A Word Whose Time Has Come To An End

[Dor]

Namaste cyberpi, I'm not understanding what you are trying to say, please elaborate.

Hell I didnt understand a word he wrote.

 

[lunamoth]

Hi Thomas,

Hi Lunamoth -

I'm not a reader of Spong, but it does appear as if he insists that the truth and validity of scripture can only be measured according to secular scientific criteria - and if science can't explain it, then it's a superstition that needs be done away with.

I've only read one book by JS Spong: A New Christianity for a New World. He rejects supernaturalism in all its forms although as I understand it it is not his point at all that scripture should be measured by secular or scientific criteria. He does, however, suggest that the Bible be stripped of its 'theistic' view. He suggests that the first experience of Christ was not as theistic God but that this was a concept added onto the Christ experience as people reflected on it.

In which case he has surrendered to the Philosophy of Relativism.

Maybe, but I'm not sure that he has. Frankly I'm a little perplexed by his view although I found this book very interesting. He seems to be claiming the death of a God I did not 'believe' in to begin with--well, except perhaps while I was a Baha'i. He rejects what he calls the tribalism of traditional views and the anthropomorphic God we tend to create in our image. Yet he proclaims God is very real; God for Spong is life, is love, is being. I also think that Spong mostly describes tradition in its most negative sense, a sense I've already rejected, and ignores the meanings of tradition that actually support what I consider the true and important parts of Christianity.

I think the most difficult part of what he proposes is the death of the idea of a God Who rescues supernaturally from the outside, and a God who can be easily manipulated to uphold the powers the world, the very powers Christ conquers.

I also think Spong sells us short, 'us' being the average pew-sitter. I think that on average we are a bit more sophisticated in our understandings of what the Gospel points toward than Spong gives us credit for.

(In which case 'love' can't be explained nor 'proven' to the satisfaction of laboratory conditions, so let's wipe that off the board to start with.)

Spong seems to assert that God can be proven or disproven by science.

No, this is not something Spong says as far as I've read him. He is not concerned at all with proofs or disproofs of God and in this I completely agree with him. His point is not about the 'reality' of God: God is real to him. His point is about a God Who can not be supported in a reasonable mind, a God who needs to be explained when He fails to intercede for us and a God who allows evil to persist in the world. Belief in a 'theistic God' is unsupportable, he concludes, and he goes on to say that we know this and the signs of the resulting disconnect are evident in the various and increasing individual and societal maladies we observe today.

Spong defines theism as the primitive coping device that has evolved to help humans live with our self-conciousness; the knowledge that we exist, that our existence is tenuous, and that one day we will die.

Theism is thus a definition of God which has journeyed with self-conscious human beings from primitive animism to complex modern monotheism. Yet in every one of its evolving forms, theism has functioned as it was originally created to do. Theism was born as a human coping device, created by traumatized self-conscious creatures to enable them to deal with the anziety of self-awareness. It was designed to discover or postulate the existence of a powerful divine ally in the quest for human survival and in the process to assert both a purpose to existence and a meaning to human life. Assuming, then, that theism developed as a human response to Tillich's shock of nonbeing and Freud's trauma of self-consoiusness, we shuold expect to see shock, trauma, and hysteria return in countless numbers of ways when theis dies as I contend it is doing today.

By his own statements Spong very much believes in the 'God is Love' of 1 John 4.

But, there's no way to say that what Spong proposes would be recognizable to most of us today as Christianity. I think a lot of what he says makes sense, I think he misses the point on some things and I think that he is largely rejecting a theism that is in some ways a 'straw man.' I think his views are interesting and it's worth reading him before villifiying him.

lunamoth

 

[Thomas]

Hi Wil -

Where does one find this list of successors? There were 12 and then are there 12 lists (or eleven) or 1, or did they split successors as Jesus did?
Apostolic succession is listed in two ways - one by actual surviving documents, two by the data of tradition. Those whom the faithful accepted.

Irenaeus argued this point against the gnostics - who is more likely to know what he meant, those whom he chose, or others who decided they knew better?

Tradition is always a tricky one, but cannot be easily dismissed.

Who is this Modernity that INSISTS?

I was talking historically - following the argument of the Enlightenment - modernity is eith non-theistic, or casts God in its own image.

Thomas





I think that history, archeology, and intellectual study of the books has revealed much about the origins of various texts...and there is much yet to be revealed. I think that some of the texts that have been deemed Scripture were inspired, others were revealed, others were enlightened, others were laws, others were records, others were fables, others were 'news', others were satire...

 

[cyberpi]

Namaste cyberpi, I'm not understanding what you are trying to say, please elaborate.

In regards to Spong, as I understand it, from a fundamental perspective we've read his writings, deem them hogwash and him a heretic. My question, does that also apply to Thomas Jefferson? Surely this swath is cast equally, the man rewrote the gospels. Are we ready to toss out all of his writings as well?

Namaste Wil... I like the word Namaste. What I know of the word came from yourself and here: Namaste - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reading through the list of religious contexts I read that it means to bow, salute, or honor the divine in a person. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I say 'Namaste' it does not mean that I submit to a person's sexual desires. Thus I am a heretic as I say the word, 'Namaste'... meaning I salute or honor only a part of a person, and it may or may not be the part that the person wanted me to salute or honor. Likewise whatever a person writes there may only be a part that I will salute and honor, and it is never a rigid absolute. That is with just one author, and I submit that the bible is written by multiple authors. Is it not? Same goes for the church.

I think to pick and choose does not require destroying what one is picking and choosing from, does it? Is anyone combining the two: heresy and destruction? I go to the library and I pick and choose what to read. I read the book and I pick and choose from it. So I am a heretic. I know that I exist with a soul in part because I am a heretic... I am given a choice and Faith is even placed in my choices so that I might learn. As I read and understand it, Jesus (pbuh) tells everyone to be a heretic in the same way that he was one. If I were to toss out anyone's writings, I only toss them from my own mind and by not serving them. If I were to toss them away from anyone else then I would be censoring and oppressing the voice of a person. I am against that. A person is revealed by his voice. Just because I reject a book or the thoughts of a person does NOT mean that I have to burn the book or kill the author with censorship.

I am a heretic and would be insulted if I were not called one. Furthermore as I read it, if a person is NOT a heretic then they are NOT a disciple of Christ... but that is only my understanding and I consider it either Christ's or God's judgement. I am opposed to any church or group of people who place the state of their rose garden above the people that God's garden was meant to serve. It is similar to cleaning the outside of the cup instead of the inside. When a house burns does a person worry about the house first and the occupants second? Then neither should anyone be concerned with the state of their rose garden over those who the rose garden is meant to serve. I judge against the people in history who branded and killed heretics as if their alledged orthodox towers and understandings were more righteous. As if the heretics themselves posed a threat to their rose garden. Lucky for them, it is not mine to judge or condemn but if any individual or group of people claims to be teachers of Christianity instead of students of Christ (pbuh) then I believe they will only bring themselves back down to the ground.

Relative to Spong, I haven't read him but from what little I have read of his viewpoints I agree with a little and disagree with a lot. Afterall, I'm a heretic.

 

[Thomas]

If Spong denies the Incarnation, then there is nothing of Christ left - 'Christ' becomes some universal abstract... surely?

And what is 'love' if God cannot engage with the world? I know I have only read superficially, but 'love' is not something on its own account - love requires object and subject ... and you can't ask man to love an abstract ... only a very few can manage that ...

... I know I haven't read him, but if you strip away the Incarnation, Revelation, God (as He who communicates something of Himself to man) ... if Scripture and its content is invalid as anything more than a myth of a race history ... then what's left, what defines Christianity?

Thomas

 

[lunamoth]

If Spong denies the Incarnation, then there is nothing of Christ left - 'Christ' becomes some universal abstract... surely?

And what is 'love' if God cannot engage with the world? I know I have only read superficially, but 'love' is not something on its own account - love requires object and subject ... and you can't ask man to love an abstract ... only a very few can manage that ...

... I know I haven't read him, but if you strip away the Incarnation, Revelation, God (as He who communicates something of Himself to man) ... if Scripture and its content is invalid as anything more than a myth of a race history ... then what's left, what defines Christianity?

Thomas

I know Thomas, and I am perplexed and vexed...and intrigued. Yes, as far as I can tell Spong rejects the Incarnation, but he also rejects the interpretation of the Fall that makes the Incarnation necessary.

Christ is universal for Spong, but not abstract. If I understand correctly, Spong does not view divinity and humanity as separate but "rather, they are like two poles of a continuum that appear to be separate and distinct, yet when one travels from one to the other, the discovery is made that their shadows blend into and invade each other. I seek a Christology that preserves divinity but not supernatural theism, which is a distinction not often made. I seek in Jesus a human being who nonetheless makes known, visible, and compelling the Ground of All Being."

There is a chapter in the book I've been referring to called Jesus Beyond Incarnation and I'll bullet a few of his points here:

"To put it bluntly, with theism no longer a concept I can salute, can this Jesus still be a God-experience for me? Can he still be for me a doorway into and an expression of the holy? The answers to these questions will determine, quite frankly, whether what I am seeking is a genuine reformation of Christianity or whether I am deluded and in my suppressed fear attempting to hide from or ot cover up the death of Christianity. The states are thus quite obviously high..."

"What I see is a new portrait of Jesus. He is one who was more deeply and fully alive than anyone else I have ever encountered, whether in my lifetime, in history, or in literature. I see him pointing to something he calls the realm (or kingdom) of God, where new possibilities demand to be considered. I see him portrayed as one who was constantly dismantling the barriers that separate people from one another. I see him inviting his followers to join with him, to walk without fear beyond those security boundaries that always prohibit, block, or deny our access to a deeper humanity. Perhaps above all else he is for me a boundary-breaker who enables me to envision the possibility of my own humanity breaking through my human barriers to reach the divinity that his life reveals, indeed that we Christians claim he possesses."

"I see Jesus as one who is calling those around him to walk past their tribal fears."

"The Bible also portrays Jesus as one who is journeying beyond the barriers of human prejudice."

"The Bibilical protrait drawn of Jesus even calls and empowers his followers to walk beyond our religious differences--differences we have consistently and falsely invested something of the ultimacy of God."

"Jesus understood that the call of every human being is not just to survive but to journey into both the fullness of one's own humanity and into the mystery of God. What most of us do not seem to embrace is that these two journeys are simultaneous, even identical journeys."

"This human Jesus seems to possess his life so totally that he can give it away without fear."

""Life cannot be given away until life has been possessed. Yet when life is given away freely and totally, the one who does the giving is not diminished. Indeed, the giving, as depicted in the portait of Jesus, actually resulted in the explosion of a new and radically different humanity in a world that was still tied to the survival mentality of our evolutionary past."

Yikes, this is getting long. But these statements address the way that, for Spong, Jesus is Life. The bolded part above is a main point: that Jesus really did reveal to us a new way of life: one not in slavery to our evolutionary instincts (animal?) to survival. He goes on with two more sections that tell how Jesus is Love, and Jesus is Being. I'll try to limit the quotes here:

"Love is manifested in the human willingness to venture beyond the boundaries of safety, to risk losing ourselves, and even in the desire to explore the crevices of the unknown."

"If life is holy and if love creates and enhances life, then love is also holy. So I am led to suggest that love and God cannot be separated and that to share love is nothing less than sharing God. For one to abide in love is to abide in God, for one to give love away is to give God away. That is why when one sees a life that loves wastefully, is is said of that person, "God was in that life." That is part of what a nontheistic but still God-centered Jesus means to me."

"What human life needs is not a divine rescue. What we need is rather a life so open, so free, so whole, and so loving that when we experience that life, we are called into the reality of love. We are opened to the source of love and enter the empowering presence of love. Such a life then becomes our doorway into the infinite and inexhaustivle power of love. I call that love God. I see it in Jesus of Nazareth, and I find myself called into a new being, a boundary-free humanity, and made whole in its presence. So God was in Christ, I say. Jesus thus reveals the source of love, and then he calls us to enter it."

I'm not sure if this is how Spong would say it, but God is all about love engaging with/in the world.

luna

 

[Thomas]

Seems like panentheism to me...

... It also seems to me that if we reject theism then we reject the 'personhood' of the Divine - if there is no 'person' of God, if there is no 'person' of Christ - just a person who became enlightened (and Spong seems closer to Buddhism than Christianity) then the notion of 'person' is limited to the accidental and contingent - and therefore the person cannot enter Union with the Divine - we are then close to an extreme Eckhartian anihilation of individual being (an erroneous readsing of Eckhart) - Union is a joining of two things - Union is not one thing totally subsumed by the other to the point that the one no longer exists ...

The quotes on love etc., I see nothing original, Jesus said most of it Himself, but I do think that his reasoning, as Rowan Williams pointed out, is fundamentally flawed ...

Thomas