lunamoth
Episcopalian
Yeah, that's exactly it. I just can't partition my mind where one part doesn't have to measure up to the same intellectual standards.
I can't discount mainstream Bible scholarship. I can't accept the Bible as history when archaeology tells a much different story.
The concept of original sin makes no sense to me. As allegory, sure, but not in any real historical sense.
The idea of a dead and risen avatar-messiah-saviour seems impossibly anachronistic to me. It's an uncomfortable mix of Jewish and Pagan elements that doesn't gell.
I can't see why the Logos would be the above avatar. I think one can gain an appreciation for the Logos concept by studying the Jesus character, though.
I can't conceive of God being in any way interventionist. I don't necessarily disagree with the Christian conception of God, I just think that the way it's usually put over is entirely too simplistic, and often downright silly. Surely everyone knows that God Itself is entirely beyond description. That's why no one has "seen" IT. Mainly, though, the problem for me is that if God intervenes in the affairs of humans directly, then there's no point in ever learning to use one's deductive intellectual faculties. Everything is a big conspiracy because nothing can be trusted to be what it seems. I just can't live like that.
So there you go. I don't believe the Bible is historically reliable. I don't believe in original sin. I think the idea of a messiah avatar is primitive, sometimes barbaric, and entirely anachronistic. I don't believe Jesus is literally the Logos. And I don't believe in the miraculous because I don't think God is that sort of thing . Doesn't seem very Alpha and Omega-ish.
So what kind of organized Christianity might appeal to someone like me? I consider myself a Christian--at least ethnically and philosophically. I'm not a syncretist (anymore), or an atheist, nor a deist, pantheist, panentheist, Buddhist, Pagan. I like the Tao, but that's also just philosophical. I appreciate Spong trying to figure out a way to have a Christianity that I, and he I'm sure, could find pleasant and meaningful. I guess he's saying he's found a way to do it for himself, but I haven't.
Chris
Why do you want to be part of organized Christianity? I would say it's not about you. You can get that (your own personal spirituality whatever it may be) on your own. My take on it is that being a Christian is about choosing a way that takes us outside our own way. But that's just me.
Maybe what Spong does for you and others (and me) is to give us permission to seek in our own way what Christ is all about. Yeah, I know, we don't need permission, but there seem to be very few voices out there today saying it's OK to question and to look at things differently.
FWIW, I found the book The Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg to be very helpful when I was re-entering Christianity with all the same ideas and reservations you state above. He helped me find the meaning in the stories of the Bible and to focus on what they are pointing at, rather than getting all hung up in the literal-metaphorical debate. Yet he does not throw out God, Christ, and the Bible along the way.
luna