms with people using this figuratively. Why does he?
  4. No way, it just makes an alternative idea possible.
  5. Never saw that many believed in them anyway, out of all the Christians I know.
  6. Barbaric? Yes. Death-Worship? Yes. OK? If its your bag. One of my largest beefs with Christianity.
  7. nc
  8. Agreed
  9. Vehemently agreed (but poly knows this from our stereotype debate :wink: )
  10. Why not? There is biblical support of this, though contradictory.
  11. It first must recognize that guilt/fear is the motivator. Many seem to feel it is love. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one :wink:
  12. Is this still done in Christianity?

Final comment for now: what is this guy doing? Sounds like his reform is actually just trying to dismiss religion entirely. Not that I’d particularly object, but wow.

4

Poly, it’s interesting that you bring Spong up. He was the subject of our last UU sermon, about “transforming Cross Cringe” (which I was unfortunately unable to attend, since I was down with the flu. :()

I’m only going to comment on the things I have questions/comments on…and not every question I have is going to necessarily be in line with my opinion on the subject.

Okay, I understand this one, but wasn’t the story of creation based on the current understanding (then, not now) of how the world came in to being? How does this effect (affect?) the way Christians view the world? How should it?

I don’t understand this at all. Further explanation?

I’m not sure how our current understanding of physics affects our interpretation of the miracle stories in the NT. However, I’m also of the opinion that magic and miracles are simply a product of a knowledge of physics that surpasses what we understand today.

And, Oh, how I love the second point, here. I’ve never understood why, when Christians are supposed to be worshipping God or Jesus the focus is on the cross - I could understand if it was the symbol for the Easter season (that makes sense to me), but not the rest of the year. Maybe a fish… :wink:

There is an interesting UU book (the title of which I don’t have to hand right at the moment, sorry) that suggests that the visions of Jesus outside his tomb may have been “grief-induced hallucinations.”

Great. Now just convince the fundamentalists of this. :slight_smile:

I like this one; the idea of a benevolent divine being, who would willingly sacrifice a child, then allowing humans to burn in a lake of fire always bothered me.

Besides, the bible has been used to justify all sorts of irrational behaviour, and violence, and people who engage in said behaviours certainly don’t feel guilty about it.

But what other method do you recommend? How do we change from “power-over” to “power-from-within”? (to steal a phrase from Starhawk)

Poly, are you sure he’s an Episcopalean and not a UU? :smiley: This is much in line with what I personally believe - that we are all divine, and each person should be treated as though they are no more or less than myself.

5

Wow. If this guy can say all this and still be considered a Christian, maybe there’s hope for Christianity yet. :slight_smile:

6

You know, just because you start in one group does not mean you are always part of it. Nor does it mean that anything you write about it carries any real weight or revealed truth.
I am not one to judge where the line is where you define yourself out of a certain group, but it seems to me that Sprong has defined himself out of the group traditionaly known as Christians. As far as I can tell he is well on his way to starting his own new religion.
Just my opinion of course…

And about the cross…

I always understood the importance of the cross was the symbology of transforming death into life. It is just a reminder, nothing else.

7

I would have to agree. Why is Spong called a Christian when I’m not? Neither of us believes in (for lack of a better term) the Invisible man or supernatural miracles. It seems to me that he’s a Christian in the same sense some people are Shakespeareans- he likes one particular book, the Christian Bible, better than other books, but only because of admittedly subjective judgements of quality.

Let me say that it appears that Spong is clearly referring, in the 12 theses, to arguments that he explains in more detail elsewhere, but with which I am familiar. That being said, I wonder if Spong is trying, in a sense, to make Christianity more like eastern religions like Buddhism. In general, Christianity is defined as a religion of belief: if you have certain beliefs, then you’re a Christian. (Hence all the arguments about how “Catholics aren’t real Christians,” etc.) Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. are defined by many in terms of what you do, not what you believe. In fact, Buddhism is rather famously a religion which has no dogma and requires no beliefs of its followers, at least in some formulations. I, therefore, am a Buddhist not to the extent that I think that reincarnation is true (because, in truth, I believe it is false) but because I think Buddhism can be one of many very useful tools for shaping your life. By the same token, I am also a Taoist. Traditional Christianity defines itself in an exclusionary fashion: you can’t believe in the resurrection and the divine nature of the Koran. But one can easily be simultaneously a Buddhist, Taoist, and Shintoist, for example. For that matter, plenty of Christians are also Buddhists; the only possible conflict would come from the Christian side (ie fundies who tell me “I’m not going to worship false gods like Buddha!”)

From Poly’s description, I wonder if Spong is trying to redefine Christianity in that fashion: a tool, not an identity; a practice, not a belief.

Poly, do you agree with the 12 theses?

-Ben

8

Basically Sprong says he doesent think god exists, and that since he doesent think god exists no one else should either:)

9

Spong is a bad joke.

He says, on one hand, that we CANNOT know God or what His will is… but he’s SURE God doesn’t want us to persecute gays! Interesting, isn’t it, how a God whose will is unknowable on every other issue DOES make His will perfectly clear on this matter.

The hilarious thing is, Spong is admired EXCLUSIVELY by people who have no use for Jesus, the Episcopal Church, or anything taught by either. He is admired exclusively for what he DOESN’T believe.

In short, the cult of Spong consists of people who say, “I don’t believe in God, but if I did, I’d believe in Spong’s God.” And Spong is dense enough to take that as a compliment!

Spong is typical of a strain in modern Christianity. They don’t believe in anything Jesus actually said or did, but are DEVOTED to the things they’re sure Jesus WOULD have said and done if he’d been as brilliant as Spong.

10

Thank you.
I think you finally pulled together the way I feel about Spong. That last post tied together all the random thoughts about Spong that had been bouncing around in my head. (thers a lot of room up there:))

11

Would you like to point out, exactly, where he says that in these 12 theses? In the final one he says:

I notice sexual orientation in there, but I also notice another couple of things about people that are traditionally causes of discrimination. Somehow, I don’t think this message is just about homosexuals, but about how we should treat all our fellow human creatures. About seeing the divinity in everyone, not just looking for Him/Her/It outside ourselves.

also,

Given who started this thread, I think you might want to rethink this. Unless Poly is going to come in here and say he disagrees with everything Spong says, which I somehow doubt, given what I’ve read in other threads. :wink:
As far as the rest of it goes, I disagree, strongly. What Spong is saying doesn’t appear to me to be “look how much smarter/wiser/whatever” than your prophet I am" - it’s “Christianity has to change to keep up with the world as it stands today.”

Some denominations are making these changes. Most are not, as can be seen in the debate within the Love the Christian, hate the Christianity thread (sorry, I’m too lazy to build a link).

IANAC, but part of the reason is that I feel it’s a dying religion, with nothing to offer me or people like me. Others feel differently, or feel that while it works in the current form for now, it’s going to have to change.

12

A couple years ago, my theologically inclined book group back in Bristol took on Spong’s Why Christianity Must Change or Die. For the past half-hour, I’ve been unsuccessfully looking for my (heavily annotated) copy, so I could explain just why my opinion of Spong is as low as it is. But it really came down to one thing: he’s an extremely sloppy thinker.

The ‘dwelling above the sky’ bit took my mind back to one example of that. (I was surprised not to see a mention of a long white beard, as well.) He seems to think that he, nearly alone in Christendom, is free from the vision of God as living up there in the clouds, with a long white beard. He seems to be unaware that many Christians have a theology that’s perfectly comfortable with Copernicus and Darwin.

Of course, that book seemed to be written by a guy with one eye on the mirror, admiring his view of himself as a revolutionary, shaking up a church mired in the past. I could continually envision him saying to himself, ‘How brave I am to say these things, and how original I am to dream them in the first place.’ Soon as I trip across my copy of the book, I’ll quote some passages to illustrate what I mean.

Anyhow, his list, and some comments in italics.

[/list=1][li]Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. God can no longer be understood with credibility as a Being, supernatural in power, dwelling above the sky and prepared to invade human history periodically to enforce the divine will. So, most theological God-talk today is meaningless unless we find a new way to speak of God.[/li]
If we replace ‘dwelling above the sky’ with ‘dwelling outside our four-dimensional bubble of spacetime’, I’d say it still works.

[li]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.[/li]
Since this ‘thesis’ completely rests on the one preceding it, a specific response to this one is unnecessary.

[li]The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.[/li]
He’s got a point here. But this is news only to Creationists.

[li]The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes the divinity of Christ, as traditionally understood, impossible.[/li]
My knowledge of biology may be too weak to understand why. But I’d be surprised to find that his knowledge of biology is any stronger.

[li]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.[/li]
I can’t see why not. Or maybe this, too, goes back to his first thesis.

[li]The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God that must be dismissed.[/li]
The only people I’ve known who really believed they understood how the Crucifixion accomplished our salvation, had a pretty paint-by-numbers picture of how it worked. I’m not sure we’re capable of understanding, in this life, how that really works. The idea of atonement may be the closest idea God thought we were capable of grasping.

[li]Resurrection is an action of God, who raised Jesus into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.[/li]
I’d say this is where he steps outside of Christianity. By and large, we do believe in a physical resurrection of Christ that happened within human history, just as surely as the Incarnation did.

[li]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.[/li]
Again, putting heaven and hell somewhere outside our bubble of spacetime seems to translate things nicely ‘into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.’

[li]There is no external, objective revealed standard writ in Scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.[/li]
*I think the emphasis on Scripture as a code, as a set of axioms, is substantially misplaced. (Not that this idea is original with me. I’m borrowing from Madeleine L’Engle, who borrowed this idea from others, IIRC.) Scripture, above all, is story and any theology that ignores that, IMO, isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, be it fundie theology, or Spong’s rejection of it.

[li]Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.[/li]
Why the heck not? Oh yeah, that’s right, theism is dead. :wink:

[li]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.[/li]
*Funny, I thought that was one of the fundaments of the Reformation - salvation by grace, not by works.

As for guilt, I would agree with him if he’s talking about making people feel guilty about their sins. But guilt itself is a fundamental and daily part of our reality. And as long as this is so, acknowledgement of guilt is a fundamental part of an honest relationship with anyone we’re close to. This is especially true in our relationship with God.*

[li]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.[/li]
While I happen to agree with him, I concur with those in this thread who’ve questioned how he can be so sure of this aspect of God, while simultaneously claiming that we can’t really understand God.
[/list=1]

13

Excuse me while I go off and write 100 times,
“Preview is my friend.”

I’ve gotten spoiled by Fathom, where I can edit after posting. :slight_smile:

14

Interesting. It seems he is trying to strip Christianity of everything that “makes” it Christian: virgin birth, redemption through the cross, resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the efficacy of prayer.

I don’t see what the difference his new religion would be from many of them already out there.

15

I don’t want to scare you…
(or ruin your good name around here)
But I think we might be agreeing again:)

16

I’m not in total agreement with everything RT Firefly had to say, but he comes close enough to my views to make a “Me too” reaction a good first cut on my responses.

Regarding bullets: I thought I had coded this as a numbered list, but it posted as bullets. I’d welcome a moderator going into my OP and fixing my coding to make a numbered list.

Astorian’s comments:

“A bad joke.” No, he’s a sincere man who was raised as a guilt-ridden literalist in a very conservative Episcopal church in Charlotte NC, had a truly lousy relationship with his father, whom he lost at a young age, and has been in conscious rebellion against fundamentalism ever since. His comment on his theses are that they are necessarily phrased as negatives, to clean out the garbage before trying to rebuild an understanding of what Christianity in the 21st century ought to be. He conceives of this in Tillichian terms, with God understood as “the ultimate ground of all being” rather than in more traditional theistic terms. I tend to disagree with narrowing our understanding to this metaphysical construction, but see his point. He does in fact believe in the Resurrection. (BunnyGirl, I’d love to know why the particular points you raise are what “make” Christianity in your view; I’d raise others as the “core” doctrines, myself, but would like to explore that further.) What he finds objectionable is seeing the Resurrection in terms of the reanimation of Jesus’s dead body as a sort of Holy Zombie. Put in those terms, I think I’d have to agree.

He does not say that we cannot know God, just that our images of Him are mediated through an out-of-date mythology that he would like to see stripped away. My wife questioned him at a teaching mission last month about Joseph Campbell’s remarks that myth is a human necessity for interpreting metaphysics in a totally human way, and that perhaps a new myth is what is needed. His response was quite discursive, but seemed to agree with what she said. I think the “be kind to gays” thing has already been addressed; I’d simply comment that in 1958-60 he was rector of an Episcopal church in a small North Carolina town being torn apart by integration, and stood for the civil rights of blacks then. He sees the rights of gay people now in the exact same light. I’d welcome your stating where you differ with that view.

“The hilarious thing is, Spong is admired EXCLUSIVELY by people who have no use for Jesus, the Episcopal Church, or anything taught by either. He is admired exclusively for what he DOESN’T believe.” I can name about twenty personal friends from my church who are devout Episcopalians who believe in Jesus and in following his teachings, and who feel they can learn a lot from Spong. That would include myself. In short, you might put that statement around your rosebushes; it’ll make them grow better, as such fertilizer usually does.

17

Being the practical and atheistic sort I am, a religion’s adherence to scripture or tradition makes little difference to me. My main concerns are: will it hurt the practicioner? Will it cause anti-social behavior? Since I’d have to answer no to both of these, I’d be considerably more friendly towards Spong’s sort of Christianity than most current interpretations of fundamentalist Christianity. I don’t particularly mind ditching the “substitutionary sacrifice” bit, either; that always seemed to date back to animal sacrifice and burnt offerings anyhow (although at least the Greeks tricked the gods into accepting fat and bone and sinew while they got the meat; clever sorts). Just think of all the eyerolling and amazed disbelief you’d miss out on from atheists if Christianity dropped that particular little God-cannot-tolerate-sin-so-He-kills-Himself-to-appease-Himself-so-He-can-bear-sin bit. :wink: Nor do I mind losing the “reward/punishment after death” as a motivator for behavior…that there are those who cannot understand why anyone would choose to do good without assurance of reward seems to indicate a bankrupt moral sense, and I am uncomfortable about the sort of Christians who cannot understand that fear of Hell is not an appeal to genuine morality. Not that all Christians believe this, of course, but it seems to be quite prevalent in those who do have rather simplistic views of religion, and I wouldn’t mind forcing them to actually formulate a morality that does not depend on a reward/punishment after death. OTOH, perhaps it keeps people in line who care only for themselves, but I wonder if it might be overall more harmful to encourage sloppy morality than to restrain those who would be evil without the threat of Hell.

Mithras the Sun-God
Asia Minor was his home,
But his chosen priest
Travelled from the East
And established his cult at Rome.

18

Interesting…A thought came to me while rereading this thread.

Think Spong has something for Aquinas?

I gotta say that I agree with RTFirefly…put God outside of space time, have Him play superstring harps, etc. Religion has always been up for interpretation and based largely on either personal experience of faith; to remove the theism leaves one with…well, I don’t know. What is supposed to fill this void?

Oh, and the miracles didn’t make any sense to me before I learned about science either. I guess I was always a skeptic :wink:

19

Holy Zombie, huh? Jesus need brains… Brains!!

The Divine Weasel idea of God should be dead. But God, entirely, as a Being – “I am he who am”? Is he trying to reify God?

I would almost agree with him here – you can’t see Jesus as pure God and not at all man – but I’m not sure if that is what he is getting at.

That I have to completely disagree with. I wouldn’t say that there weren’t always bad people throughout human history, but man’s dominion over man which makes God’s spirit difficult to access is a real historical event. Perhaps he is merely ignorant of what the fall of man means IRL?

That doesn’t make sense to me either. :smiley:

Again, what is his point? That they occured in nature and thus can’t be considered “super-natural”? That Jesus wasn’t entirely an incarnate deity? Again, where is he going with this?

Well, I’ve never been a big fan of St. Paul’s eschatology because it can lead to flawed reasoning.

Does he mean the resurrection of Jesus? What does he mean “inside human history”? It seems quite obvious it was a physical resuscitation unless you want to split hairs.

Huh? Why not?

Sure there is. Give me an ethical situation that isn’t covered by the Sermon on the Mount.

It cannot or it may not? Prayer can be anything you want it to be. Is he saying God doesn’t answer prayers, and even knows what it is we need before we ask? Then he is missing the point.

Well, Jesus apparently disagreed with Sprong’s first statement. But, I’m not sure what he means by “guilt as a motivator” or how that follows from his first statement.

Aw, Sprong has thrown in a “warm fuzzy” at the end to try and show he is a good person. I suppose this means we should listen to all else he has to say?

20

So you don’t think prison is a deterrant either, right? (or, to put it the other way round – not being put in prison is a fair reward to not breaking the law). You are against the death penalty, etc.?