[Oe List ...] 12/10/09, Spong: The Origins of the New Testament, Part VII...
KarenBueno at aol.com
KarenBueno at aol.com
Sat Dec 12 16:18:35 CST 2009
Thanks, Ellie, for continuing to send these, since I do not subscribe, but
I want to hear what Bishop Spong has to say.
Karen Bueno
In a message dated 12/12/2009 2:51:39 P.M. Mountain Standard Time,
susan at gmdtech.com writes:
Why do these things go out to the whole OE community listserv? Is there
some way for me to continue on the listserv without getting these messages
which are easily available on the Spong website?
Susan
____________________________________
From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On
Behalf Of elliestock at aol.com
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 4:24 PM
To: Dialogue at wedgeblade.net; OE at wedgeblade.net
Subject: [Oe List ...] 12/10/09, Spong: The Origins of the New Testament,
Part VIII: The Corinthian Letters
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=https://secure.agoramedia.com/manage_spong
_account.asp)
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=http://secure.agoramedia.com/spong/c
alendar.asp)
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=http://forums.prospero.com/sp-bishops
pong)
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=http://secure.agoramedia.com/story_home_spon
g.asp)
_Print this Article _
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=~amp~#xA;
http://secure.agoramedia.com/spong/34682.asp~amp~#xA;)
Not a member?_Subscribe now!_
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=http://clk.atdmt.com/A
GM/go/ups0120000005agm/direct/01/)
____________________________________
Thursday December 10, 2009 The Origins of the New Testament
Part VIII: The Corinthian Letters Paul was a complicated mixture of many
things. He was a missionary who traveled hundreds of miles by foot and by
boat to tell his story. He was, as we noted last week when examining the
letter to the Galatians, an intense zealot who would fight vigorously to
defend his understanding of the gospel. He was a theologian who sought to put
his experience of God into rational thought forms so that they could be
passed on. Perhaps above all things, however, Paul was a pastor who sought to
smooth out disputes, confront evil and ease hurt feelings in the
congregations that he founded and served. When we examine his correspondence with the
church in Corinth, it is this pastoral side that dominates. Even when he
discusses issues like the resurrection, his discussion is pastorally oriented
as he seeks to ease in the people of the Corinthian church their anxiety
connected with mortality.
The first thing to note about the two Corinthian letters is that they
appear to be composites of a more extensive correspondence that perhaps reached
a total of four or even five Pauline letters. By a careful analysis of our
two remaining epistles to the Corinthians, scholars have come to the
conclusion that these "lost letters," to which Paul actually refers in the
epistles that we do have, have been included, at least in part, in what we call
II Corinthians. These scholars point to such passages as II Cor.6:1-7:1,
II Cor.10-13 and even in the extraneous verses in Cor.11:32-33 that appear
to be inserts into the texts that actually break the flow of Paul's
argument. Despite this strange construction, however, scholars find no evidence to
suggest that all of II Corinthians is the authentic work of Paul.
We need to remember that preserving letters in the first century was an
inexact and costly procedure of hand copying, and that no one had yet
assigned the status of "Holy Scripture" to the writings of Paul. Maybe that is why
they preserved only what they believed was most important.
When we turn to the content of these two Corinthian epistles themselves,
we find Paul, the pastor, dealing with human beings who are acting like
human beings. Paul knows what every pastor knows, namely, that congregations
are not made up of angels. At the same time congregations learn very quickly
that ordination does not bestow perfection on their ordained leader.
Pastoral care is the sensitive attempt to bring wholeness out of an exchange
between human passion and human insecurity. It is a delicately nuanced
balancing act, the job of which is to enhance the humanity of all who are
involved. If we need a text to describe the goal of all pastoral activity, it would
be the Fourth Gospel's definition of Jesus' purpose: "I have come," John's
Jesus says, "that they might have life and have it abundantly." That is
finally both the mission of the Christian Church and the hoped-for outcome in
every pastoral situation. Abundant life, please note, does not always
mean happiness or even the easing of pain. Many people seek wholeness in quite
destructive ways, with addiction to drugs, alcohol, sex and even success
being just a few of them. Sometimes abundant life becomes possible only in
confrontation and brokenness. Real pastoral care is not about making it feel
good; it is about helping wholeness to be created. Paul understood that
and every pastor must learn it sooner or later. Wholeness is seen in the
freedom to be, in the ability to escape the survival mentality that inevitably
locks us into self-centeredness. Wholeness is found in the maturity of
being able to live for another by giving our love away. It will be through the
lens of that understanding of pastoral care that I will seek to explore
the issues found in the epistles to the Corinthians.
The Corinthian congregation appears to have had more than its share of
pastoral needs and even to have exasperated Paul on more than one occasion.
Some of the issues to which he refers are party lines and divisions among the
people. Some claimed loyalty to Paul, some to Apollos and still others to
Peter. Beyond that their rowdy behavior had begun to distort the worship of
the people. In that early part of Christian history the Eucharist was
begun with a community meal called "The Agape Feast." The Corinthians,
however, had turned this common meal into a gluttonous orgy that left some of the
poor hungry. Then they had turned the Eucharistic wine into an occasion of
public drunkenness. Paul obviously needed to speak to this behavior.
There was also a dispute in the congregation about the meat served at this
"Agape Feast." It had been bought at a local butcher shop where, in this
pagan society, it had been slaughtered in ceremonial offerings to the idols
of the people. Could Christians eat meat that had been offered to idols?
Some Corinthian followers of Jesus were offended by this idea. Still others
had become enamored with Paul's message of salvation as the ultimate
expression of God's grace and the conviction that this grace, so abundantly and
freely given, was not dependent on their personal behavior. This meant that
they had now become what the church came to call "anti-nomianism," that is,
some were suggesting that the more they sinned, the more God's grace
abounded. This stance appeared to render any sense of personal ethical
responsibility completely meaningless. Still others seemed to have a hierarchy of
value associated with certain activities of the synagogue. Prophets who
shared their prophetic words with the congregation were deemed to be of less
value than those who claimed the gift of "glossolalia" or "speaking in
tongues," that is, the ability to utter words that only God could understand.
This was, they seemed to think, the highest gift of all and thus the most to
be honored.
If this were not enough for one pastor to deal with, there was also a
gender dispute going on. Some Corinthian women seemed to take seriously Paul's
words, in his earlier letter to the Galatians, that "in Christ there is
neither male nor female, but all are one." This new freedom and equality for
women obviously challenged the patriarchal value system of that ancient
world. Some women, quite clearly, pushed these boundaries well beyond even
Paul's comfort level. No one, not even Paul, escapes his or her cultural
prejudices completely. The extent of this boundary pushing becomes obvious when
Paul asserts his threatened male authority by saying, "I forbid a woman to
have authority over a man!" Since no one forbids what has never happened,
these women were overtly claiming authority over men in the life of the
church.
While Paul's prejudiced humanity is in full display in this last conflict,
on most of the others he rises to the pastoral challenge. Paul begins by
telling them that Christ alone is their foundation and that any division of
loyalties among the followers of various leaders was based on the inability
to understand that these leaders were simply "servants through which you
believed — I planted, Apollos watered, but only God gave the increase." In
regard to the Eucharist, Paul upbraids the members of this congregation for
eating and drinking in such a way that some are hungry and some are drunk.
He urges them to eat and drink in their own homes and to recognize that
the act of breaking bread and drinking wine in the Eucharistic feast is "a
participation in the body of Christ" and what his life of love and sacrifice
was all about. The Eucharist, he proclaims, is a liturgical way in which
they participate in Christ's wholeness.
Paul takes anti-nomianism on directly, reminding them of their mutual
responsibility to one another. He suggests that immorality, at its heart, was
to treat another human being as a thing to be used rather than as a person
to be loved. He defuses the debate about meat offered to idols by saying
that since idols are nothing, meat offered to idols is meat offered to
nothing, so there is no prohibition as to its use. He continues, however, by
stating that this stance misses the point of this dispute. "All things are
lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful but not all
things build up." It was a subtle, but powerful, distinction. The evil in this
debate, he continues, is the lack of sensitivity on the part of some to the
feelings of others. Candy is not evil, but to offer candy to one battling
with obesity is not loving. It does not build up the person or fulfill the
goal of Christ.
Finally, Paul gets to the debate on spiritual gifts. There is no hierarchy
of gifts, he argues, for all gifts are in the service of the same spirit
and are expressions of the same God who inspires us all. The gifts of the
people offered in worship are necessary to the building up of all, he
suggests. Every gift is for the benefit of the whole community that he calls the
body of Christ. Following that analogy of the body, he moves on to suggest
that their bickering as to whose gift is the most important makes as much
sense as a debate between the eye, the ear, the hand and the foot as to
which part of the body has the higher value.
This sets the stage for Paul's writing of what is surely the most
beautiful, the most memorable and the most quoted passage in the entire Pauline
corpus. After describing the body in which the various organ and parts work
together for the good of the whole, Paul says, "I will show you a more
excellent way." Then he begins his famous ode to love. "Though I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a
clanging cymbal." He continues by defining love as patient, kind, not boastful
or jealous and never ending. He recognized that all human knowledge is
partial. No one sees God face to face. We all see "through a glass darkly." He
urges the Corinthians to put away childish things and to grow up. Finally,
he concludes "that faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the
greatest of these is love." It is Paul at his insightful best.
– John Shelby Spong
____________________________________
Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong
John Ford, via the Internet, writes:
I had to smile when reading your recent newsletter in which you suggest
that you might be becoming a mystic. I have always read you as a mystic.
God's peace be with you.
Dear John,
I appreciate your words and even your insight. I don't believe one can
volunteer to be a mystic, a prophet, a seer, an intellectual or a genius.
Those are qualities attributed to you by others sometime well after your
earthly pilgrimage is complete. It is meaningful, however, when another
attributes one of those titles to you — so thank you.
Mysticism is to me primarily coming to terms with the limitations of
words. That seems to be harder to do in religious circles than anywhere else.
Words are always symbols or pointers. They are not the truth or the essence
they seek to describe. They are always human, always time bound and always
time warped. When any human experience is reduced to words, it is always
distorted by time, place, one's level of knowledge, one's time in history and
one's culturally conditioned language Nowhere is that more clear than when
we try to frame who or what God is in the vehicle of human words. A horse
cannot communicate to another horse what it means to be a human being, for
a horse cannot escape its horse nature. A human being can never tell
another human being what it means to be God, because human beings can never
escape the limits of our human nature. Perhaps that is why all human images of
God look very much like a great big human being.
The deeper I experience the reality and presence of God, the less my words
seem like adequate vehicles to express that truth. Then words cease and
one enters the experience of wordless wonder. Perhaps that is the realization
of the mystic.
– John Shelby Spong
____________________________________
Send your questions to _support at johnshelbyspong.com_
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd
=mailto:support at johnshelbyspong.com)
_Print this Article_
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=http://secure.agoramedia.com/sp
ong/34682.asp)
Not a member? _Subscribe now!_ (http://trackin
g.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock at aol.com&utp=&rd=http://clk.atdmt.com/
AGM/go/ups0120000005agm/direct/01/)
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=http://www.everydayhealth.com?xid=nl_ANewChristi
anityForANewWorld_20091210)
Thanks for joining our mailing list, _elliestock at aol.com_
(mailto:elliestock at aol.com) , for A New Christianity For A New World on 11/09/2008
_REMOVE me from this list _
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=http://secure.agoramedia
.com/manage_subscriptions.asp?email=elliestock at aol.com~amp~nlid=71~amp~hshem
l=moc^loa~kcotseille) | _Add me to this list_
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=http:/
/secure.agoramedia.com/manage_subscriptions.asp) | _Manage my e-mail
settings _
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=http://secure.agoramedia.com/manage_subscriptio
ns.asp?email=elliestock at aol.com) | _Contact Customer Service_
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.co
m&utp=&rd=mailto:support at agoramedia.us)
Copyright 2009 Waterfront Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
4 Marshall Street, North Adams, MA 01247
Subject to our _terms of service_
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=http://www.everyd
ayhealth.com/pop_tos.htm?xid=nl_ANewChristianityForANewWorld_20091210) and
_privacy policy_
(http://tracking.waterfrontmedia.com/nlsclick/t.aspx?k=71&d=2009/12/10&e=elliestock@aol.com&utp=&rd=http://www.everydayhealth.com/pop_p
rivacy.htm?xid=nl_ANewChristianityForANewWorld_20091210)
_______________________________________________
OE mailing list
OE at wedgeblade.net
http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/oe_wedgeblade.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20091212/6f88fdef/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the OE
mailing list