[Apologetics] Bishop John S. Spong

[Stephen Korsman]

Hi

He's a controversial guy.  A few snips from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shelby_Spong):

He identifies himself as a Christian because he believes that Jesus fully expressed God's presence and that he was resurrected by God to "God's right hand", and that this is the meaning of the early Christian slogan of "Jesus is Lord" (Spong, 1994 and Spong, 1991). He rejects the historical truth of some Christian doctrines, such as the virgin birth (Spong, 1992) and the bodily resurrection of Jesus that he claims would define the resurrection as the literal resuscitation of the corpse of Jesus (Spong, 1994).

Spong has also been a strong proponent of feminism, gay rights and racial equality within both the church and society at large. Towards these ends, he calls for a new Reformation, in which many of Christianity's basic doctrines should be reformulated.

Pasted from http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/jsspong/reform.html onto Wikipedia are a few of his own words:

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 writ 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.

Back to Wikipedia:

Many of Spong's critics charge him with hypocrisy, saying that a bishop who argues against church doctrines that he swore in his ordination vow to defend lacks integrity, especially when being paid by the church. Some, such as Brent Hardaway, would argue that Spong's beliefs are not even Christian: "The God of the Christian Bible is a theistic God, and if one does not believe in a theistic God, then he cannot be called a Christian."

Gerald O'Collins, Professor of Fundamental Theology, Gregorian University, Rome argued that Spong's "work simply does not belong to the world of international scholarship. No genuine scholar will be taken in by this book. ... What is said about a key verb St. Paul uses in Gal. 1:15f. shows that the bishop [Spong] has forgotten any Greek that he knew. [Spong argued his case based on a Greek word that is not in the passage] ... [my] advice for his next book is to let some real experts check it before publication." [Review of Resurrection: Myth or Reality, London Tablet, 30 April 1994]

God bless,
Stephen
--
Stephen Korsman
skorsman at theotokos.co.za
www.theotokos.co.za

IC | XC
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  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Dianne Dawson 
  To: Apologetics Group 
  Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2006 1:48 PM
  Subject: [Apologetics] Bishop John S. Spong


  Bishop Spong's name is tickling something in my memory but my brain can't upload it.  :-)  All I can remember is that he is a retired Episcopalian bishop. Could someone please remind me (positive, negative, or neutral)?  

  My interest is piqued because each year my parish presents "A Festival of Lessons and Carols."  I have attended in past years and enjoyed it.  Apparently it is Episcopalian in origin.  This year I am one of the readers so I was doing some research into the readings.  I found an article by Bishop Spong titled "Rethinking the Festival of Lessons and Carols."  http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/vox20197.html.  Before I put too much stock in this article I'd like to know more about the author.

  Thanks,
  Dianne





  Like a deer that longs for running waters so my soul longs for you, O God.
  Ps 42:1


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