A Response to Spong's 'Twelve Points for Reform'

[Thomas]

Actually ... scrub Eriugena ... 9th century, too old for some to be relevant.

Let's go with Denys Turner, author of The Darkness of God.

check out http://collected.jcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1067&context=theo_rels-facpub

 

[wil]

Denys doesn't know enough about Spong to have an opinion....but he is taking a glance at... http://servicioskoinonia.org/relat/436e.htm

We will see what he has to say.

 

[wil]

It was an attempt to call them into a debate on the real issues that I was certain the Christian Church now faced. I framed my twelve theses in the boldest, most provocative language possible, designed primarily to elicit response and debate.

Well Jack, you got the provocative part right!

Introduction

As the 21st century approached with millennial celebrations, I felt myself increasingly compelled to assess the state of the Christian religion throughout the world. There were multiple signs everywhere of its decline and perhaps even of its imminent death. Fewer and fewer people were attending European churches and those that did were rapidly aging. North American churches were breaking into either a vapid, liberal emptiness or a religious, anti-intellectual fundamentalism. South American Churches were increasingly becoming separated from the concerns of the people and no leaders seemed capable of speaking to those concerns with authority. None of these patterns were new. With every discovery emerging from the world of science over the last 500 years in regard to the origins of the universe and of life itself, the traditional explanations offered by the Christian Church appeared to be more and more dated and irrelevant. Christian leaders, unable to embrace the knowledge revolution seemed to believe that the only way to save Christianity was not to disturb the old patterns either by listening to, much less by entertaining the new knowledge

As I engaged these issues as a bishop and a committed Christian, I became convinced that the only way to save Christianity as a force in the future was to find within the church the courage that would enable it to give up many of the patterns of the past. I tried to articulate this challenge in a book entitled: Why Christianity Must Change or Die, published just before the dawn of the 21st century. In that book I examined in detail the issues that I was convinced Christianity must address.

Shortly after that book was published I reduced its content to twelve theses, which I attached in Luther-like fashion to the great doors on the Chapel of Mansfield College at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. I then mailed copies of those Twelve Theses to every acknowledged Christian leader of the world, including the Pope, the Patriarch of Eastern Orthodoxy, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leaders of the World Council of Churches, the denominational leaders of the major Protestant churches in both the United States and Europe and the well-known television voices of Evangelical Christianity. It was an attempt to call them into a debate on the real issues that I was certain the Christian Church now faced. I framed my twelve theses in the boldest, most provocative language possible, designed primarily to elicit response and debate.

Recently, the editors of the magazine Horizonte requested that I explicate for their publication in Latin America, throughout the Spanish speaking world and ultimately to Christians everywhere in the world, my reasons for calling for debate on these twelve theses. I am pleased to have the opportunity to do just that. I welcome responses from Christians everywhere. I claim no expertise or certainty in developing answers, but I am quite confident that I do understand the problems we are facing as Christians who are seeking to relate to the 21st century.

 

[wil]

My search to find something to send to Denys to comment on after he replied allowed me to find the support for the 12 thesis... Gotta thank Thomas now for starting the thread, and me making the connections... and now reading the Bishop's comments.

 

[Thomas]

Spong:
It was an attempt to call them into a debate on the real issues that I was certain the Christian Church now faced. I framed my twelve theses in the boldest, most provocative language possible, designed primarily to elicit response and debate.
Well Jack, you got the provocative part right!

OK.
Can you deal with that then, the theses themselves?

+++

“Theism as a way of defining God is dead. God can no longer be understood with credibility as a being, supernatural in power, living above the sky and prepared to invade human history periodically to enforce the divine will.” So most theological God-talk today is meaningless. We must find a new way to conceptualize and to speak about God.”

(We can dismiss the first 12 paragraphs, a potted history of scientific achievement, as largely irrelevant to the debate. Science v Religion, we've been over that here ad nauseam)

So Spong begins to develop his thesis with:
This ever so brief, and therefore, inadequate chronicle of the human expression of knowledge from the 16th century until today, makes us aware, that at the very least, the way human beings have conceptualized God in the past has now been fundamentally altered.
Agreed. The way we conceptualize everything changes all the time ... God, science, art, music ... no dispute here.

Yet in the liturgies of all Christian Churches we continue to use these intellectually dismissed concepts of the past...
LOGIC FLAW — the 'intellectual dismissal' is not presented, nor proven, therefore it does not follow. This is thesis presentation 101. If you're going to make a claim, back it up with evidence and reason.

That definition no longer makes sense in our world
LOGIC FLAW — same as above.

There is no supernatural deity above the sky waiting to come to our aid
LOGIC FLAW — same again.

Space is infinite and we human beings now embrace its infinity
So do the monotheist religions. In fact the foundations of calculus and the Renaissance language of the Infinite were laid down by Nicholas of Cusa. Reference here

Theistic talk is, therefore, meaningless
LOGIC FLAW

That is the major issue before the Christian Church today
Overstatement.

Can we redefine what we mean by God?
Yes, we do so all them time.

Can we apprehend that meaning differently?
Yes. Without abandoning what has gone before. In the same way we understand atomic theory differently, but we have not abandoned the basic premise laid down by the Greeks. Maths, language, everything we apprehend differently without necessarily dismissing everything that's gone before.

Can we lay down our theistic definitions of God without dismissing the reality of God altogether?
Yes.

I think we can, and I know we must try. If theism dies, does God die? If Christianity, as a religion, is to survive, it must develop an understanding of the divine which makes sense in the 21st century. That becomes our highest priority.
LOGIC FLAW We have those understandings

The fact that all language is human means that all of the deities that human beings have worshipped throughout history tend to look very much like human beings
FACTUALLY WRONG.
The Bible describes God as 'a rock', 'a spirit', as 'love', as 'still, small wind', as 'a burning bush', etc. All manner of non-human terms.

That is why most human ideas of God are expressed negatively
Wrong. There are positive affirmation of God.

Human life is finite, so God must be infinite, or “not finite,” we say
This statment and the similar that follow are wrong. This is anthropomorphism, and easily disproven. I can cite the Fathers on this if necessary.

Every God defined throughout history by any human being is always human-like with all human limits removed
Wrong

If the theistic understanding of God is dead...
It's not.

So we push aside theism as a definition of our own creation, and we seek to move in a new path into the reality of God. That is a far more revolutionary step than most of us can imagine, but that is the world in which Christianity must learn to live
LOGIC FLAW and LOGICAL NONSENSE. What other language can we use but human? What other mind can we apply to the question, but human?

ADRESS TO THE FUNDAMENTAL LOGICAL FLAW:
God as as:
Being
If we assert that God exists — and I don't think even Spong is saying there is no God at all — then we assert that God 'is'.
If something 'is', it has 'being', its is-ness, the state of existing.
How God exists, what that state is, is subsequent.
(And if Spong read Turner, then he might realise that apophatism answers all his questions and corrects his errors.)

Supernatural in power
By this we mean God is not defined in natural terms, something Spong seems insistent about, so I fail to see his problem with 'supernatural' or 'metanatural', especially when he talks about the experience of God as something unmediated by our natural powers. God is not thunder storms, sunrises, etc.

living in the sky
This to me reads like a contradiction.

Spong asserts that language is incapable of expressing experience. Therefore our options is say nothing at all, and knowledge then remains fixed at whatever point we say it can no longer be discussed, or we allow that metaphor can convey something of idea in a comprehensible sense.

"Neither shall they say: Behold here, or behold there. For lo, the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21)

Do I read this to mean that the Kingdom of God is located somewhere in my viscera? No. Does anyone? No. Same with the sky.

Give me your average Catholic who believes, like I do, in a God who is 'up there' and it will take me less than five minutes to demonstrate that, despite the naiveté and simplicity of language, that simple Catholic does not believe that God lives in some physical space between here and the outer atmosphere, or the Moon, or Mars, etc. And that furthermore the language is entirely fitting and adequate to the object under discussion.

"Prepared to invade human history"
Spong speaks of the subjective experience of God as interior, etc., etc. How is that not an 'invasion of human history' in that the experience, as he declares of himself, changes the person?

So Thesis One founders on a number of logical flaws and, as a consequence, does his 12-point enterprise.

Over to you.

Please do not come back with a description of born agains, bible thumpers, fire and brimstone preachers, flat-earthers, creationists, climate change deniers, etc., etc – they do not make right the flaws in the thesis.

 

[wil]

(We can dismiss the first 12 paragraphs, a potted history of scientific achievement, as largely irrelevant to the debate. Science v Religion, we've been over that here ad nauseam)

No we can't, this is exactly what we are fighting here in the US... A literal 6 day creation, a short earth, an anti science religiosity, an omniscient, omnipotent G!d... These 12 paragraphs describe the issue...it isn't true, yet this thought is not only in our churches, it is now in our whitehouse and our lawmakers and decisions which affect the entire world are based on this view.

 

[Thomas]

No we can't...

Why 'pon my soul, sirrah! Are you censoring me?

... this is exactly what we are fighting here in the US...

I'm not here to fight the US, that's yours, I'm a foreigner.

I'm disputing the 12 theses, that is what this thread is about. That's the title.

If you don't want to discuss it, that's cool, but please don't derail the topic. Take it up on 'Politics and Society' or in the 'Lounge'.

These 12 paragraphs describe the issue...

I'm not contending that. It's the flaws as I see them (and I am inviting correction) in the solution that worry me ...

Two wrongs don't make anything right.

 

[Thomas]

Trying a different tack ...

Wil, I agree with you!

... this is exactly what we are fighting here in the US...

I know. We're astounded by the ridiculousness of it all over here.

"A literal 6 day creation, a short earth, an anti science religiosity..."

And Pro-Lifers bombing abortion clinics, or wishing death and disease on the LGBTQQ community ... my God, it's a mess!

These 12 paragraphs describe the issue...

Issue not in question. It's the defective solution.

D'you think these nutters will accept Spong's theses? I think he's just alienating them even more. To them it's more leftie liberal trash. If it comes to it, surely they'll just set up their own churches, as the Constitution allows them to?

Can we get back on track now, please?

 

[Thomas]

Theism as a way of defining God is dead. God can no longer be understood with credibility as a being, supernatural in power, living above the sky and prepared to invade human history periodically to enforce the divine will.” So most theological God-talk today is meaningless. We must find a new way to conceptualize and to speak about God.

Putting our exegetical differences aside, acknowledging the need for a reinvigorated debate, and mindful of the importance Spong places on the human subject and the 'experiential moment', I would approach the problem from a consideration of that 'moment' in light of Scripture; the Encounter with Christ.

From the anthropological point of view, and without downplaying the Drama of Scripture by one whit, I would give the kaleidoscope a twist, shifting the focus from the Passion, from Christ on the Cross who too readily becomes the stick for the fundamentalist to beat the poor sinner on the head (and if you were educated by the nuns of my generation, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about) and focus, as my Orthodox brothers and sisters are more inclined to do, on the Transfiguration, and in human terms the of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36, and in passing 2 Peter 1:16–18 and possibly John 1:14) which might be better spoken of as transformation of the human psyche in light of the event.

Particularly, not at the material description — place, time, nor its accompanying difficulties in light of a critical reception of the text, but at the subjective description, in which we can at least say, to begin with, something happened.

I would look at that, and then the post-Resurrection accounts in John 20 and the Encounter on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24. It's worth noting that two people are spoken of in Luke 24. One is named Cleophas, but the other is not named, and the Tradition has it that the other is you. Lastly the psychodrama undergone by Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus (Acts 9), drawing heavily on the exegesis of N.T. Wright.

No doubt Spong would dispute the veracity of these events, but that is by-the-by. What matters here is the idea of an encounter with the Divine, and whether these Scriptural encounters have anything relevant to say to us in our current situation. Certain specifics of such encounters, notably Spong's 'primary' and un-self-mediated experience, are clearly detailed and surely must in some way serve as informative, if not formative, in our own experience, and our talking of God in the light – or wake – of such.

This seems to me fertile ground if we are to challenge aspects of the Biblical narratives without prejudice.

 

[Thomas]

Following on from the thesis debate, here's my comments on the rest.

THESIS #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.’ The traditional concepts of Christology of the ages are, therefore, bankrupt.
LF: As Thesis #1 has been shown to be illogical, it follows that this falls also.

THESIS #3
The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which we human beings have fallen into original sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense!
LF #1: The Biblical story is not a scientific account
LF #2: Darwinism does not address the question of the cause of the world, the Divine, or the nature of the human other than as a biological organism.

THESIS #4
The virgin birth understood as literal biology makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible
LF #1: The virgin birth was seen then, as now, as a miracle.
LF #2: The sacred scribes and the community had biology enough to know that this was an event that could not be explained by natural causation.

THESIS #5
The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in our post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
LF: Newtonian physics does not address God, the supernatural, nor the possibility of miracles.

THESIS #6
The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbaric idea, based on primitive concepts of God that must be dismissed.
LF #1: Crucifixion was a barbaric practice. The condemnation of Christ was a 'political expedient', not primitive at all.
LF #2: The idea of sacrifice and sin is univeral and omnipresent.
LF #3: Atonement theology is an aspect, but not the core principle, of a more broader salvation theology.
LF #4: Contemporary salvation theology answers all his objections.

Aside:
Spong says Barabbas 'literally means son of God'. It doesn't.
Bar means 'son' and 'abba' is Aramaic for father, a local magnate (Isaiah 22:21), an elder (2 Kings 2:12), an ancestor (Genesis 10:21), a counselor (Genesis 45:8), a prophet (2 Kings 6:21). It's a term that can be applied to anyone in authority, such as a teacher, doctor or rabbi. Spong ignores these other meanings.

THESIS #7
Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. Resurrection, therefore, cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
LF #1: Nowhere in Scripture does it say 'Jesus was raised into the meaning of God.
LF #2: To say 'Jesus was raised into the meaning of God' is a theism, which he has declared a dead language, so somewhat contradictory.


Points of note:
Nothing, however, in the New Testament itself supports ... (an) understanding of what the resurrection actually was and what it still is.
Wrong. The New Testament assumes a physical resurrection. He can contest it, and the best he can do is stand by his own interpretation, but he cannot declare it 'unsupported'.

It is interesting to note that Paul, the first writer of any book in the New Testament, never describes the appearance of the raised Christ to anyone.
It was not the point of his epistles. What he said in preaching, we cannot know.

He simply gives us a list of those who were witnesses to the resurrection (I Cor. 15:1-6 written about 54 CE).
Yes, as proof of the resurrection.

In that list he includes himself, different, he says, only in that the appearance to him was last.
Ah, a clear deception. Nowhere does the gospel say or imply 'different'.

The chapter goes on to declare explicitly that Christ is risen from the dead:
"Now if Christ be preached, that he arose again from the dead, how do some among you say, that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God: because we have given testimony against God, that he hath raised up Christ; whom he hath not raised up, if the dead rise not again. For if the dead rise not again, neither is Christ risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins." (v12-17)

THESIS #8
The story of the ascension of Jesus assumes a three-tiered universe and is, therefore, not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
LF Science v Religion again. The spiritual and eschatalogical spheres are no part of physical space.

THESIS #9
There is no eternal, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time
Really? The Golden Rule?

THESIS #10
Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way
Opinion supported by Straw Man argument.

THESIS #11
The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior-control morality of reward and punishment. The church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
Indeed it should, and most mainline churches have ... this is old hat and Straw Man again.

THESIS #12
All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for the person that each of us is.
LF #1: This belongs to Biblical theism so a contradiction again.
LF #2: The argument is not one of being, but of conduct.

 

[Thomas]

Having made a particular 'bold and provocative' point of Thesis #7 above — I realise that my focus on this point was because it seems to me that Spong has overlooked something which is quite fundamental to his argument, and could have based it on a lot more sound status had he picked it up. Perhaps he has, I don't know, but for someone who's a Hebrew and Scripture scholar of such knowledge and renown, I am totally surprised that he did not employ it in defence of this thesis.

Acts 9:3-8
"And as he went on his journey, it came to pass that he drew nigh to Damascus; and suddenly a light from heaven shined round about him. And falling on the ground, he heard a voice saying to him: Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Who said: Who art thou, Lord? And he: I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against the goad. And he trembling and astonished, said: Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said to him: Arise, and go into the city, and there it shall be told thee what thou must do. Now the men who went in company with him, stood amazed, hearing indeed a voice, but seeing no man. And Saul arose from the ground; and when his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. But they leading him by the hands, brought him to Damascus."

My point is, according to the (literal) text — Paul never saw anything at all!

There is a light, and a voice ... but that's it. No indication that he saw Christ whatsoever. What he 'saw' is questionable, and he seems struck blind afterwards. We could well say he was dazzled by the brilliance of the divine light that engulfed him, and was caught in the 'Cloud of Unknowing'.

Acts says Paul went from here to Damascus, where he received catechetical instruction.

In Galatians 1 however, after the Damascus event he went to Arabia (possibly for 14 years) before completing that journey.

N. T Wright offers an insightful exegesis here.

"... Saul certainly did not go to Arabia in order to evangelize. He might have been doing what a puzzled zealous prophet might be expected to do: going back to the source to resign his commission. Alternatively, and perhaps preferably, he might be conceived of as doing what a puzzled, newly commissioned prophet might do, complaining (like Moses, Jeremiah, and others) that he is not able to undertake the work he has been assigned. And whatever still, small voice he may have heard, it was certainly not underwriting the land of zeal in which he had been indulging up until then. His zeal was now to be redirected (Gal 4:18; see also 2 Cor 11:2). He was to become the herald of the new king."

Interesting. We could surmise then that Paul underwent a psychodynamic event, and withdrew to his 'spiritual homeland' to work out what the hell had just happened ...