[Dialogue] Spong 11/7/07 I missed this one Sorry

[KroegerD at aol.com]

November 7, 2007  
The Five Fundamentals: A  Conclusion  

If the "Five Fundamentals" articulated by traditional Christians in the early 
 years of the 20th century represent the essence of Christianity then the 
time  has come to acknowledge that we have come to the end of this noble faith  
tradition. Those "Fundamentals" assume a supernatural, theistic deity, who  
manipulates the laws of the universe to do miracles. Isaac Newton put an end to  
that notion in the 17th century. The "Fundamentals" also assume a three-tiered 
 universe that educated people stopped believing in after Galileo. Even the  
Vatican pronounced Galileo correct in 1991. These "Fundamentals" define human  
life as something that was created perfect at some specific date in history  
(Bishop Ussher suggested 4004 B.C.) only to fall into sin and thus to require 
an  intervening act of divine rescue. That view of human origins died in the 
19th  century at the hands of Charles Darwin whose work was ultimately 
authenticated  by the discovery of DNA evidence that links all life into one common 
origin. The  "Five Fundamentals" assume that human beings can possess knowledge 
of God that  is in fact beyond the capacity of the human mind to embrace. 
Insisting that  interpretive myths can be literalized, the "Fundamentals" claim to 
possess truth  by direct revelation, not recognizing that God cannot be bound 
by the human  limits of time and space and that human words about God can 
not, therefore, be  literalized by anyone in any age. Indeed the "Five 
Fundamentals" are so bound to  a worldview and to a frame of reference that no longer 
exists that to insist  upon them as the defining convictions of a Christian is 
to close out the  possibility that modern men and women can be committed 
Christians without  twisting their brains into pre-modern pretzels.  
Since in the common mind, however, these "Fundamentals" have become  
identified with traditional Christianity itself, many people, including the  popular 
voices in the media, assume that a dismissal of these "Fundamentals"  
constitutes a dismissal of Christianity itself. Therefore, those of us who  refuse to 
surrender the title Christian either to the Benedict XVI's or to the  
Falwell-Robertson brands of contemporary Christianity have a responsibility to  say 
what it is that we do believe and why we continue to call ourselves  Christians. 
In this concluding essay on the "Five Fundamentals" I want to do  just that.  
I no longer define God as a being who exists somewhere outside the boundaries 
 of this world, who possesses supernatural power and who intervenes in human  
history periodically to answer prayers, to do a miracle or to accomplish the  
divine will. That is nothing more than the "theistic" definition of God, and 
it  must be recognized today as no more than a human creation. The theistic 
God is  portrayed as a great big human being who has escaped human limitations. 
So  deeply has "theism" captured the definition of God that the word 
"atheist,"  which literally means one who does not believe in a theistic God, has come 
to  mean one who does not believe in any God at all. Nothing could be further 
from  the truth. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchen and Sam Harris do not 
understand  that distinction. That is certainly not my situation.  
We have today finally begun to recognize that no human mind can grasp the  
reality of God, so human efforts to define God are as nonsensical as the efforts 
 of horses might be if they attempted to define a human being. God is a 
reality  that can be experienced but never defined. There is also the chance that 
when we  think we are experiencing God, we are in fact facing only our own 
delusions. All  religious systems are typically loathe to face or to admit that 
possibility..  
Honesty compels me to state that I am a God-intoxicated, but not a theistic  
believing Christian. I experience God as that transcendent dimension of life 
and  I use the undefined human word "other" to name. God to me is experienced 
as the  power of life that surges through the universe and that comes to  
self-consciousness in human beings alone. God to me is experienced as the  presence 
of love that enhances life and that human beings alone can name. God to  me 
is experienced as the "Ground of Being" empowering all that is, to be what  
every created thing can be, but which only human life can understand or  
articulate. So I worship this God of life by living fully and I call this aspect  of 
God "Holy Spirit." I worship this source of love by loving wastefully and I  
see this quality uniquely in the portrait of the all loving Jesus of Nazareth. I 
 worship this "Ground of Being" that I "the Father" by having the courage to 
be  all that I can be. I think that the God experience met in the affirmation 
of  life, love and being is in fact a therapeutic pathway to wholeness and 
that  wholeness is and can be a factor in restoring one to health and healing. I 
do  not think that this is miraculous or supernatural, I think it is rather 
natural  and real. I do not believe that I could tolerate emotionally a chaotic 
world run  by a miracle-working, manipulating, capricious deity rather than 
the universe in  which I live, which is stable and ordered by the natural laws 
of the universe.  
I define myself as a Christian, by which I mean I am a disciple of Jesus, who 
 is for me the human icon through which I embrace the reality of God. When I 
look  at Jesus' life, as I have received it through both tradition and 
scripture, I  see one who was so fully alive that I perceive the Source of Life in 
him. I see  one who so totally loved that I perceive the Source of Love in him. 
I see one  who was free to be all that he was meant to be so I perceive the 
Ground of Being  in him. Since my God experience convinces me that God comes to 
me as life, love  and being, I have no problem joining with St. Paul and 
saying of this Jesus that  "God was in Christ." It is that undoubted experience 
that underlies all the  doctrine about the divinity of Christ. To meet this Jesus 
is for me to meet the  reality of God through a human medium. That does not 
find me literalizing the  ancient symbols through which my ancestors sought to 
explain the God presence  they believed they met in him. I am not much 
attracted to primal myths like  virgin births, miraculous acts, the resuscitation of 
deceased bodies or the  cosmic ascension of a deity returning to the divine 
abode above the sky. I do  believe with all my being, however, that the reality 
of God transcends all human  barriers including the ultimate boundary of 
death. Jesus is vital to me in  understanding that God presence. My hope for 
eternity also resides in that  conviction.  
I do not believe in something called original sin or what classical theology  
called the "fall of man." The sooner Christianity can part with that 
antiquated  idea, the better. I am a post-Darwinian not a pre-Darwinian. Human life 
was  never made in a state of perfection so it could not possibly have fallen 
from  that original perfection into the trough of "original sin." If we are not  
fallen, it is nonsensical to suggest, as classical Christianity does, that 
only  the intervening, rescuing God could save us. Rather, human life has 
evolved over  4 ½ -5 billion years until it arrived at our present self-conscious 
stage. The  evil that marks human life does not rise, therefore, out of some 
mythical,  pre-historic fall into sin but in the reality of the continued 
incompleteness of  our humanity as we evolve into what we were created to be. So we 
do not need a  savior or one who will rescue us from our sin. What we need 
rather is to be  empowered to become more deeply and completely human, to live 
creatively with  the chronic anxiety that is the unique mark of self-conscious 
creatures who know  their limits. Thus the story of the Christ must be totally 
rethought in light of  this new understanding of human origins. The old way 
cannot be restored to  credibility even by artificial respiration.  
These facts alone render the current mythology about Jesus as the divine  
visitor to earth to be both dated and inadequate. They reveal Pope Benedict  
XVI's book about Jesus to be completely irrelevant to the current Christological  
debate. This new perception of our origins will quickly and totally take the  
Church out of the business of providing certainty and security and will cast 
us  finally into a deep and radically different search for truth. The context 
in  which all religious questions are discussed will be changed. "The Five  
Fundamentals" will be seen as little more than fading images in a rear mirror  
reflecting a world that no longer exists. These realities raise powerful and  
provocative questions. Does the Christian Institution, in any of its forms, have 
 the ability, strength or willingness to undergo this radical new process? 
There  is little evidence to encourage one to think so. Pope Benedict XVI still 
lives  in a fantasy world in which he regards ultimate truth as something that 
has been  captured in the creeds, doctrines and dogmas of his Church. He 
assumes that a  first century Bible, a fourth century creed and thirteenth century 
dogmas can  escape the limits of their time and place in history. He 
continues to play  superiority games, asserting that his Roman Catholic Church alone 
possesses  ultimate truth, thus rendering all others as "defective," an 
argument too absurd  to elicit defensiveness. The Archbishop of Canterbury has, at 
the same time,  sacrificed truth for unity, as if a church united in homophobia 
or any other  prejudice is worth fighting to save. Mainline Protestantism is 
in such a  statistical freefall that with a few notable exceptions in each 
tradition, it  has lost the nerve needed to stand for much of anything. These 
forms of  Christianity will die of boredom long before they die of controversy.  
Evangelicals and fundamentalist offer the snake oil cure of religious 
certainty,  surrounding their 2000-3000 year old sacred scriptures with the irrational 
claim  of inerrancy. The Christian Church of tomorrow can live without any of 
the "Five  Fundamentals," but it can no longer live with them. It is time to 
say so loudly,  persistently and bluntly.  
A new Christianity for a new world is struggling to be born. It will not be a 
 majority movement, but like the ancient biblical images it will accept its  
vocation to be leaven in the lump, light in the darkness and salt in the soup 
of  this world. I am confident that such a day is dawning in the Christian 
world. I  await its arrival with what Charles Dickens called, "Great 
Expectations."  
John Shelby Spong  
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Bill Beairsto, via the Internet, writes:  
I love your writing and your views that embrace compassionate deeds rather  
than creedal concepts. It seems to me that your message would have a much  
broader appeal if you opened your invitation to follow your belief paradigm to  
all comers, not just Christians; and broadened your teaching authority to other  
sages and ethical and moral teachers beyond Jesus. I think your call and 
message  could be far more inclusive than being restricted to Christians alone. 
Have you  ever addressed a non-Christian audience and broadened your message to 
accept  their way of worshipping God?  
Dear Bill,  
Thank you for your letter and suggestion. Yes, I have addressed audiences of  
other faiths, especially in synagogues, but I have also conducted a dialogue  
with a rabbi and his congregation in Richmond, Virginia, with a Buddhist monk 
in  China and with a trio of Hindu scholars in India. Every significant 
contact I  have had with other faith traditions has deepened my appreciation for 
what they  are and has broadened my understanding of my own faith.  
I do not believe that I contribute to the interfaith dialogue by seeking to  
master a faith tradition other than my own. While I certainly do not think 
that  God is a Christian, I believe the ultimate pathway to religious unity comes 
 through my willingness to go so deeply into Christianity that I escape its  
limits. Only then can I bring to the interfaith table the pearl of great price 
 that I believe Christianity has to offer. I hope that all religious people 
of  all traditions will be equally dedicated to discovering the essence of 
holiness  that their faith tradition possesses so that they can share with me the 
essence,  the pearl of great price that they have received from their life in 
Judaism,  Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. My goal is to enrich the world with 
the essence of  Christianity even as I am being enriched by the essence of other 
worship  traditions.  
I hope I never disparage or look down on the way any person journeys into the 
 mystery and wonder of God. I do not want to be against any religion. I want 
to  walk beyond all religions, even my own, in my lifetime quest for the truth 
of  God that all of us can only "see through a glass darkly."  
Thank you for writing.  
John Shelby Spong 



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