jmullaney asks:
In the words of Isaiah (ch. 55):
Presuming you agree that Jesus’s teachings came from this same God, then we agree completely.
I’d intended to go on and comment on more of Spong’s theses, but I need to respond to MEB’s comments in a bit more detail:
I think you’re absolutely right in remarking that those doctrines and the others that you cited are in fact held by the vast majority of Christians. They would, in that sense, be considered as “core doctrine” of the religion.
However, I would submit that what most Christians mean by their “faith” is not intellectual assent to doctrinal propositions. To draw a parallel, it would be entirely correct to say that David B. or Gaudere “believes in” the Cosmological Principle, the principle of causality, and the system of logic. They are, in fact, valid statements regarding the worldview which they subscribe to (and they would be accepted by you and me and most other readers). It would be incorrect to describe this, as some conservative Christians have in the past, as tenets of a secular “religion” – they are merely statements of assent to principles regarding how the world operates.
For a Christian, the dogmatic statements are simply that: statements of assent to principles regarding how, in their view, the world operates. This is the composition of God; this is the composition of Christ; this is how salvation occurs; and so on.
Faith is the placing of trust and commitment in the deity who is so described. No matter how one slices it, and people’s responses vary, their bottom line is a belief in God, meaning to them a commitment for which “emotional” or “spiritual” carry connotations not intended but together approximate the sense in which they mean “believe” – and the propositions regarding the nature and operations of said God are secondary, subordinate descriptive clauses to the proposition “I believe in God” to indicate the sort of entity they understand that God to be. If Jodi would be a darling and post the Methodist “Modern Affirmation” here (my copies of Methodist books are in cold storage), it will brilliantly illustrate that distinction.
It is in this sense that Joel, based on his posts, might consider himself not to be a Christian. (I do not mean this negatively, but in an attempt to illustrate by his being the rare phenomenon filling the fourth quarter of a grid representing intellectual assent and committed belief and their lacks. And I hope he will correct any mistaking of his position in this post and forgive my misunderstandings if such exist.)
Joel, according to what he has said in various threads, gives intellectual credence to the existence and nature of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the nature of Jesus, his commands and teachings, and so on. But he understands these to place a demand on him which he is powerless to fulfill, and does not trust in that God to whom he gives intellectual “belief” (=assent) to be merciful enough to accept what he, Joel, can give in response and to save him despite his faults, and therefore despairs of salvation under that system. He does not **believe in God[/b}, sc. he does not trust Him to be the God of mercy and grace He describes Himself to be, on the basis of a literal reading of Jesus’s “hard sayings.” (He who sends Joel a copy of Luther’s Preface to Romans or Wesley’s account of reading that has only himself to blame. ;))
I trust that roundabout illustration makes the distinction I would draw here.
What is the point, in relation to this thread? Simply that the dogmatic formulations that Spong condemns are not the essence of faith, and IMHO Spong believes in the God whom he is quick to deny these formulations of, and seeks to do His Will as he himself understands it. As such, he becomes the necessary antithesis to the doctrinaire Christian who propounds the dogmas of the faith, and one may hope that a synthesis that produces an interpretation not dependent on old paradigms of reasoning and better portrays who this God in whom Aquinas and Spong and I believe might actually be.
I think we’re mixing apples and oranges here. IMO, there’s a big difference between the question, “What (belief) is necessary for salvation?” and “What beliefs must a church (and its members) subscribe to, to consider itself Christian?”
It doesn’t seem like one needs to believe very much to be saved. If we take Paul at his word, all we need is:
Romans 10:9.
Even that, I expect, is too much doctrine for Spong, since Paul surely spoke of (and was understood by his contemporaries as speaking of) a physical, bodily resurrection.
Despite this lack of need of major doctrinal machinery for salvation, I believe that (at the church level, at least) a somewhat larger core of doctrine is necessary. The Church had to deal with a wide range of heresies in its early years; the problem with them lay not in their departure from complete theological correctness, but in their ability to completely mislead converts about what it meant, at the core, to attempt to live the Christian life. The classical creeds (at least, the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds; I’m not sure about the Athanasian creed) were written to distinguish Christianity proper from the major heresies of their day. (I’m told that all heresies since the time of the Council of Nicaea have been close variations on those that the Nicene Creed responded to, so the creed needs no updating.)
I’m not sure of the importance of some of the stuff in the Nicene Creed. For instance, is it that important that I believe in the Virgin Birth? I don’t really know, and I don’t care; I go along with it because agreeing that a creed such as the Nicene has it right enough, means that we don’t have to debate the issue; we can instead consider it resolved that these are the things Christians believe are true. It helps to have some place where the debate stops.
Continuing my responses to the theses I quoted in my OP:
Many moons ago, Gaudere and I were in a thread in which the Substitutionary Atonement ended up as a topic of discussion. There are several key points that need to be raised: First, in the OT mindset, sacrifice was the way to “pay off” god for sins. There is something Jungian in the human need to find a way to buy one’s way out of a problem, triggering myths where the hero somehow gives himself to protect the people from the just wrath of the god. For Christianity to invest the Passion of Christ with this meaning, fraught with subconscious triggers as it is, was quite natural. But the proper Trinitarian understanding of what’s happening, in point of fact, is that through the idea that Jesus was God Incarnate, it’s not a case of “God being bought off” but of God giving Himself out of love for His people.
It reminds me of an exchange during the “God is dead” theology of 30-odd years ago:
“God is dead.” - Nietsche
“Nah, that’s just a misunderstanding. He was for a couple of days, but it didn’t stick!”
The symbolism of God giving Himself in the ultimate gift, His own life, has got to be meaningful. Even if you don’t happen to buy into the Christian understanding where Jesus is God Incarnate, you should be able to see some mythopoeic symbolism that moves you in the idea.
Foomph! First point I’d make is that a symbol without a referent becomes pretty meaningless. The IPU would be a particularly poor god-parody if there were not a commonly held mythology of unicorns (which by the way symbolized Christ to the medieval mind, producing an interesting twist to the use of the IPU in place of the Incarnate Pink Son-of-God). Spong analyzes in one of his books the idea of “how Jesus became the Son of God” and finds in Paul the suggestion that he took on that role at the Resurrection, not at his Baptism (Mark), his Birth (Matthew), his Conception (Luke), or from eternity (John). Doing a minimalist text-historical analysis to get rid of supposed accretions to the Jesus story, he finds the Paul concept to be the original one.
My comment would be that whatever actually happened on the First Easter, there was something that firmly convinced the witnesses that the man Jesus whom they had seen put to death was alive again in all his fullness, and in fact with more power than he had had prior to his death. You need to remember that in the first century, the idea of a ghost was not considered superstitious. The whole point of “the resurrection of the body” was to define that the post-Easter Jesus was not some spectre but, despite his skills at passing through locked doors and appearing suddenly, a full human being with flesh and blood, able to break bread, eat fish, and all the other bodily skills of humanity.
It might further be noted that the whole Passion-Resurrection story is set in a Passover framework by Jews for Jews. In point of fact, Paul might say, on this greatest of Passovers, God saved His own Firstborn from death, as he had done to the firstborn of Israel in Egypt 1500 years before.
I am not particularly interested in arguing this point. The ascension story suggests that Jesus physically moved upwards and was “taken into Heaven.” What’s the metaphor here? It’s not a major issue to me.
Hmmm. You know what Spong is trying to say here: the Jewish Law, the Ten Commandments, the strictures Paul tosses out in his letters…they’re not the definitive statement on human ethical behavior. Though I’d agree with that point of view, I’d beg to differ with him on the precise wording of his statement, because what Jesus taught, taken as a whole, is supposed to be the appropriate guidance for humanity, with the touchstone, the Constitutional principle if you will, that allows you to interpret it for all time, being the two commandments He gives as summary of the Law.
Why not? On Spong’s thesis, the Ultimate Ground of All Being is not going to enter into historical activity and supernaturally cause some contrary-to-causality event to occur. But a God who pervades a universe He created and whose laws are expressions of His Will, and who in fact is omniscient, is quite capable of having structured such a world as to cause events to happen that appear to respond to prayer, in fact are responses to prayer from the temporal perspective. If David B., in his capacity as God of this forum, knew from the first (AOL days) that I was going to ask a question about the origins of the abominable snowman stories next month, had an answer prepared, and when I get around to posting that question, posts the data he has accumulated about it, has he or has he not answered my question?
If, on the other hand, you read this as an assertion not to take a naive view that God is going to miraculously restore poor cancer-ridden Uncle Albert to health if you pray for him hard enough, he has a point.
Absolutely. I am so disgusted by the theory that God is a cosmic judge out to reward the good and punish the evil, whose names He maintains on a list, presumably checking it twice to be sure who’s naughty or nice, that I find it difficult to express my feelings adequately. If He is anything worth worship, He is a God of love who is faced with “allowing us to fall off the bike repeatedly so that we can learn to ride without Him holding us up” if you’ll pardon the extended metaphor.
Amen. And, by the way, Hallelujah! [sub]Never thought I could get away with posting that line in GD! 
[/sub]
Good catch.
Unless of course you consider everybody who is saved a Christian, and salvation neccesary to be called a Christian:)
But I think that is a little abstract for this thread. I was unknowingly addressing the salvation question, not the definition of Christianity.
I guess the difference was subtle enough that it slipped by for awhile.
Well, I think it would make your analogy more accurate if we say you email David a request to post a topic on the Abominable Snowman. Now, David, being omniscient, knew you were going to ask this, and has from all time planned to post that OP the next hour and would have done so even if you had not requested it. Is he then genuinely responding to your request, or simply doing what he would have done anyhow? I think for intercessory prayer to be seen as truly effective, it must cause God to do something He would not have done otherwise, and I believe Spong is objecting to thinking that God will change his plan to accomodate a request. I must admit I am rather confused as to whether you are arguing that prayer can influence God or not. If you do think a prayer influences God in His timeless view, then praying “hard enough” might influence Him too; if it does not influence him, then answered prayers are merely a coincidence.
You and RT and I went over this before, and I beleive the theistic perspective on this MB is that God has set up the system so that the spiritual and psychological benefits to us of having workable intercessory prayer outweigh the problem of having Bosnians not be as helped as they could have been due to Joe Blow in Topeka not praying for them.
Powerless? No. But today the devil will get his due – his continuing dominion over my soul. I believe that God is merciful to those who would repent. Other than that, I don’t see how I can get around God also being just – which is what Jesus taught.
If you can show me where Jesus describes the God you are describing, please help. I know the devil would be more than pleased for those who could otherwise be saved NOT to take Jesus at his word. Wouldn’t you agree?
The more I mull over what he is saying in these thesis, the more I have to doubt that what he objects to are the essence of faith. Let me think some more.
Well, one might posit, that if you believed in your heart Jesus rose from the dead, why wouldn’t you keep his commandments, obey the Gospel? (We don’t know if the people Paul was writing this to had faith or not, but one might assume this too). If you know, in your heart, what the ressurection implies – that man is more than a mere machine, a highly evolved animal, and that if Jesus was dead his soul must have been somewhere for three days so there must be another realm of existence we can only glimpse in this life – what are you worried about? The devil has no power over such a person. That 1/3 of a sentence in the context of the rest of Romans 10 means, more or less, just that. As he goes on, in his rambling style:
Long story short – Paul seems to believe that obeying the Gospel is required for salvation, and that the people he wrote this letter were already doing so.
No, but not believing you have an eternal soul gives the Devil power over you. If you are just a machine, an animal, regarding both yourself and your fellow man as such, which seems to be where Spong is going with all this, sort of makes Jesus’s whole message moot. Is life more than food and clothing – mere objects? If even people aren’t, I guess not.
Not in such a way that we should throw the whole thing out. Because the Devil also says, not only is it impossible for you to be perfect, but it is impossible for Christ to ever have victory over me. Why is it impossible? Because man has always been a slave of the Devil’s so why should it ever be any different?
Jesus was born without sin. Essential? No, I don’t think so. Important to keep in mind a single mother might not be evil, and her growing child a punishment for her sins, and such a child has, to put it mildly, potential? Yes. I personally believe that virgin births happen all the time. 
Other trick up the Devil’s sleeve, re:#5, is that, though Jesus said anyone who has faith in him shall do works, that, according to Newton such works are impossible. So, again, Jesus clearly lied, right? But, Spong seems to be caught up in a 19th century understanding of the universe which no scientist I know holds as valid.
Again, that is only what Jesus, and even Paul (at least in Romans 11), taught. Why do you find it so hard to accept God as just? Another one of the Devil’s tricks, perhaps? If everyone goes to heaven, what is the point of listening to Jesus? Or maybe everyone does go to heaven, in which case, again, Jesus clearly lied. Maybe Jesus is the Anti-Christ? I’m sure the Devil would be happy if he convinced anyone of this.
Loving your fellow man is not worth doing without the reward of eternal life? Tsk. Remember what I said about “naive morality”?
What does this have to do with the promise of eternal life? Personally I accept that man is an animal and do not believe in life after death, but it does not make me treat people solely as objects. Men are animals in the same manner that Michelangelo’s David is a rock.
Forgive me for saying so, but this, IMO, borders on gnosticism. I understand why you would need something like this to remove prayer from self-fulfilling prophecies, but I think this is an impossible stance. This is, I think, like saying “The only way we know its water is if it DOESN’T take the shape of the container its put in.” Why would God do something God wouldn’t do, in other words. Proving a negative? I don’t understand this argument…
Poly, you’re asking how we can epistemologically avoid epistemology, or find a philosophy without calling it one. No way to remove it, if you get answers to your questions it is one regardless of what you want to call it. No? These are epsitemological, metaphysical questions…well within the limits of philosophy. Don’t you think?
In re: freedom2’s definition of that which is essential for salvation and jmullaney’s question about it, I think both the Pope and the Archbishop of Constantinople would have no disagreement with that definition. The primary dissent would be in how grace is recieved; Protestants holding to faith alone, the others being somewhat more complicated. But everyone agrees on grace.
And as far as what constitutes Christian belief, isn’t this why we had those Church councils and creeds? While I like everybody, I think that as a matter of taxonomy, “Christians” are those in general agreement with the Apostle’s creed, Chalcedon, Nicea, etc.
I think people like Spong mean well, and I’m sure he’s a nice person. But nothing he says jibes with any other Christian before this century. So you can conclude that
A) Spong is just smarter than the church fathers who wrote those creeds, as well as Luther, Calvin, Aquinas, Augustine, etc.
B) Spong had information none of them did (i.e. modern science). If this is the case, I think it is incumbent on Spong and his supporters to show how his assertions are based on said superior knowledge. I don’t see how his first thesis is based on anything more than his opinion; and of course, much of what follows is based on his rejection of theism.
or
B) Spong is a heretic. That’s not a pejorative, just a descriptive. He’ll have roughly the same effect on the Church as other heretics have; which is to say, in the end, very little. I doubt very much we’ll be reading him in twenty years, let alone a millenium.
Loving your fellow man while most of them hate you in return, to the point of torture and death? It could be naive to think that such a life could win over evil without such hope. That devil is one bad mother(shut your mouth).
The reification of man is a bad first principle, if that is where Spong is going with all this. Even partial reification might not lead to proper moral conclusions. If you believe Jesus was telling the Truth, then you reach one set of conclusions. If you think he was lying, you reach another – that he’s trying to convince people of something false in order to make them do good. It is definitely one or the other – Jesus (real or not) is thus either the Christ or the anti-Christ. The same threats the Devil makes to him are the same ones Jesus, oddly, makes back at us. (I might spin a new thread on that). I’ll keep thinking about it though – you are reverse engineering my reverse engineering and confusing us both.
How am I removing prayer from self-fulfilling prophecies? I don’t think that enters into it at all. As I see it, we have two options:
- Prayer can affect God’s choices
- Prayer cannot affect God’s choices
Both viewpoints, IMHO, have their problems. If God’s decisions are affected by prayer, perhaps your grandfather will die because you didn’t pray enough. If God’s decisions are not affected by prayer, why pray to God to save your grandfather, when your request will not alter his decision?
It seems pretty simple to me. In order for us to say X can affect Y, Y must be changed through the influence of X. In order for prayer to be able to be said to have an affect on events, God would have to do something different if He is prayed to than He would have had He not been prayed to. If the outcomes are both the same whether you pray or not, how can you say your prayers have “done” anything with regards to those outcomes?
I am not trying to prove in any real-world way that prayers do or do not influence God. That is impossible to tell, since we don’t know what would have happened had a person not prayed, or what might have happened if they had prayed more. I am simply exploring the ramifications of the possibility and meaning of intercessory prayer. (Did it before, but I’m bringing it up again since it seems to apply to Spong.)
Shucks. And I thought I’d “foiled you again.”
If y’all quote “oh crap I double-posted” posts, don’t be surprised if you look nutso when I delete 'em…
Where do you live, dude? Not even everybody on this messageboard hates you ;), and I don’t think anyone here would ever seriously hurt you! You certainly have an unrelentingly grim view of human nature. Contrary to your belief, I find that caring for my fellow man, while certainly not consistently rewarding, does not invariably result in hatred (to put it mildly). Your rather whacked-out Free Spirit lifestyle may not make everyone terribly happy with you, but I doubt it would result in universal loathing. (No one would particularly care much at allwhat you did if you’d conjure up pepperoni rolls to feed yourself rather than mooching off others, BTW.) I believe there are people who adopt a possessionless lifestyle without the promise of eternal life, as well.
::shrug:: I don’t see any need for reification of man. Just love.
What do you think would make someone follow Jesus’ teachings? It seems to me you think man will only do good if promised eternal life. I wonder what JC thinks of those who do good only for the reward, rather than out of love.
- Prayer can affect God’s choices
- Prayer cannot affect God’s choices
Assuming God chooses things because of the details of the prayer this is correct. There are other ways to look at prayers than request:action/no-action.
The grandfather hypothesis is interesting enough. My grandpa, say, is dying of cerebral atrophy. I pray to God, “Please, save my grandfather!” Or something. Now, is it the prayer itself that will be answered, or is it the recognition of servitude that may be rewarded? Prayer can be seen as an act of turning to God (which he wants, I think). God is going to do what he is going to do regardless of your prayer. BUT, and this is a strong but, he knows what you mean, and that you mean well.
“God, please save my grandpa!” ; “In my own way, thank you.”
Just tossing some ideas out. I don’t believe in God at all, but I also don’t think all prayers are necessarily plea-bargaining for God’s favors. Maybe my opinion of praying is too high…
I don’t think prayer must be plea-bargaining either. Maybe you just pray for strength, and God likes that you have turned to Him and so spares your grandfather. But the basic argument is the same: either prayer (any sort of prayer) can affect God’s decisions, or it can’t. I really don’t see room for an alternative between these two.
The Efficacy of Prayer:
Gaudere, I’d have to differ with your definition. If the universe is so constructed that God’s will is done, and His eternal awareness includes the hearing of prayer – and remember that eternity sees all time as present, so we’re not even talking foreknowledge here, but the idea that at the instant He said “Let there be light” he was aware that Poly was praying that this message might post successfully in December 2000 AD – then so engineering the world that the SDMB does not crash at that particular time when I’m posting it – a few moments from now – is as much a response to prayer as if he supernaturally suspended a crash at that point, confounding the Reader’s techs. In short, what I’m saying is that responses to prayer fall within the natural order of things, and are not the intervention of a supernatural force. This fits into Spong’s thinking and into my sense of what Providence means and what “natural law” in a created, teleological world with an immanent God might mean. It’s not a law if the Legislator can break it regularly, and does whenever asked by one of his constituents. But if he has no power over the law, then he is not the Legislator. QED – the law as enacted incorporates His answer to constituent requests – as would any good human legislator produce a law that includes circumstantial exceptions (e.g., the budget law after a severe winter a few years ago incorporated provisions lifting the April 15 deadline for people in the designated disaster areas resulting from winter storms).
I’m sure your mileage varies, but I hope that you can see the integrity of my mental structure as regards this question.
We don’t need no steenkin’ epistemology…
**ARL[b/] commented:
Well, yeah, everybody has an epistemology and a metaphysic, no matter how much they deny it. But the point at which I was aiming is that the sort of analytical structure that traditional Christian doctrine posits and Spong denies, and which my questions point at, is not at the core of what the Christian metaphysic is, the sine qua non of being a believer: “There is a God. In Christ we see God. God loves you, and wants to be there for you as a lover might, supporting you in times of need and sharing in your joys, helping you grow and become whole within yourself.” Whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from one or more other personae of a single theos ousia and the putatively absent sex life of Mary wife of Joseph are relatively minor points in that minimalistic structure. RT and I might agree on them, but would never suggest that you or Gaudere might need to give your intellectual assent to them antecedent and as a necessary prerequisite to believing. In fact, the reverse would be true: having accepted, on whatever grounds, the basic premises above, not as intellectual propositions, but as an invitation into joy and wholeness, then you might find the dogmata as something that do indeed make sense within the framework of the new worldview you then would accept. But this is requiring you to heal your own wounds beforethe surgeon will operate, when his goal is to cause healing in the first place.
Buying Your Way into Heaven:
Joel remarked:
One presumes you are acquainted with perhaps the best historical example of a person meeting those behavior patterns, and in fact appearing to have in fact won over evil – although, to be fair to your post, one presumes that he did indeed have a hope of eternal life.
But that was not what motivated him. In fact, if John’s gospel has any validity, he gave that up in order to carry out those behaviors. So I think you would have to admit, Joel, that there might be other motivations. And that one of them might be selfless love.
On His part. And maybe on Gaudere’s, too?
Moi? 
I’m not talking about moi. There are times and circumstances where such issues have arisen, plenty of martyrs to the cause, etc. You just seem to be asking a lot of people to think they can bring a knife to a gunfight and still win. The resurrection, in any case, also gives evidence that Jesus wasn’t lying about the afterlife (of course it could all be wrong).
Acts are what matter, not beliefs. But if what Jesus taught is true, your view seems non-sensical. Either Jesus is manipulating people by claiming there is an afterlife, or others are manipulating people by claiming there is not. It is either true or it isn’t.