[Dialogue] {Spam?} Spong January 2, 2008

[KroegerD at aol.com]

January 2, 2008 
South Africa's "New Reformation  Network"

It is a relatively new organization. They call it "The New Reformation  
Network." Its primary leaders are three Afrikaans professors. Two of them, Dr.  
Izak Spangenberg, Professor of Old Testament Studies and Dr. Pieter Craffert,  
Professor of New Testament Studies, are colleagues at the University of South  
Africa in Pretoria; the third is Dr. Hansie Wolmarans, Professor of Theology at 
 the University of Johannesburg. Of the three, only Dr. Wolmarans is 
ordained,  serving as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church, though he began his career 
as a  pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church. That Church forced him out for his  
opposition to apartheid and his perennial refusal to interpret the Bible in a 
 fundamentalist manner. Heresy was the charge, but competence was the 
reality.  Izak Spangenberg has also felt the wrath of the Dutch Reformed Church. In  
Matthew Fox-like fashion, he has publicly challenged both the truth and the  
literal accuracy of the Bible's opening myth of creation and fall, dismissing  
original sin as an outdated concept laid on the Church by Augustine in the  
fourth century. It has been used, he has written publicly, primarily as the  
means through which the Church has through the centuries sought to enhance  
guilt, dependency and helplessness, while engaging in behavior control. Though  
trained, prepared and qualified for ordination in the Dutch Reformed Church, Dr.  
Spangenberg was invited and urged by Church officials to resign from the 
Church  altogether. He declined that "invitation" and simply withdrew from the  
ordination process itself. He was then vilified, attacked and had his character  
assassinated by those who headed that apartheid-defending Church. For Pieter  
Craffert academic freedom caused him to sever his ties with that Church.  
These three men, however, did not simply slink away into the woodwork as  
their critics had hoped. Instead, they decided to fight for the soul of their  
rejecting Church. Far from threatening to leave the Church, they threatened to  
transform it and proceeded to do so.  
As scholars, these three professors were obviously well read. They were  
enthusiastic about the last 200 years of critical biblical scholarship, which  had 
broken into public awareness in Germany as early as 1834 with the  
publication of the monumental work by David Friedrich Strauss entitled "The Life  of 
Jesus Critically Examined." Strauss, a 27 year old New Testament scholar at  
Tubingen University, had himself paid the price that scholars frequently have to  
pay. Far from being appreciated for his brilliance, Strauss was dismissed by 
the  university, a sacrifice deemed necessary by the authorities to quell the 
uproar  his book created. He was never hired again at any European school of 
higher  learning. These South African scholars had, however, embraced Strauss's  
insights. They were also devotees of what came to be known as the  
Graf-Wellhausen school of thought in Germany, which created the consensus that  the 
Torah was not the work of Moses at all, but of at least four separate  sources 
written and interwoven over a period of at least 500 years of Jewish  history. 
They had mastered the groundbreaking work of German New Testament  scholar 
Rudolf Bultmann, who shaped most dramatically 20th century biblical  studies. 
Recently they had become familiar with the work of the Jesus Seminar in  America, 
resonating with its aims and taking courage from the realization that  they 
were not alone in the fight against fundamentalism.  
Forming as their vehicle for change "The New Reformation Network," they began 
 to wonder if there were others in their land who were equally turned off by 
what  they perceived Christianity was becoming and they determined to find 
out. The  three of them began to crisscross that nation, lecturing on reforming  
Christianity and seeking those who might share their passion and be willing to 
 stand with them in building a new Christianity in a new South Africa. The  
response was encouraging and a loose network came together that began to meet 
on  the third Sunday of every month to have discussions, to read books together 
and  to be a "worshiping community" for those who could no longer be 
fundamentalists,  but who were not willing to give up on Christianity.  
The group now numbers about 80 people with an average attendance at regular  
meetings of about 40. Those numbers in and of themselves are not significant,  
but their presence was sufficiently threatening to many in South Africa's 
still  dominant Dutch Reformed Church to bring about sustained attacks from its  
leaders, which has had the effect of establishing the "New Reformation 
Network"  as a force with which to reckon in South Africa's religious life.  
It was out of this "New Reformation Network" that the invitation was issued  
to me to come to South Africa. The request was that I deliver a series of  
lectures primarily at the two universities where these three scholars taught.  
I accepted the invitation immediately for reasons about which I wrote last  
week and will not repeat. Before I had left on my first visit to this country 
in  1976, I, along with eight other Anglican bishops, had laid my hands on the 
head  of the Dean of the Anglican Cathedral at St. Mary's in Johannesburg, to 
make him  the Bishop of Lesotho. His name was Desmond Tutu. I had felt at that 
time the  hot breath of anxious violence that was engulfing the land. I had 
seen the  dehumanizing power of apartheid, which produced rising anger among 
blacks and  rising fear among whites. I departed fully expecting to see this 
country bathed  in the blood of a racially-tinged civil war. It did not happen; 
instead the  miracle of reconciliation occurred.  
There was, however, another miracle happening in this land to which the media 
 paid scant attention. An apartheid supporting Christianity, located 
primarily in  the Dutch Reformed Church and based on biblical fundamentalism was as 
dead as  apartheid itself. Christianity, like South Africa itself needed to be 
rebuilt.  To participate in that process and to be part of that struggle were 
the reasons  that these three professors invited me to return to this land.  
My itinerary began with a daylong seminar under the auspices of the  
University of South Africa in Pretoria. I gave the opening keynote address on  
contemporary biblical scholarship, seeking primarily to demonstrate the  interpretive 
power of the synagogue, in which the story of Jesus lived for at  least forty 
years before a written gospel was created. Following the lecture I  responded 
to the questions from an audience made up primarily of academics and  clergy. 
This segment filled the first two hours of that day and was followed by  
three additional lectures given by my three hosts, to which I gave prepared  
responses, after which the process was opened up to the full participation of  the 
audience.  
Izak Spangenburg gave the second address in which he demonstrated in a  
powerful and profound way just how a 4th Century theologian named Augustine of  
Hippo had distorted the Adam and Eve story so that it could undergird his  
particular theology of creation, fall and redemption. Portraying Jesus as the  
divine rescuer is what made the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus  necessary. 
It thus was Augustine who shaped the way that Christianity has been  
understood from that date until relatively recently. That understanding has,  however, 
been rendered inoperative by the now well-established insights of  Charles 
Darwin. Professor Spangenberg was brilliant and to his provocative  presentation 
I responded with enthusiasm.  
After lunch, Pieter Craffert tackled the topic of understanding the  
resurrection of Jesus in the 21st century, seeking to find a middle ground  between 
those who insist that the resurrection must be understood as a physical  
resuscitation of Jesus' body in an ultimate miracle of divine intervention and  those 
who have dismissed the story of Jesus' resurrection as a kind of  pre-modern 
superstition. His newest book on Jesus as a shaman is now available  in South 
Africa.  
The final lecture was delivered by Professor Hansie Wolmarans on the subject  
of misogyny in Christian history. It was a gripping portrayal complete with  
quotations from Christian leaders throughout the ages that have contributed to 
 the dehumanization of women in both the Church and society. Illustrating his 
 lecture with slides of paintings that revealed misogyny in all its  
ecclesiastical glory, he also showed how the story of the virgin birth had fed  this 
stream of negativity toward women. She has never been the "ideal woman,"  she 
has been a male portrait of what men think they want women to be: passive,  
docile and obedient. The response to this presentation was electrifying.  
Suddenly a new Christianity was being debated by clergy and many of the faculty  of 
this university. The attention of the press was even piqued by this seminar  
and four stories, two in the major national English language newspapers and two  
in the major national Afrikaans language newspapers, brought these themes 
and,  not coincidentally, my visit to the attention of the nation. A two hour  
one-on-one radio interview with South Africa's most listened to radio interview  
program, hosted by Mixael De Kock, continued to build the public awareness.  
Attendance grew at the other lectures on the tour. My books literally sold out 
 in South Africa and "The New Reformation Network" looked like it had become 
a  major player in the religious debate in that country.  
I left South Africa exhilarated and hopeful not just for the political  
process that seeks to build a multi-racial democracy on the history of deep  
racism, but for the revitalization of Christianity, which is also so obviously  
going on. The Christianity that had supported apartheid was in the process of  
being reformed in a positive way. It was a great honor to meet these courageous  
professors, their supporters and friends. This is a new nation within which is 
 being built a new understanding of Christianity. Both enterprises are worthy 
of  having the eyes of the world focused on them over the next few decades. I 
intend  to do just that.  
John Shelby Spong 
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
John Scherer, from Seattle, Washington, writes:  
I just finished reading a provocative book, St. Paul Versus St. Peter: A  
Tale of Two Missions, by Michael Goulder. In it he argues, very  persuasively in 
my opinion, that there were actually two ways of seeing Jesus  from the very 
beginning of the early Church: Peter's way and Paul's way. Theirs  was a bitter 
battle, which can be inferred clearly from Paul's writings about  "those who 
would lead you astray." Goulder's point was that while Peter won some  
battles, Paul won the war.  
One school of thought formed around Peter and the Jerusalem-based followers  
like James, Jesus' brother. They held Jesus to be special in many ways, but  
underneath it all a human being like the rest of us, who was entered into by  
God's spirit at his baptism, which spirit then departed his body on the cross.  
The Petrine position was that the kingdom had been ushered in via Jesus' 
life,  death, and resurrection: the "kingdom now" view. He also believed that 
people  needed to practice Jewish laws concerning food, the Sabbath, and 
circumcision to  be followers of Jesus.  
The other position was Paul's, that Christ was a divine being all along,  
whose death and resurrection ushered in only the possibility of God's kingdom  
coming: the "kingdom later" view. In addition, followers did not have to follow  
Jewish law to be members, since Jesus was the sacrifice that satisfied all 
those  requirements. (Also, persuading adult Greeks and Romans not to eat meat 
and to  place themselves under the knife for circumcision put a dent in the 
evangelism  effort.)  
Here is my quandary: given that there seems to have been at least two  
diametrically opposed ways of viewing Jesus and his divinity from the very  
beginning, and given that our theology apparently goes back not to Jesus but to  Paul 
(since he "won" the battle), why are we Christians so arrogant? Doesn't  this 
argue for a little humility, and even relaxing the "our way or the highway"  
mentality that grips the Church? It seems to me that in the face of yet another 
 example of the humanness of the words we have received and the process by 
which  they have come to us, conundrums like the "inerrancy of scripture" need 
to be  gently laid to rest and we need to be searching for what it means to be 
a  follower of Jesus in a world that finally must be lived by faith and 
awareness  of how the spirit is moving in this moment.  
Dear John,  
The book you refer to was the last book written by my friend Michael Goulder  
before he retired as professor of New Testament at the University of 
Birmingham  in the United Kingdom. Michael has been more influential than anyone else 
in  shaping my understanding of the connection between the synagogue and the 
first  three gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke.  
There is no doubt that there was conflict from the very beginning that  
centered on Peter and Paul. However, I do not think that it was basically about  
the divinity of Christ, as Michael suggests. Both Peter and Paul were Jews. God  
was wholly other for both of them. Jesus had revealed God in a dramatic way, 
but  to suggest that Paul somehow saw him as the second person of the Trinity 
is an  enormous stretch. Paul suggests in his most systematic Epistle to the 
Romans  that God "designated" Jesus as "the Son of God" by the "spirit of 
holiness" at  the time of the resurrection. In the gospels Peter is said to be the 
first one  to confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, at Caesarea 
Philippi.  Clearly, however, Peter did not understand the meaning of this 
affirmation as  the gospel story clearly reveals.  
The real battle between Peter and Paul was over whether the Christ made the  
journey to God through the practices of Judaism no longer essential. Paul 
argued  that people like the Gentiles could come to Christ without coming through  
Judaism. Peter argued for the necessity of coming through Judaism to Christ.  
I think it is fair to say that both Peter and Paul found in Jesus a God  
presence. That is the consistent Christian claim. You are the Christ, the  
messiah, the one in whom we have glimpsed the presence of the Kingdom of God.  God 
was in Christ. These were the ways they articulated this experience. The  human 
words of explanation are always time bound, time warped, and finite. Human  
explanations always die. If the experience is real, however, it will force the  
formation of new explanations in every generation. These explanations too will 
 die in time. Yes, this knowledge does call for humility before the mystery 
of  God and the recognition that our words can never capture that mystery.  
Idolatry begins when we claim inerrancy for the human words of the Bible,  
ultimate truth for the human words of the creeds, our doctrines, our dogmas, or  
even the ex-cathedral utterances of one designated the head of the Church.  
God alone is ultimate. Our understandings of God are never ultimate. That is  
also true for the explanations of Peter and Paul.  
John Shelby Spong 



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