Review of Apologia Vol. 7(2/3) 2000 -
"Focus on John Shelby Spong"

This issue runs to 135 closely-typed A4 pages and follows the previous "Focus on Jim Veitch" which was reviewed in Newsletter 36. This journal announces, in passing on page 86, that future issues will focus on Lloyd Geering and Don Cupitt.

The editorial sets the scene: this issue "contains a careful analysis of Bishop Spong - the man and his message - from a conservative Christian position". Battle-lines are drawn: the media exhibits "fawning devotion"; "candidness" can get in the way of truth; there is error to be combated. All of which is undertaken. Conservative Christians will be well-pleased by this journal.

Letters to the Editor are followed by biographical and bibliographical background information about Spong. He is credited with 16 books and 101 articles up to the end of 1997.

 Spong's Twelve Theses - A Call For A New Reformation  (see Newsletter 27 p4) are reproduced and are savaged by the bulldog pen of George Duggan. One wonders how persuasive Duggan's assessments "garbage" and "nonsense" will prove to those not already against Spong. However, in a footnote, Duggan's better nature takes over and he gives a helpful analysis of how science, as we know it, was helped into being by medieval natural theology.

This is followed by what promised to be a commentary on Spong's 1997 visit to New Zealand and which includes a misreference (p13) to the Geering "memorial" Lecture. Their Editor also gets it wrong on page 17 by referring to the Geering "Fellowship" Lectures. The lectures are simply the "Geering Lectures" and they are arranged by The St Andrews Trust for the Study of Religion and Society. However, the article barely mentions Spong and instead gives a history of all the other "intellectuals attacking the Gospels" as far back as Celsus in the year 180. A reference to Spong's approach to Christianity as "theological snake oil" only adds to a reputation for intemperance on Duggan's part which threatens to rival Spong's. As earlier, Duggan's mood brightens at the end of this article with an attempt at a helpful discussion on Fundamentalism.

Then follows 33 pages of well-articulated criticism of Spong, by the editor David Lane, under the overall heading of "Redefining God in Man's Image". This is followed by a 20 page critique of Spong's autobiography Here I Stand.

A mild rebuke of Spong by the late Brian Davies (Anglican Archbishop of NZ) straddles the fence - some agreement, some disagreement.

A further twenty pages follow, written by "Laymen" who restate the conservative Christian disagreement with Spong.

The book Can a Bishop Be Wrong? is introduced on page 93 and reviewed on page 116. Unsurprisingly the answer given, and with many details, is "yes".

Dr Stephen Smith, Professor of Theology and Ethics, rightly discerns that there is a "great gulf fixed" between Christian Theism and Monism. He attempts to show that Spong is a monist and therefore on the wrong side of the gulf. (For a more accurate position read Lloyd Geering's article on Trinitarianism on page 10 of Newsletter 38, and in full on the website).

A fluffy article by Wayne Jackson of The Christian Courier is padded out with two anecdotes which lower the otherwise serious tone of the journal.

Spong's Resurrection: Myth or Reality is reviewed by Kathleen Loncar in a style that avoids citing the conservative theology of the rest of the journal. If you are bored by liberal and conservative Christians slugging it out like punch-drunk boxers, then you might find this the best item in the journal. It is followed by a less satisfactory review of the same book by Gerald O'Collins, Professor of Fundamental Theology, Gregorian University, Rome. He dismisses Spong's arguments as "not new" and, without evidence, writes that Spong "pushes a midrashic theory to his own idiosyncratic extreme" in order to explain the restoration of faith in Jesus on the part of the post-crucifixion disciples.

An Australian, Frank Mobbs, reviewed Spong's Why Christianity Must Change or Die and sees it as a "recipe for the extinction of Christianity". He reasonably observes (p114) that Spong's reformulation of Christianity "means discarding all those beliefs which make someone a Christian."

George Duggan returns to review Jim Stuart's The Many Faces of Christ (St Andrews Trust for the Study of Religion and Society 1998).

As if his trial in the previous issue of Apologia were not enough, Jim Veitch sustains another 8 pages of criticism from Justin Cargill, who brings in Jim Stuart, John Murray and Burton Mack to stand at the bar with Veitch.

I reviewed the previous issue of Apologia in Newsletter 36 and that review is republished (with my permission) in this journal. It is followed by a "Response" from David Lane, the editor of Apologia. I will respond separately.

Observations

"Antecedant Assumptions"

Liberals are accused by Duggan (pp14, 18) of having "antecedent assumptions". These are offered as evidence of a closed mind in regard to the existence of a supernatural order and of supernatural beings. But surely these conservatives also have "antecedent assumptions" as the Statement of Belief so eloquently sets out. If liberals like Spong can be accused of acting out their assumptions by wielding Occam's Razor with reckless abandon, then cannot the conservatives also stand guilty of using theirs' to transfix Christianity in potting cement?

Yes . and by self-declaration. On page 16, George Duggan attempts a distinction between "moderate" and "extreme" Fundamentalism, which may be little more than a difference of degree. The moderate form has its origins in a series of pamphlets issued around 1910 in the United States dealing with what the Protestant authors took to be "the fundamentals" of Christian faith.

Apologia's Statement of Belief, both in content and in creedal centrality, bears a strong resemblance. In recent years, Lloyd Geering has identified "fundamentalism" in areas of life other than the overtly religious. "What all fundamentalists have in common is their conviction that they are absolutely right". He quotes, as an example, "New Right" economic theory.

What Christian liberals appear to worry about in Christian Fundamentalism is not so much the reduction of Christianity to a credit-card-sized manifesto but rather the ferocity of its proclamation.

Fundamentalism starts with the view that "we" have the truth and that there is no scheme of thought, philosophy or discourse that can cast doubt on it.

The implied license to act from this base of such certainty (what, in the Christian sense, Geering refers to as "idolatry of the Bible") should keep the rest of us alert for our safety.

In his St Andrews Trust lectures series Crisis in the Christian Way (1993) Lloyd Geering talked of a prediction made in 1923 by the scholar Kirsopp Lake, that the traditionalists would force out the radicals and then become gradually absorbed by the fundamentalists. "Thus, he said, the church would shrink from left to right". And, so it has.

Biblical Innerancy and Figurative Language

The first item in the Statement of Belief deals with Biblical inerrancy (not the same as "literally true") and it is the major plank of most rebuttals by liberals. However, on page 44 Lane writes "All conservative New Testament scholars would agree that the Gospels and the birth narratives do not have only a flat, literal meaning." He then goes on to deny Spong's claim that the Gospels are midrash, something which does not concern us at this point because we need to note that we are left with a hanging concession - if not "flat, literal" then what? Lane offers only "great artistry at the level of narrative and theology." Why not be specific and allow that there is parable, hyperbole, metaphor and myth? But it is not clear how one is to know whether a given text can be treated as "metaphorical" or even "mythological". Only a literal reading of the NT would allow Lane to write (p43) "the founder of no other religion in human history besides the Lord Jesus Christ, has predicted his own death and bodily resurrection, fulfilled that prophecy, and convinced generations of His followers . that He overcame death and lives for evermore." To say that Christ believed the Scriptures to be inerrant seems like question-begging in that Christ's supposed beliefs are recorded in the self-same Scriptures.

Myths: Legitimate Expression

Given the concession on page 134 that "some conservative evangelicals show a weak understanding of myth when they dismiss it as 'mere myth'", there appears to be an opportunity for Apologia to explore this more in the future.

A Plague On Both Your Houses

In this edition of Apologia we find: Spong, Geering and Veitch described as "hucksters of modernity" (p37); Spong described as "Pickwickian", but soon transformed to "Don Quixote" (p46); and Cupitt described as an "atheist" (p68) in what appears to be a piece on name-calling.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, has accused Spong of intemperance and hectoring. Reading Spong's autobiography one can see merit in the charge. Spong is not a diplomat - what goes down well as a one-liner from a rostrum often looks threadbare in print. He is a charismatic speaker and personally charming with people he likes. It was as much lack of diplomacy that sunk Galileo and there may be a parallel here for Spong to consider - being "right" is only half the story.

If we can discount for Spong's errors and sometimes over-the-top forms of expression, we might end with an example of a theme that is central to Spong's challenge to conservative Christianity. On page 101 there is a quotation from page 147 of his Living In Sin: "The Levitical condemnation of homosexuality is a premodern illustration of ignorance." In that statement we see a clear example of the great gulf that exists between liberal and conservative Christians. The former are prepared to set aside the scriptural record of earlier expressions of faith in the name of an understanding and compassion now thought to have been lacking then. But conservatives see the Bible as the inerrant and unchanging record of the transactions between humankind and a sternly-loving consistent God.

But, since our opinions on the nature of just about everything else has changed throughout the 3000 year life of the Bible, why cannot also our views on the nature of God and the requirements placed on humankind?

After all, all Christians agree that there was a significant change of perspective 2000 years ago.  

Noel Cheer
Sea of Faith
http://www.geocities.com/athens/marble/1826/