Twelve points
1. Theism,
as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today
meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
2. 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.
3. The Biblical story of
the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology,
makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. 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.
6. The view of the cross
as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on
primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an
action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be
a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. 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.
9. There is no external,
objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that
will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a
request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. 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.
12. 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.
“The guy”
is a former Episcopal
bishop, John Shelby Spong, who has written a book called The
Sins of Scripture, which argues that the Bible cannot and must not be
taken literally. So how does one read the Bible, the interviewer asks in the
clip below? Spong believes you should read it as a progression, from the tribal
beliefs of the Old
Testament through the teaching of the life of Christ.
Well, that
was interesting enough for me to check out the Reverend Spong in Wikipedia,
which is where I got the twelve theses above.
Well, I
thought I knew the term “theism,” but did I? Is Spong using the term in some
specialized way? Here’s the definition,
also by way of Wikipedia:
Theism, in the broadest sense, is the belief
that at least one deity
exists.[1] In a more specific sense, theism is commonly a monotheistic doctrine concerning the nature of a deity, and that deity's relationship to the universe.[2][3][4][5]
Theism, in this
specific sense, conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and
organization of the world and the universe. As such theism describes the classical conception of
God that is found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism and some forms of
Hinduism.
Ummm—I’m a
bear of very little brain, especially where religion is concerned, but I’d be
curious to know: why is theism dead? And in what way are we to talk about God?
Could it be
the ocean, the Goldberg
Variations, the love of a mother holding her child moments after birth?
Because if that’s God, I might have a shot, here.
Here’s what
Spong has to say:
Right—so whatever God is (or are—which to me makes sense theologically, if not grammatically), Jesus is not the incarnation of her / him / it / them. Oh—and I looked up Christology, and yes, it means exactly what you think—the study of the nature and person of Christ. That said, how are we to look at Christ? As the most perfect representation of God?
All of the
rest of the theses make perfect sense to me. But apparently, somebody with a
better ear for theology didn’t think so; the Reverend Rowan Williams
said they embodied “confusion and misinterpretation.”
Spong has
various other contentions, some of which are contentious. He’s believed since
before Dan Brown that Mary Magdalene was the
wife of Christ. Why? Well, for one thing, Mary Magdalene in one gospel goes to
claim the body of Christ—no woman of the time could have done that, were she
not his wife.
Spong also
decries the fact that “religion,” as it’s commonly seen, has become almost
totally a negative thing—the priest abuse
scandals, the exclusion
of women in many faiths, the prohibition of
homosexuality, the total focus on sex,
about which he thinks the church knows nothing. Spong feels that two things are
happening—the fundamentalist movement is hysterically reaching backward, and
the mainstream churches have nothing to offer the rest of us. And so, we’re at
a crucial moment when Christianity is going to have to change, to re-invent
itself.
And about
scripture? Well, first Spong points out that the first gospel of the New
Testament was written 50 years after the death of Christ; in addition, it was
written in Greek, whereas Christ spoke Aramaic. And he tears through a lot of
stuff: nothing, he says, in the scripture paints Mary, the mother
of Christ, as a particularly saintly, or even supportive mother, nor is she
very prominent in the gospel. Oh, and by the way—the virgin birth stuff?
Concocted in the ninth decade, by Matthew; none of the
earlier writers ever made the claim. Oh, and he says that no respecting /
respected theologian believes it. What’s the source of the confusion? Matthew
didn’t know Hebrew, and had to read in Greek. So when he read in Isaiah 7:14 that a virgin
shall conceive, he was reading a Greek translation of a Hebrew word that did
not mean “virgin” but rather a young woman.
Oh, and
another news flash—there weren’t twelve apostles but fifteen. Why? Because
there are 15 guys in the New Testament who seem to be apostles, and so we have
to assume that Thaddeus
was Judas, and they
got the names wrong. Poppycock, says Spong. And speaking of disciples—Jesus had
both male and female disciples.
Spong says
that he started out as a fundamentalist, and only changed when he discovered,
at age fourteen, that his fundamentalism was impeding his growth and
development. And what does he say now? “God is beyond my human capacity to ever
know fully.”
Right—I can
get that. In fact, I can buy into all of what Spong says. But I think he’s
articulated all of what we shouldn’t be thinking or doing. That’s great, but…
…what is he
proposing instead?
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