As Spong has closed his career as a formal minister, retiring from the bishop position in 2000 have has become even more controversial than ever before:
Spong believes in a transcending reality at "the very heart of life" that presses toward life and wholeness. He describes God as the "Ground of Being" and "universal presence" that undergirds all life and is present in all that is. He regards heaven as a symbol standing for "the limitlessness of Being itself," describes Jesus as "a God presence" whose burning awareness of God made him a doorway to divine reality, and believes that the divine source of life calls human beings to live fully, love wastefully, and have the courage to be. Spong describes his project in classic liberal terms -- walking the "razor's edge between orthodox overbelief and losing the 'Christ experience'..."I do so not because I reject the church, but because I am convinced that if we stay where the church now is, the faith that we profess as Christians will surely die. The floods of creedal distortion have destroyed our fields, contaminated our groundwater, and made our faith-assertions of yesterday unlivable places for us today. No matter how deeply we fear to move, there is no alternative." (9)
Dorrien 456)
Dorrien also offers one of the most concise and enduring contextual summary of just how extreme Spong has been in his prolific writing career.
Spong's books specialize in provocative assertion. Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991) suggested that Paul was a repressed, guilt-ridden homosexual. Born of a Woman (1992) suggested that the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke were constructed to refute the charge that Jesus was illegitimate, stressed that all virgin birth stories are legends, and speculated that Jesus might have been married to Mary Magdalene. Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (1994) noted that Paul and Mark made no case for a physical resurrection of Jesus, argued that Matthew didn't either, and highlighted the discrepancies in the gospel resurrection narratives.
Dorrien 456)
Having been received by his reading public, in the same sort of love hate relationship he had always had on the more personal aspects of scripture, Spong moved discuss even more core issues of faith and Christianity, i.e. putting the bible in context of its time, as a work of Jewish faith steeped in tradition and Liberating the Gospels (1996) interpreted the gospels as deeply Jewish liturgical works organized on the model of the Jewish liturgical year, showed that the synoptic passion narrative relies heavily on Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, and contended that Luke is dependent on Deuteronomy.
Dorrien 456)
One of his final works, put him in a sense over the top of tolerable for many Christians as he claimed the faith is based upon a system of belief and practice that is almost if not entirely outdated and ridiculous and that if the faith does not change it will likely fade away.
Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1998) asserted that the church's ancient creeds "have become empty and meaningless to this generation because the way we perceive the shape of reality has changed so dramatically." The virgin birth story is refuted by the eighteenth century discovery of the egg cell, the spatial imagery of the ascension story makes no sense after Copernicus and Galileo, and the Bible abounds with unbelievable miracle stories.
Dorrien 456)
To a very large degree, Spong demonstrates the ability and nerve to effectively ask questions and challenge long held beliefs of the nature of faith, tradition and the way one should dissect the faith from tradition and build itself anew.
Spong insists that he writes out of his faith commitment as a Christian, not to create controversy: "But where this faith has been corrupted into literalized propositional statements, I have become its exposer and its critic. I have come to see the controversy that ensues not as negative and not even as destructive to the church. I regard it rather as a positive sign of health and vitality. It represents a faith tradition in ferment, simultaneously dying and being resurrected." (8)
Dorrien 456)
Spong is a strong and adamant exposer of fundamentalism and of falling back on traditions that have no relevance to the present day or the current state of the world. His beliefs about the reality of God are anti-theist to say the least but worth expressing even to the most conservative of his opponents,
It is not the human description of the reality of God that is important...
Christian This course changed my concept of what it meant to be a Christian in three fundamental ways, all focused on what it means to me to be a Christian in modern society, rather than on the theological underpinnings of Christianity. This course helped me realize that Christianity is not merely a system of belief, which is how many people conceive of religion. Instead, Christianity must be a combination of
Finally, each branch of Christianity decides which books to include in the Bible, which can greatly alter meaning and intent. That does not mean that the Bible lacks authority. One need only see how societies have generally incorporated the tenets of the Ten Commandments into codified laws to see that the Bible has weight and authority. However, it does mean that a Christian must consult his own thoughts and
However, certain elements of traditional Christian theology are centered on Mary, and the degree of emphasis that those elements receive can be very telling about Mary's actual role in the religion. For example, the connection between female chastity and religious observance seems to have been established by God's choice of a Virgin to carry his son. God did not have to choose a virgin to bear his child, but
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now