[Dialogue] Spong on theism and its alternatives
Janice & Abe Ulangca
aulangca at stny.rr.com
Sat Jun 18 11:54:28 EDT 2005
Most important: "Living the Questions" is not for everyone! In fact, there is an orientation session in which participants go over a "Disclaimer" page. It says "This study is not for -- " and lists things such as those whose personal faith requires them to believe that the Bible is the inerrant and inspired word of God -- those who believe the reason mainline churches are losing members is because they aren't preaching the true Gospel... etc. It is also not for those who want certainty - wrapped up "answers" to the big questions in life. The general attitude of this curriculum is not to even try to "convert" such folks. If their present stance toward Christianity helps them grow in love and in relationship to God and others - and particularly if they are not using their brand of Christianity to bludgeon others - why, blessings on them. But these days there are many who cannot be Biblical or creedal literalists, and have turned away from Christianity, sometimes regretfully, because they have too many questions that don't seem welcome. These are folks who may say, "Thank you, thank you! I always thought there must be something more..." and whose lives can be lit up and transformed (as some of us were by RS-1).
So my best advice is to try to discern where potential participants are. If church leaders are among the certainty folks, steer them somewhere else to avoid indignant fights. Better to have 5 seekers than 25, 20 of whom are angry because a critical approach to the Bible or tradition is "ruining" their faith.
Generally the procedures seem good for the sessions, even including the timing suggestions. One thing I pushed hard to change was the suggestion that we start every session with participants giving a brief report on the state of their lives, using the metaphor of a weather report. (Partly cloudy, stormy, etc.) Too much danger of giving the impression that the major thing we are about is "supporting" each others' feelings. So the 3 clergy and I who are taking turns facilitating the sessions are leaving that out. We also revised the Expectations of Participants points; I'll send ours to you, Bob, if you're interested (after July 6). We are not having a meal, but are using the tea ceremony alternative. Each person has session materials printed out from the internet, in 3-ring notebooks. So far we've had the Orientation session and Session One: "An Invitation to Journey: The Role of Biblical Authority." The selected ecumenical participants -- seekers -- are eating it up, including me.
One other tip: For wonderful background on this "emerging paradigm" approach to Christianity and the session topics, get Marcus Borg's book The Heart of Christianity. So clear, so true, so exciting. But perhaps you already have it.
Best wishes,
Janice Ulangca
----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Hanson
To: 'Colleague Dialogue'
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 2:24 PM
Subject: RE: [Dialogue] Spong on theism and its alternatives
Janice, I appreciated your comment and noticed your mentioning "Living the
Questions" I have purchased this program for the congregation and community
I am now serving in Xmas tree and lake country in East central West about 50
miles west of the Fox River Valley. Could you give me some more things about
how you do it and responses. This will be mostly lay people, Rick Dines and
I have been comparing notes also, they are using it in a couple of
congregations in Milwaukee. Thanks for your help and ideas. Peace Koshin,
Bob Hanson, formerly Milw area and order, Hartford and Japan.
-----Original Message-----
From: Dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:Dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Janice & Abe Ulangca
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 3:54 PM
To: Colleague Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Spong on theism and its alternatives
Wow! What a thought-provoking essay from Spong.
When I have more time (sometime in July!) I'll share with you about a
phenomenal curriculum series called "Living the Questions". Good
procedures for 2 1/2 hour sessions, including a 30-minute DVD with pithy
bits from folks like John (they call him Jack) Spong, Marcus Borg, Dominic
Crossan, 15 or so other scholars. Then good conversation questions,
discussion in pairs & plenary, experiencing various kinds of spiritual
practices. 25 of us heretics - half peace & justice folks, half other
seekers, from 8 congregations have just started this 12 week series, and are
having a great time. We'll all need to miss a week or 2 sometime this
summer, but want to get in on all we can. Two Methodist clergy, 1 Catholic
priest among the group. Exciting.
Janice Ulangca
----- Original Message -----
From: KroegerD at aol.com
To: MICAH6-8 at topica.com
Cc: Dialogue at wedgeblade.net
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 1:31 PM
Subject: [Dialogue] Spong on theism and its alternatives
June 15, 2005
Can One Be Christian Without Being a Theist?
As one who lectures extensively across this nation and the world, I have
been
asked questions by my audiences that have ranged from the naive to the
profound, from the obvious to the obtuse. Some have been hostile,
designed to
embarrass, attack, and minimize. Some have been seeking in the wasteland
some
hint that the living water of faith might yet be available. No one,
however, has
ever confronted me with a question at once so penetrating and yet so
devastating as the one with which I began this column.
It was articulated several years ago not by a critic of the Christian
Faith
but by a deeply committed layperson who had even thought for a time about
seeking ordination. It went to the very core of the contemporary
theological
debate and forced me to think in a brand new direction. Theism is the
historic
way men and women have been taught to think about God and most people
think it
is the only conceivable way to think about God.
The primary image of God in the Bible is surely the theistic image; that
is a
God conceived of as a Being, supernatural in power, external to this
world
but periodically invading it to answer prayers or rescue a person or
nation in
distress. This theistic Being is inevitably portrayed in human terms as a
person who has a will, who loves, rewards, and punishes. Although one can
find
other images of God in the scriptures, this is the predominant and
familiar
one.
Theism is also the understanding of God revealed in the liturgies of the
Christian churches where we meet God as one who desires praise, elicits
confession, reveals the divine will, and calls us into the spiritual life
of
communion with this divine Being.
So dominant is this definition of God that to reject theism is to be an
a-theist. An atheist is one who denies the theistic concept of God and,
since
theism exhausts most peoples' definition of God, that is heard to be
saying
there is no God. So when one is confronted with the question, "Can one be
a
Christian without being a theist?" the door is opened to much theological
speculation. This question can only be asked when one lives in a world
where the
traditional theistic view of God has become inoperative because of the
explosion
in human knowledge over the last five hundred years.
We once attributed to the will of this deity everything we did not
understand, from sickness to tragedy to sudden death to extreme weather
patterns. But
today sickness is diagnosed and treated with no reference to God
whatsoever.
Tragedies like the attack on the World Trade Center, tornadoes, floods
and
tsunamis are investigated by this secular society without much reference
to the
will of God. That was certainly not the case when things like the Black
Death or the bubonic plague, swept across the world. When death strikes
suddenly
today, we do autopsies that reveal a massive coronary occlusion or a
cerebral
hemorrhage as the cause. We do not speculate on why this external Deity
might have wanted to punish this particular person with sudden death. Even
what
the insurance companies still call "acts of God" are today thought to be
completely explainable in nontheistic language. We chart the formation of
hurricanes from the time when they develop as low pressure systems in the
southern
oceans and we mark their paths until these weather systems are broken up.
No
meteorologist I know of refers to these phenomena of nature as divinely
caused
to inflict godly punishment upon a wayward region, people, or nation.
One English priest and theologian, Michael Goulder, became an atheist when
he
decided the way he had traditionally conceived of God was nonsensical
since,
in his words, God "no longer has any work to do." This God no longer
cures
sicknesses, directs the weather, fights wars, punishes sinners or rewards
faithfulness. The idea of an external supernatural deity who invades human
affairs periodically to impose the divine will, though still given lip
service in
worship settings, has died culturally. If God is identified exclusively
with
the theistic understanding of God, then it is fair to say that culturally
God
has ceased to live in our world.
If the theistic understanding of God exhausts the human experience of God,
then the answer to the question of the layperson is clear. No, it is not
possible to be a Christian without being a theist. But if God can be
envisioned in
some way other than inside the theistic categories of our religious past,
then perhaps a doorway into a new religious future can be opened. To make
that
transition is what I regard as the most pressing theological issue of this
generation.
Christianity has been shaped by traditional theistic concepts. Jesus was
identified in some sense as the incarnation of the theistic God. It was
said
that he came to do "the Father's (read: the external supernatural supreme
Being's) will." Indeed, Jesus was portrayed as a sacrifice offered to this
God to
bring an end to human estrangement from the Creator. Theologians talked of
original sin and "the fall," to which, it was asserted, the cross spoke
with
healing power and in which drama of salvation the shed blood of Jesus
played a
central role. But in a world that has abandoned any theological sense of
offering sacrifices to an angry deity, what could this interpretation of
the cross
of Christ possibly mean? In a post-Darwinian world, where creation is not
finished but is even now ongoing and ever expanding, the idea of a fall
from a
perfect world into sin and estrangement is nonsensical. The idea that
somehow
the very nature of the heavenly God required the death of Jesus as a
ransom
to be paid for our sins is ludicrous. A human parent who required the
death of
his or her child as a satisfaction for a relationship that had been
broken
would be either arrested or confined to a mental institution. Yet
behavior we
have come to abhor in human beings is still a major part of the language
of
worship in our churches. It is the language of our ancient theistic
understanding of God. It is also language doomed to irrelevance and
revulsion. At this
point the real question thus becomes, "Can Christianity be separated from
ancient theistic concepts and still be a living faith?" That is why this
inquiry
from this layperson was such a threatening, scary question. Once it is
raised to consciousness, it will never go away and will destabilize
forever the
only understanding of God most of us have ever had.
The "religious right" does not understand the issues involved here. On the
other hand, the secular society where God has been dismissed from life has
also
answered this question by living as if there is no God. Only those who
can
first raise this question into consciousness, and who then refuse to
sacrifice
their sense of the reality of God when all theistic concepts fail, will
ever
entertain or address these issues. This debate already rages in the
theological academy where God has not been spoken of as an external,
supernatural
Being, periodically invading the world, in decades. Yet the experience of
God as
divine presence found in the midst of life is all but universally
attested.
Jesus as a revelation of this divine presence is at the heart of the
Christian claim, but the way it has traditionally been processed and
transmitted is
now all but universally rejected by the academy.
So perhaps the major theological task of our times is to seek a new
language
in which to translate the premodern theistic categories into the
postmodern,
nontheistic language of tomorrow. The religious leader who does not
address
these issues offers little more than an unbelievable 'opiate for the
people.'
I cannot begin to say how much the posing of this frontier question about
the
relationship between the Christian faith and the theistic language of the
past encouraged me from that day to this. It is the crucial concept in
developing a revolution in theological inquiry. Most Christology seeks to
explain how
the external theistic deity could be met in the person of Jesus. Most
moral
theology is based on the assumption that a theistic deity will dispense
reward or punishment. Most prayer is addressed to an external theistic
deity who
has the power to answer those prayers with an act of miraculous
intervention.
Most liturgy is directed toward this external theistic deity. Theism is
therefore the lynchpin that once pulled brings the traditional
formulations of the
Christian faith crashing down. Reformation and the future life of the
Christian church depends on the ability of the contemporary Christian to
dismiss
theism as an adequate explanation of God, without dismissing the God
experience
and even the God experience in Jesus as unreal. It is no wonder this
debate
scares so many.
The present split in the developed Christian world between fundamentalism
and
a growing secularity rises out of this very issue. The fundamentalists
(who
come in both a Protestant and a catholic version) refuse to engage the
issue
because they see no way out. The secular humanists embrace the debate but
see
no value left in traditional Christianity. My vocation has become to
dismiss
the theistic explanations without dismissing the God experience. Check
with
me in fifty years and I will tell you whether or not I have succeeded.
-- John Shelby Spong
Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong
Marcia Wadsworth, via the Internet, writes:
Why do others such as Tim LaHaye and certain church groups, who I presume
are
well educated on biblical matters, insist that every word in the Bible is
inerrant. Have they never been introduced to Biblical criticism? Could
they be
afraid to question?
Dear Marcia,
Religion is a strange and sometimes even an irrational thing. People have
an
amazing ability to compartmentalize learning so that various things never
have to interact in their minds. So it is that apparently educated people
can
actually suspend their thought processes and reject evolution for
"creation
science," seek to deny that homosexuality is a given rather than a chosen
way of
life or even believe that miracles occur whenever they pray for them. It
is
not that their minds are closed so much as it is that they cannot allow
anything into their minds that threatens the core of their
security-giving
religious faith. As I get older, I am impressed by two constant truths
1. It is not easy to be human. Anxiety and mortality have to be
embraced
by self-conscious creatures and that is what makes our humanity so unique
among the creatures of this earth.
2. Religion is primarily a search for security and not a search for
truth. Religion is what we so often use to bank the fires of our anxiety.
That is
why religion tends toward becoming excessive, neurotic, controlling and
even
evil. That is why a religious government is always a cruel government.
People need to understand that questioning and doubting are healthy,
human
activities to be encouraged not to be feared. Certainly is a vice not a
virtue. Insecurity is something to be grasped and treasured. A true and
healthy
religious system will encourage each of these activities. A sick and
fearful
religious system will seek to remove them.
--John Shelby Spong
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