[Dialogue] 7/04/11, Spong: Lecture Tour of Germany, Part II: Gottingen

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The Lecture Tour of Germany, Part II: Gottingen
My lecture tour of Germany was joined from the very beginning by a unique Frenchman named Raymond Rakower, who accepted Gerhard Klein’s invitation to come to Germany and to accompany us.  Gerhard Klein has been the translator into German for four of my books.  Ray Rakower was his French counterpart, who has translated two of my books into French.  Both were remarkable men and able scholars.  Since I introduced Gerhard last week, let me now briefly introduce Ray this week.  Ray, fluent in German, French and English, came out of a Jewish family.  His grandfather had been the Chief Rabbi at the synagogue in Krakow, Poland.  Both his father and his brother were killed in a Nazi death camp, while Ray and his mother managed to escape into Switzerland.  In his adult life he had a very successful career in the oil and gas business that took him all over the world.  He added a unique dimension to our German experience, especially when we went to places where anti-Semitism had victimized millions.
Three venues hosted my visit.  I described Grebenstein last week.   Because it was Gerhard’s home it was the fitting place to start.  He is a highly-respected citizen of that community and his friends came from all walks of German life.  The other two venues were university towns, Gottingen and Marburg, both of which have theological schools and theological faculties on their campuses.  This week I will focus on the Gottingen visit for it had many rich and provocative moments.  Next week, I will examine Marburg.
One of the things that made the visit to Gottingen University so unique was that on its theological faculty was a man named Gerd Ludemann, a brilliant New Testament scholar.  Gerd is described far and wide as a biblical and theological radical, and today no longer identifies himself as living inside the Christian tradition.  I have known and liked Gerd for several years as we have spent time together as members of the Jesus Seminar.  In that fraternity of scripture scholars, Gerd found support for his insights, his findings and his journey, but what he enjoyed there was certainly not what he experienced from the hierarchy of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany, who saw in him a destroyer of what they held sacred.  These hierarchical figures regarded him first as a “disturber of Israel,” a bit later as an unacceptable provocateur and finally, as one whom they judged to be no longer worthy or qualified to teach students preparing for ordination in their Lutheran tradition.  In time the conflict between Gerd and the leaders of the German Lutheran Church reached a crescendo and the Lutheran Church in Germany cancelled its recognition of Gerd as an acceptable Lutheran teacher and withdrew his “certification.”  They ordered that his university title be changed to indicate that he was no longer recognized by the Lutheran Church.  Those preparing for ordination from this time on were to be given no credit for taking his courses.  His students immediately dried up, but the university’s commitment to academic freedom meant that he maintained his tenured position on the faculty.  It was a strange compromise.  He became a professor with no students.  What Gerd had done to bring about this judgment was to suggest in his writing that the vast majority of the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament were not spoken by him at all, a conclusion that is commonplace in the Jesus Seminar. Gerd, however, had gone further to assert that since these words, attributed to Jesus, were not in fact spoken by him, then the superstructure of ecclesiastical creeds, doctrines and dogmas based on these unauthentic words could not be said to present a defensible body of data originating with Jesus.  While many in the church recognize this problem, there are few who, like Gerd, draw the conclusions that are apparent and appropriate.  If his challenge to ecclesiastical authority had come in the 14th century, Gerd Ludemann would very probably have been burned at the stake.  In the 21st century, he was simply marginalized and dispossessed.  So Gerd dedicated the remaining years of his Gottingen career to study, to public lectures and to writing.  He was, however, the one who was eager to have me invited to this university.
When we arrived, Professor Ludemann was waiting outside the university building to greet our party, which he did warmly and generously.   We talked as we renewed our friendship.  His time at Gottingen was coming to an end as he was preparing to retire at the end of June. In his office, his books had already been removed and packed.  He had recently signed a three-year contract to teach at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.  There he would join Professor Amy-Jill Levine to form an unusually competent duo of biblical scholars.  Vanderbilt must not think that controversy in biblical studies is a liability.
The format for the Gottingen visit was that I was introduced to deliver the lecture of the day,  Gerhard Klein served as the translator, and afterward Gerd Ludemann and I were to engage in a dialogue/debate over the content of my presentation, moderated by a third person.  When that was complete, a general question period was entered in which the audience would have an opportunity to ask either of us a question.  My topic was the relationship of the thinking of Charles Darwin to the traditional way Christians have told the Christ story.  The contrast was striking.  Darwin had rooted human life in the struggle for survival, which is a mark of all living things.  Christians have, however, interpreted this survival drive and its inevitable manifestation of self-centeredness as the mark of our “sinfulness.”  They understood this mythologically as “The Fall” and this, they have asserted, left human lives victimized by “original sin.”  On the basis of this analysis of the source of human evil, traditional Christianity has postulated Jesus as the divine rescue operation mounted by the external deity.  Against this backdrop Christians have traditionally told the story of the Cross as the place where the price of the fall was paid and where the power of original sin was broken.  This has resulted, I believe, in a theology rooted in victimization with Jesus being seen as the first victim.  Catholic Christians refer to their liturgy as the “sacrifice of the mass” and suggest that the mass serves liturgically to make the death of Jesus ever available to overcome the “sin” that is present in us all.  Protestant Christians, working in this same theology of victimization, have developed the mantra “Jesus died for our sins” that permeates our prayers, our hymns and our scriptures and which is primarily a guilt message of blame.  It is this understanding of human evil that is rendered absurd if Darwin is correct.  Since Darwin asserts that there was no original perfection, there could have been no “original sin.”  If there was no “fall” then to speak of Jesus as the one who rescued us from that fall becomes nonsensical, as does salvation being understood as a restoration to a status we have never possessed.  So in conclusion, I recast the Jesus story as empowering us to become fully human.  “Atonement” theology has been, I believe, the prime distorter of the Jesus story.
When the lecture was completed, Gerd challenged me from the perspective of his belief that the Jesus story is not history at all, but a later mythological development.  I defended the position that the Jesus story in fact is rooted in the history of a particular life in which people believed they had encountered what they understood God to be and that it is not that life, but the way life itself has been interpreted that is the problem.  It is quite obvious to me that much mythology has been wrapped around the memory of Jesus, but the substance and outline of this historical life can still be identified.  That life was seen by his followers as a doorway into God.
The issues between us were clear and the questions from the audience were lively.  It was a good and exciting afternoon.  When it was over, Gerd bade us farewell and both of us looked forward to continuing the dialogue when he will be in the United States over the next three years.
I can respect Gerd Ludemann and be challenged by him without agreeing with him. It would never occur to me to try to silence him, but only to engage him, to listen to him and to learn from him.   If his insights force me to change the way I look at Jesus then so be it.  My interest is not in the way either I or the Christian Church has traditionally understood the Christ experience, my interest is in what the reality of that experience is.  Of course, the mythology of the ages has been wrapped around Jesus, but the question I seek to answer is not whether this mythology is true, but what was there about the life of Jesus that caused people to think it was appropriate to wrap mythological patterns around him.  Of course, the virgin birth, the bodily resuscitation and the cosmic ascension are ancient myths, but I want to know what the experience was that elicited those myths and caused them to be attached to Jesus? Can we, apart from that mythological content, retell the Christ story in the accents of our day?  The basic issue that divides me from Gerd Ludemann is that I believe we can and therefore that story still has integrity for me. Gerd believes that this is no longer possible and that one should not even try.
I too am convinced that the structures of traditional Christianity are dying.  I do not want to rescue dying structures.  I do believe, however, that Christianity is bigger than the structures in which it has been carried for 2000 years and that we still have the ability to sing the Lord’s song in the real world of the 21st century, if we can but separate the Christ experience from the explanations of the past.  I am no more interested than Gerd in trying to defend the concept of God from the erosion of modern thinking, nor am I interested in protecting traditional creeds.  My interest is in discovering the authenticity of the Christ experience and then being able to enter it as a citizen of the 21st century.  I am interested in learning how to relate that experience to out increasingly non-religious world.  That is what my lecture at the university in Gottingen was all about and I believe that goal justified the approach I took.
We drove back to Grebenstein that night weary, but happy.  The next day we were headed to Marburg and another adventure.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.





Question & Answer
Harvey Williams, via the Internet, writes:
Question:
Thanks for your excellent work.  Would you please comment on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins in regard to its internal validity and its potential to change the debate which involves your work? 

 
Answer:
Dear Harvey, 

I have not yet read Rob Bell’s book.  I have read reviews and the debate among evangelicals about his book.  In the light of that, I doubt if I will ever read Love Wins. 

That is not meant to be pejorative.  I welcome his obviously more open and more loving sense of God.  It is to say that while universalism may be hotly debated in fundamentalist circles, where the need to control belief appears to be so real, this issue simply doesn’t exist in the circles in which I live.  It would never occur to me to proclaim anyone to be outside the love and thought of God.  That is not my business.  I cannot speak for God.  The great heresy of fundamentalism is that they presume that they know what truth is, what one must believe and how God will respond in all circumstances.  As such, fundamentalists are not far from the stance of conservative Roman Catholics, including Pope Benedict XVI.  Evangelical, fundamentalistic Protestantism and strict, traditional Roman Catholicism have many things in common.  Among them is the claim that they have accessed the ultimate truth of God and are able to control that access to God for all others.  I do not believe that any human individual or ecclesiastical institution can exhaust the meaning of God and I am more bored than angry at religious claims like the infallibility of the Pope and the inerrancy of the Bible.  Such claims are always an attempt to buttress religious idolatry.   No one who has studied history can believe in the infallibility of the papacy and no one who has ever read the Bible can believe in its inerrancy. 

What I see in Rob Bell’s book is that on the edges of evangelical Christianity, some people find they cannot continue to live within the party line.  That is a step in the right direction.  Even as the book is condemned in fundamentalist’s circles, it is still being discussed.  I rejoice in that. 

~John Shelby Spong





Announcements
A Special Announcement from Bishop Spong’s Publisher
John Shelby Spong – John A. T. Robinson Lectureship Created in the UK
The Very Reverend Peter Francis, Warden and Dean of the Gladstone Library in Hawarden, United Kingdom recently announced the formation of an annual lectureship on progressive theology to begin in 2013.  This lectureship will be named the John Shelby Spong-John A. T. Robinson Lectureship, honoring two of the Anglican Communion’s best known progressive bishops.  Bishop Spong, who was elected a Fellow of the Gladstone Library by the Board of Trustees some years ago, has been a guest lecturer at the Library regularly over the last twelve years.  Bishop Robinson, who died in 1983 and who was Bishop Spong’s mentor and friend, has by the action of his family donated all of his extensive collection of personal and theological books to the Gladstone Library.  Other notable Church of England theologians who have placed their books in the care of this Library include Professor Don Cupitt of Cambridge University and Dr. Eric James, the official biographer of John A. T. Robinson.
The Gladstone Library has become a powerful force in the task of re-thinking Christianity for a new century and affirming the work of the Anglican Communion’s pioneer thinkers.
Funds to endow this lectureship will be solicited beginning in 2012.  With the announcement made at the end of Bishop Spong’s last conference there this summer a sum of 5000 pounds was raised in pledges from the conference attendees alone.
For further information contact Peter Francis, The Gladstone Library, St. Deiniol’s Church Lane, Hawarden, Flintshire CH5 3DF United Kingdom.
Further Announcements from the Publisher
Read what Bishop Spong has to say about A Joyful Path Progressive Christian Spiritual Curriculum for Young Hearts and Minds: "The great need in the Christian church is for a Sunday school curriculum for children that does not equate faith with having a pre-modern mind. The Center for Progressive Christianity has produced just that. Teachers can now teach children in Sunday school without crossing their fingers. I endorse it wholeheartedly."
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