John Shelby Spong & the Churches of Christ (Victoria, Australia) |
When I read Merrill Kitchen's [2] favourable article towards
ex-Bishop Spong, in "The Future Church and Bishop John Shelby Spong"
[3], I wondered if Kitchen and I were reading the same author. This is
only one view by a
leader within the Churches of Christ in Australia, but she is in a
position of influence -- the principal of a theological college of
influence in Melbourne,
Australia.
I thought I had read an adequate sample of Spong's views in Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Born of a Woman, Resurrection Myth or Reality?, and his latest which he claims will be his last -- Spong's swan song -- A New Christianity for a New World. [4] But I was not ready for the sanitised version of Spong in this article. [5]
This is the Spong who rejects fundamental doctrines of the faith,
yet Kitchen
gave him the honoured status of being "clearly a believer but one who
refuses
to toe the ecclesiastical line when doctrine and tradition inhibit
spiritual
growth." She claims Spong is calling us back to "a New Testament Church
style
and proclamation." [6] Really?
| A. The nature of Spongian religion |
John S. Spong photo courtesy Episcopal
Diocese of Newark, NJ, USA]
Kitchen rightly asks, "So what does Spong believe?" Yes, he believes
the things that Kitchen raised in the article, but he believes much
more that tell us what kind of a believer he really is and what his new
style of church
will look like in the future.
Will it be like the New Testament church (e.g. the Book of Acts and the Epistles) or more like Spong's own brand of religion? To arrive at her sympathetic understanding of Spong, Kitchen has forgotten to tell us about some of the fundamentals of the faith that have been rejected or redefined by Spong. He sees his "task of seeking to redefine Jesus" as something that he does not take "easily or lightly." [7]
For prayer, he proposes "substitute words" that have been identified down through the centuries "with the mystical disciplines of spiritual development — words such as meditation and contemplation" that will include "centering prayer" and breathing exercises. [10]
He's against evangelism and missionary enterprises, the latter being "base-born, rejecting, negative, and yes, I would even say evil." [11] This shocking redefinition of missions as "evil" is associated with his universalism and theory that "we possess neither certainty nor eternal truth." [12]
Christ did not found a church. We are not born sinful. The fall into sin by Adam and Eve is mythical. Women are not less human and less holy than men (I agree!). Homosexuals are not morally depraved; the Bible is not the literal word of God and certainly is not inspired. Forget about absolute Christian ethics because "time makes ancient good uncouth." [14] The colour of one's skin or ethnic background does not constitute grounds for making one superior or inferior (I agree!).
He repudiates baptism and the commemoration of the Lord's Supper. "Since the diagnosis (sinful human nature) was wrong, the prescribed cure (atonement) cannot be right." Since the fall into sin is a wrong diagnosis, baptism "to wash away the effects of a fall into sin that never occurred is inappropriate." As for the Eucharist, this "reenactment of a sacrifice . . . becomes theological nonsense." [15]
The supernatural is out. There will be no singing of praises to a theistic deity: "I treat the language of worship like I treat the language of love. It is primitive, excessive, flowery, poetic, evocative. No one really believes it literally." [16] There will be his ill-defined, mystical "God-experience". We could do that in a mosque, temple, synagogue, holy place, or ecclesia (his preferred word). There will be no confessing our sins to a "parental judge." [17] There will be no literalised faith story. It will "never claim that it already possesses truth by divine revelation." [18]
The ecclesia of the future will be a place for "Catholic and Protestant, orthodox and heretic, liberal and evangelical, Jew and Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu" and where worship of this "god" will not be "bounded by our formulas, our creeds, our doctrines, our liturgies, or even our Bible, but still real, infinitely real." [19] God is not a personal being, not even the highest being but the one he experiences as "the Ground and Source of All Being and therefore the presence that calls me to step beyond every boundary." [20] This is a rejuvenated liberalism of Paul Tillich.
This new community, the ecclesia, "must be able to allow God and Satan to come together in each of us. It must allow light and darkness to be united. It must bind good and evil into one. It must unite Christ with Anti-Christ, Jesus with Judas, male with female, heterosexual with homosexual." [21]
This is a church built in cloud cuckoo land – out of the minds
of
Spong and his friends! It is beyond radical. It is blasphemous!
| B. Spong & evangelicals |
He goes to great lengths in denigrating traditional, evangelical
Christianity, even to the point of making blasphemous statements such
as these: "I am free
of the God who was deemed to be incomplete unless constantly receiving
our
endless praises; the God who required that we acknowledge ourselves as
born
in sin and therefore as helpless; the God who seemed to delight in
punishing
sinners; the God who, we were told, gloried in our childlike, groveling
dependency.
Worshiping that theistic God did not allow us to grow into the new
humanity."
[23]
[Photo of Merrill Kitchen, courtesy of Churches of Christ,
Victoria]
In spite of these blasphemous statements about the
Almighty God,
Kitchen wants to give him this kind of credit: ". . . He is far from
being an atheist and is certainly more than a philosophical humanist. .
. Spong's faith is
firmly bonded to the person of Jesus." [24] But which Jesus? Paul, the
Apostle,
warned of the one who "comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one
we
proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you
received"
(2 Cor. 11:4, English Standard Version). It is evident from the
writings
of Spong that he wants nothing to do with the New Testament picture of
Jesus
Christ, yet Kitchen lauds him as "clearly a believer." [25] Both
Kitchen
and Spong have redefined believers, if this is the case.
Spong does not want to deal with conservative, fundamentalist Christianity, and believes that it has no application to life today. He comments that "nowhere is this better seen than when one observes how the word Christian is used in our contemporary world." [26] This is the pot calling the kettle black! It is Spong who has demolished the Bible's definition of a Christian.
Among Spong's 205 items in the bibliography of his latest book, [27] it is not surprising that there is not one that refutes his views or presents a scholarly evangelical perspective. I looked for Don Carson, William Lane Craig, Ben Witherington III., N. T. Wright, J. P. Moreland, Ravi Zacharias, Australia's Paul Barnett, and other leading defenders of the evangelical faith., but they were absent.
His theological supporters from the Jesus Seminar and other liberals
are
everywhere – John Crossan, Marcus Borg, Robert Funk, Michael
Goulder,
John
Hick, John A. T. Robinson, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Don
Cupitt.
Spongism is one-eyed religion that is intolerant of opposing views,
especially
those of the "fundamentalists" (evangelicals).
| C. Emptying or growing churches? Spongian religion has a killer instinct. |
One of the most damning pieces of evidence against Spong's views are
that
the facts do not stack up concerning the demise of supernatural
Christianity. What's the truth about the death of theism? Wherever
theological liberalism has taken hold, church numbers have crashed.
Based on The Episcopal Church
Annual (USA), membership of that dominantly theological liberal
denomination,
fell from a high of 3.6 million baptised Episcopalians in 1965, to 2.3
million
in 1997– a loss of fully one-third of its membership. [28] The
average
Sunday
attendance in the year 1998 was 843,213. [29] Two years later (the year
2000),
it had further declined to 839,760. [30] "Mainline [church] membership
is
down (by nearly 6 million members) since 1965" in the USA. [31]
It is no wonder that the Newark Diocese of the Episcopal Church is
talking about the need for church growth.
[31a]
There are some other strong indicators that Jesus is alive and well and the church is growing. In the Ukraine, in the past three years, some 70 new house churches have been planted in Crimea, most in places previously without a church. [33]
In the city of Xinjiang, China, there were 20-30 small churches with about 300 believers in 1994. Through courage, vision and the Lord's direction, five couples have been used to enable rapid growth. Over a period of three years, the growth has been so strong that there are now almost 500 churches with about 100,000 members in four districts. This growth has so concerned the Government that it has infiltrated the churches, persecuted the believers, and gone on television, accusing the groups of being a cult. [34]
During the last 10 years of the "Decade of Harvest" among the Nigerian Assemblies of God in Africa, there has been extraordinary growth. The church has not only gained 1.2 million new members, but also ordained 5,026 new pastors and planted 4,044 new churches in Nigeria. The emphasis on reaching previously unreached people groups led to 75 churches being planted in areas previously untouched by Christianity. [35]
World-wide, the Pentecostal movement has grown from no
adherents in 1906 to approximately 500 million today. Yet Spong has the
audacity to
say that "Christianity as we have known it increasingly displays signs
of
rigor mortis." [36]
There certainly are areas where the Christian church is showing significant
decline, especially in the Western world. About 100 years ago, Wales
experienced a heaven-sent revival. The proportion of the total Welsh
population attending church has declined from 14.6% in 1982 to 8.7% in
1995. [37]
God's church is being persecuted around the world, but is showing growth internationally. Spong's thesis is dead in the water. It is his ideology, a la John A. T. Robinson, radical theological liberalism, that kills churches.
The Episcopalians of Spong's diocese voted with their feet while he was bishop. One report
said that "Spong [had] been the Episcopal Bishop of Newark [New Jersey] since 1976. He has presided over one of the most rapid witherings of any diocese in the Episcopal Church [USA]. The most charitable assessment shows that Newark's parish membership rolls have evaporated by more than 42 percent. Less charitable accounts put the rate at over 50 percent." [38]
When we throw out the Scriptures as the standard for theology, where do we go for answers? Here we have a new kind of religion, out of the minds of Spong himself and his friends. Yet Spong thinks his views are the future of faith, a new Christianity for a new world! Welcome to Spongism, "Christianity" with a killer instinct. He is searching "for that elusive truth of God that lies beneath the literal words of that sacred text." [39] When the up-front words are too offensive to the human mind, instead of reading and interpreting them as any other piece of literature, you invent your own approach. Here, Spong wants to find the meaning behind the text. We shall see that this type of interpretation leads him to accept many things that are politically correct in our secular society -- out with the supernatural, no heaven or hell in the afterlife, acceptance of homosexuality, etc.
Yet, Spong is so blind that he cannot admit what his brand of Christianity does to churches:
"Only those whom the traditionalists mistakenly call liberals carry
within
themselves the seeds of renewal and future life for the religious
traditions
of yesterday. A title more proper than 'liberal' might well be 'open'
or
'realist.'" [40]
| D. Is Spongian religion the future of the church? |
Paul warned the Corinthians: "But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough" (2 Corinthians 11:3-4). Spong is preaching another Jesus to that of the Scriptures. His writings tell us what kind of a believer he is and what kind of a church he wants to see developed in the future. He is not a believer in the Jesus of the Scriptures, nor is his church one aligned with the New Testament.
The Spongian Jesus is not the real Jesus of the New Testament.
This is the principal of the Churches of Christ theological college in the state of Victoria, Australia, identifying Spong's "New Testament style of proclamation" with the Churches of Christ movement. "Is [Spong] a "contemporary heretic who must be silenced" or "does he offer hope to a struggling Church in a post-Christian age?" [42] The tone of Kitchen's article infers that Spong is offering hope to the church, even the Churches of Christ in Victoria.
2. Spong's theology and the Churches of Christ
"The primacy of Galilee [and not Jerusalem for the crucifixion and resurrection] means that all of the appearance narratives that purport to be the physical manifestations of the dead body that somehow was enabled to be revivified and to walk out of a tomb are also legends and myths that cannot be literalized. The risen Jesus did not literally eat fish in Jerusalem. Thomas did not touch the physical wounds. Resurrection may mean many things, but these details are not literally a part of that reality. To affirm Galilee as the primary locale in the experience of Easter is a radical step, but it is nonetheless a step that the Bible itself seems to acknowledge" [44]
"Human life alone could not produce that which we have experienced in Jesus Christ. He is of God, so the Christmas story points to truth, but the words used to describe or capture that truth are not themselves true in any literal sense." [48]
[Note: This is the existential Christ of theological liberals such as Paul Tillich, John A. T. Robinson, Rudolf Bultmann, etc. It is a redefined Jesus who is radically different to the Jesus of the New Testament.]
| E. Conclusion |
When you invent your own religion, there is no need to listen to the
text
of Scripture. Therefore, Spongian theology and its counterparts
(Tillich, J.A.T. Robinson, Bonhoeffer) can assert:
2. Paul, the man from Tarsus, was "a rigidly controlled gay male, I believe, [who] taught the Christian church what the love of God means and what, therefore, Christ means as God's agent." [54]
3. Rationalistic, humanistic, existential views are promoted. The Bible is myth. [55] The mythology of Mark's Gospel is superseded by today's knowledge. "We understand what causes wind and wave, epilepsy and deaf muteness in ways that involve no appeal to supernatural forces." [56]
4. There's no need for the supernatural in our modern world. Spong's language is, "Theism is dead." [57] But this kind of statement is not original with Spong; it is found in his mentor and friend, John A. T. Robinson [58], who wrote about "the end of theism." [59] Paul Tillich had spoken of three kinds of theism, one [60] of which "must be transcended because it is irrelevant" and another kind [61] "must be transcended because it is wrong. It is bad theology." [62]
5. Autonomous humanistic godlessness reigns. In the preface to his latest book, Spong highlights, thus supporting, the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "God would have us know that we must live as those who manage our lives without God. . . Go is weak and powerless in the world." [63]
6. The Bible's authors are out of date: "They are not in touch with emerging contemporary knowledge." [64]
7. If you don't like what the literal words are saying, make up your own and than claim they are the truth. That's what Spong has done with the birth narratives of Jesus: "My purpose here [with the birth story] is to see the truth to which these narratives point. Birth narratives tell us nothing about the birth of the person who is featured in those narratives. They do tell us a great deal, however, about the adult life of the one whose birth is being narrated." [65]
Since theology matters, Kitchen's views in support of Spong, if
promoted and accepted, will spell the demise of the Churches of Christ
if her views are widely accepted. We know it from Spong's own track
record and the record of theological liberalism world-wide.
|
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| Endnotes: |
2. Merrill Kitchen is the principal of the Churches of Christ Theological College, Mulgrave, Vic., Australia.
3. Merrill Kitchen, "The Future Church and Bishop John Shelby Spong," The Australian Christian, 28 November 2001, p. 17. This article appeared in the "Theology Matters" feature of the magazine. The Australian Christian is an official Churches of Christ magazine in Australia.
4. John Shelby Spong, A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.
5. For ease of reference, I will refer only to his latest book (ibid.), but similar beliefs are documented in his other books that I have read.
6. Kitchen, "The Future Church and Bishop John Shelby Spong," p. 17.
7. Spong, A New Christianity for a New World, p. 130.
8. Ibid., p. 77.
9. See ibid., pp. 3, 64, 74.
10. Ibid., p. 193.
11. Ibid., p. 178.
12. Ibid., p. 179.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., pp. 2, 6. Elsewhere, Spong writes: "In time the virgin birth account will join Adam and Eve and the story of the cosmic ascension as clearly recognized mythological elements in our faith tradition whose purpose was not to describe a literal event but to capture the transcendent dimensions of God in the earthbound words and concepts of first-century human beings" (John Shelby Spong, Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, p. 45).
15. Ibid., p. 124.
16. Ibid., p. 204.
17. Ibid., p. 206.
18. Ibid., p. 214.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., pp. 59-60.
21. Ibid., p. 167.
22. Ibid., p. 12.
23. Ibid., p. 75.
24. Kitchen, "The Future Church and Bishop John Shelby Spong," p. 17.
25. Ibid.
26. Spong, A New Christianity for a New World, p. 12.
27. A New Christianity for a New World.
28. These figures of decline are based on Louie Crew, "Charting the Episcopal Church. Retrieved on November 4, 2001, from http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/chartecusa.html, p. 9 (A4 size, printed).
29. Rev. Dr. Leslie P. Fairfield, "Modernist Decline and Biblical Renewal: The Episcopal Church from 1870-2000," American Anglican Council website, posted January 24, 2001. Retrieved on October 15, 2001, from http://www.americananglican.org/Issues/Issues.dfm?ID-91. On 6 May 2007, it was available from: http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.php?loc=kb&view=v&id=3486&fto=1081&
30. Louie Crew, "Growth and Decline in ECUSA Attendance, 1991-2000."
Retrieved
on 6 May 2007, from: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/growthdecline90-00.html. The Episcopalian Church USA has shown "30 years of
membership decline and over a million members lost" [The Institute on
Religion and Democracy,
"Episcopal Action." Retrieved on 6 May 2007 from: http://www.ird-renew.org/site/pp.asp?c=fvKVLfMVIsG&b=308889.
See also, "Charting the Episcopal Church," Louie Crew. Retrieved on
June 6, 2004, from http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/chartecusa.html.
31. Robert Wuthnow, "Still Toeing the Mainline," retrieved
on November 4, 2001, from http://www.beliefnet.com/story/31/story_3171_1.html. This article states that, "More than 20 million
Americans
still hold membership in mainline churches. The largest mainline
denominations
are the United Methodist Church, with 8.7 million members; the
Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America, with 5.2 million members; the Presbyterian
Church
(USA), with 2.6 million members; the Episcopal Church, with 2.5 million
members;
and the American Baptist Churches USA and the United Church of Christ,
each with 1.5 million members."
31a. The 2003 Diocesan Conference on Church Growth, October 24-25,
2003 - Xavier Center, Convent Station, NJ, retrieved from: http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/churchgrowth/
[26th December 2003]
32. "10M new converts, 32M Christian children per year," [Source: Justin Long, Assoc. Editor of World Christian Encyclopedia (David Barrett)]. World-wide statistics plus news from Bulgaria, Chile, Brazil, DAWN Fridayfax 1998 #04. Retrieved on November 4, 2001, from http://www.jesus.org.uk/dawn/1998/dawn9804.html.
33. "Ukraine: 70 new house churches in the Crimea," DAWN Fridayfax 2001 #24, News from Germany, Ukraine and China. Retrieved on November 4, 2001, from http://www.jesus.org.uk/dawn/2001/dawn24.html.
34. "China: 100,000 new believers in Xinjiang in 3 years," DAWN Fridayfax 2001 #24, News from Germany, Ukraine and China. Retrieved on November 4, 2001, from http://www.jesus.org.uk/dawn/2001/dawn24.html.
35. "Nigeria: Assemblies of God plant 4,044 new churches in 10 years," DAWN Fridayfax 2001#3. Retrieved on November 14, 2001, from http://www.jesus.org.uk/dawn/2001/dawn03.html. The source is the AoG news, 3 January 2001.
36. Spong, A New Christianity for a New World, p. 8.
37. "Wales: Church decline generally but slight increase for Anglicans," Anglican Communion News Service (ACNS), 7 March 1997. Retrieved on November 3, 2001, from www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/acnsarchive/acns1100/acns1153.html. The report went on to say that "the Church in Wales congregations (Anglicans) report that there has been a slight increase in the size of their congregations in the last five years [i.e.. prior to 1997]. The report also found that Churches identifying themselves as Anglo-Catholic or Broad, or Charismatic were growing the most."
38. "Rescuing Christianity from Bishop Kevorkian," D. Marty Lasley, review of John Shelby Spong's, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, for Anglican Voice, posted June 2 1999. Retrieved on 6 May 2007 from: http://listserv.episcopalian.org/wa.exe?A2=ind9906&L=virtuosity&H=1&P=272.
39. Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, pp. x, xi.
40. Spong, Born of a Woman, p. 176.
41. Kitchen, "The Future Church and Bishop John Shelby Spong," p. 17 (emphasis added).
42. Ibid.
43. These are based on Kitchen, "The Future Church and Bishop John Shelby Spong," p. 17.
44. John Shelby Spong, Resurrection Myth or Reality? A Bishop's Search for the Origins of Christianity. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, pp. 233, 235-236.
45. Ibid., p. 235.
46. John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, p. 207.
47. Ibid., ch. 13, n4, p. 253.
48. Ibid., p. 225.
49. Spong, Resurrection Myth or Reality, p. 287.
50. Ibid., p. 288.
51. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes in the bullet points above are from Kitchen, "The Future Church and Bishop John Shelby Spong," p. 17.
52. Spong, Resurrection Myth or Reality?, p. 288.
53. Spong, Born of a Woman, pp. 157-158.
54. Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p. 125.
55. John A. T. Robinson speaks the same kind of language about "the Genesis stories of the Creation and Fall were representations of the deepest truths about man and the universe in the form of myth rather than history, and were non the less valid for that" (Honest to God. London: SCM Press Ltd, 1963, p. 33). Rudolf Bultmann, the demythologiser of the Bible, took a similar line: "There is nothing specifically Christian in the mythical view of the world as such. It is simply the cosmology of a pre-scientific age" (Kerygma and Myth, vol. 1, p. 3, in Robinson, ibid., p. 34).
56. Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p. 143.
57. Spong, A New Christianity for a New World, p. 77.
58. Spong writes that one of the tasks of his book "is to move forward the work begun in the last century by a man who was my mentor and my friend. His name was John Arthur Thomas Robinson" (ibid., p. x).
59. Robinson, Honest to God, p. 39.
60. This is the theism of "the unspecified affirmation of God" (Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1952, p. 182).
61. This is "theological theism. . . It usually develops the so-called arguments for the 'existence' of God" (ibid., p. 184). Elsewhere, Tillich rejects the existence of the God proclaimed by orthodoxy: "Ordinary theism has made God a heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the world and mankind. The protest of atheism against such a highest person is correct. There is no evidence for his existence, nor is he a matter of ultimate concern. . ." (Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1. Digswell Place: James Nisbet & Co Ltd, 1968, p. 271).
62. Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, p. 184.
63. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, dated July 16, 1944. A fuller quote reads: "God would have us know that we must live as those who manage our lives without God. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us. . . Before God and with God we live without God. . . Go is weak and powerless in the world and that is precisely the way, the only way in which he is with us to help us." (in Spong, A New Christianity for a New World, p. ix).
64. Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p. 9.
65. Ibid., p. 215.
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