[Oe List ...] 9/02/10, Spong: The Origins of the New Testament, Part XXXVI: Johannine Epistles and the Book of Revelation

Thu Sep 2 17:58:36 CDT 2010

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We bring your attention to a major series of lectures from Bishop Spong entitled "Building a New Christianity for a New World" in Atlanta from September 16-September 19, 2010:
9/16  7 p.m. Trinity Presbyterian Church — "Why Traditional Christianity is Dying: The Religious Challenges of our Generation"
9/17  7 p.m. The Cathedral of St. Philip — "Redefining God in Today's Scientifically Oriented World"
9/18  9 a.m. The Cathedral of St. Philip — 1) "Rethinking the Role of Jesus in Today's Post-Darwinian World" 2) "The Role of Christians in a Scientific, Multi-Cultural and Multi-Faith World"
9/19  4 p.m Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel — "Religious Victimization: Are Sexuality and Gender the Basis of a New Segregation?"

Thursday September 02, 2010 

The Origins of the New Testament
Part XXXVI: Johannine Epistles and the Book of Revelation

We come this week to the final chapter in our three-year-long walk through the 66 books of the Bible. We conclude with the final pieces of the Johannine literature: the three epistles that bear his name and the book of Revelation that is also attributed to John. Since I treated the gospel in more detail and even mentioned these other Johannine pieces briefly in the introduction to the gospel, I will not spend much time on them in this final piece. This Johannine material is not necessarily the final work in time that makes up the New Testament. That honor usually goes to II Peter that, as we mentioned earlier, is quite clearly a mid-second century work. The Johannine Corpus, however, is dated at the end of the first century (95-100), which makes the Gospel of John clearly the last gospel to be written and the Johannine material has always been used as a counter weight to the Synoptic Gospels. So there is a sense in which the New Testament does not become whole or complete until the writings of John have been added to it. That is why I made the decision to treat it last. Throughout Christian history, the work of John has tended to dominate the life of the church. It was, more than any other book, the quoted authority behind the development of creeds, doctrine and dogma. It was the sole source quoted by Athanasius at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE in his duel with a man named Arius, who incidentally buttressed his argument by quoting from all of the gospels. When that council backed Athanasius and dismissed Arius, the ascendancy of John in the development of traditional Christianity was clearly established. No less a person than Isaac Newton, writing in the 17th century, was learned enough to state that in his opinion the anti-Arius decision of that coun cil was "the greatest mistake" made in Christian history. It just may be that, because of the ferment in contemporary theology coupled with the critical insights of modern biblical scholarship, we are today in the process of rebalancing that traditional emphasis on John.
When we focus on the three epistles that bear John's name, only the first appeared to be substantial, both in length and in substance. It has five chapters, whereas II and III John have only one each. I John is a powerful treatise based significantly on the gospel and intent on drawing out its ethical implications. Its similarity to the gospel, both in vocabulary and style, has led many to the conclusion that these two pieces of writing are the products of the same person. That is not true of the second and third epistles of John, both of which indicate that they are written by one who is self-identified as "The Elder" and both reflect a time when there is a clearly defined body of truth that they feel must be defended and passed on. It is the tendency of religious people always to believe that they have in some way captured truth that is ultimate. I think it is fair to say that if II and III John had not been included in the canon of the New Testament, not much of any great significance would have been lost to the Church. It is interesting that no part of these latter two epistles that bear John's name is included in the various lectionaries for public readings at worship, a fact that speaks volumes about how these two books have been viewed historically.
That, however, is not the case with I John. This epistle has had a rich history. It is oft quoted, oft read and is frequently the subject of sermons. I John is the primary place in the New Testament in which God is specifically defined as "Love." This author states that only the person who loves can truly be said to have been "born of God." One cannot know God if one does not know love, this author argues. The presence of love, he states, is the ultimate manifestation of the presence of God. We love each other only with the love that God has given to us of God's own nature. The only way any of us can abide in God, he concludes, is to abide in love. There is no fear in this love, he states, because "perfect love casts out fear." To make this point very clear, this epistle states that "If anyone says, 'I love God' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God who he has not seen." His ultimate commandment to those to whom he writes is this, "the one who loves God, must love his or her brother and sister also." This text has been violated by the Church over the centuries, but it is so powerful that the violation has required that the object of our scorn and hatred be viewed as something sub-human. So the anti-Semitism of the ages has been accompanied by the definition of Jews as those who fall outside the boundaries of our definition of humanity. One reads the writings of some of the figures of Christian history like Irenaeus, Polycarp, John Chrysostom and even Martin Luther for documentation of this thesis. In those writings, Jews were described as "vermin" and as "unfit for life."
Women, people of color and homosexual persons have also been defined by the Church throughout history in such a way as to put them outside the boundaries of that which is fully human and thus outside of God's all-encompassing love. So women were denied higher education for 1900 years of Christian history, denied the right to vote until the 20th century and denied the possibility of ordination as pastors, priests and bishops in most churches until the 21st century. In the two largest Christian bodies in the world today, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, the ordination of women is still prohibited and that prohibition continues to be justified on the basis that a woman is somehow physically defective (i.e., not fully human) and thus cannot represent God to the people before the altars of these churches.
People of color were defined as sub-human so that they could be enslaved by Christians, segregated by Christians and denied equal rights by Christians. Only in the 1954 decision in the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education was the back of segregation finally broken.
Gay, lesbian, transgender and bi-sexual people have also been defined as both depraved and sub-human and thus have been denied equality. They have been rejected, oppressed and even killed throughout the ages by self-identified Christians. In the struggle in the United States over full equality for gay people and gay couples, the opposition has overwhelmingly been from various parts of the Christian Church, most especially from the Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant wings of Christianity. The first epistle of John has been the central biblical text in confronting this religious tyranny. I'm glad this small book was included in the New Testament for I hear the "Word of God" speaking through the words of John and commanding us to love one another as God loved us.
The Bible closes its pages with the book of Revelation. It is a piece of apocalyptic or "end of the world" literature. Presumably that theme struck the leaders of the early Church, who still expected the end of the world to be near, to think that this book represented the proper way to close the New Testament. The book of Revelation has been a godsend to those who like to predict "doomsday" all of whom, let it be noted, have thus far been 100% incorrect! It is also the favorite book of those who believe that events in modern history are the fulfillment of and can be explained as the living out of biblical prophecy. In my lifetime I have heard the beast of Revelation 13 being identified with Adolf Hitler, Tojo, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Saddam Hussein, just to name a few. My mother told me that Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was called the beast of Revelation during World War I. I have never found the book of Revelation to be worthy of the study it would take to open it to its own meaning and context. I have read it a number of times, but I have never been edified by it. It is all but nonsense to me. My good friend and admired colleague, Professor Elaine Pagels of Princeton University's department of Religion faculty, is now writing a book on Revelation. I shall read her work with delight when it is published, but I have never felt compelled personally to explore its words with any depth myself. I see this book primarily as a dated piece of first century literature and little more.
Despite this I can still say that my favorite text from Revelation is in chapter three where the author, writing to the Church of Laodicea, condemns them for being neither "hot nor cold" but "lukewarm," regarding them thereby as "wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked." As a bishop, I have known lukewarm congregations, which stand for nothing and thus have no passionate commitments. These churches will die of boredom long before they die of controversy. The love of God demands that our love go beyond our limits, confront our prejudices and call us into transformed lives. That always means that controversy is part of the Christian life.
I began this series of columns on the origin and meaning of the books of the Bible in the year 2007. It has taken me over seventy columns to complete it, interspersed as they were with treatment of the events of the day. This series has required me to go back to my library to familiarize myself anew with every book included in the sacred text, even those that I had long ago dismissed as irrelevant It has also kindled anew in me my long time love affair with this book, which began on Christmas day in 1943 when my mother gave me my first personal Bible. From that day to this, I have read it daily, going cover to cover at least twenty-five times. Some of its books I have read too many times to count. On many of its books I have spent more than a year in concentrated study. I am at this moment beginning my third year of study on the Fourth Gospel. Underneath its limited words it conveys to me a sense that all life is holy, that all life is loved and that each of us is ca lled to be all that we are capable of being. Those are the themes that I hope our world never loses.
I close this series with the words that capture my understanding of Jesus. These words come from John's gospel (10:10). "I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly." Love which breaks down all barriers of separation is the life power that I find in Jesus and that is why he is and remains Christ for me. 

– John Shelby Spong

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Mick, via the Internet, writes:
Hello, I have followed your columns for a number of years and have also read a couple of your books. It's because of your point of view that I have been able to redefine my atheistic ideas (it's hard to accept a magical Santa Claus in the sky) into what I guess you could categorize as (for lack of a better word) a modern forward-looking Christian willing to believe that whatever God is, we can only scratch at the surface.
I have a question or concern with some statement you made in the column, The Origins of the New Testament, Part XXI: Introducing the Gospel of Matthew. You state that the author of Matthew appears to be the leader of the synagogue, followed the liturgical patterns and observed the high holy days of the ongoing Jewish tradition, had a deep knowledge of and appreciation for the Jewish Scriptures and the Jewish expectation that the Messiah would come to and for the Jews. Then you state, "The fact is that Matthew quoted the scripture in a fast and loose way." To me these two statements seem to contradict each other. Would a leader of the synagogue with a deep knowledge and appreciation of the scriptures really play willy-nilly with their meanings to tell his story? Do you plan to address this as the discussion of Matthew continues? I usually agree with and follow your explanations and arguments but this one has me wondering. Any comments? Please keep up the great work.

Dear Mick,
I do not think they are contradictory statements. Matthew had all the qualities I described but he was also convinced as a follower of Jesus that the scriptures pointed us to the coming of the Messiah in very specific ways. He was also part of that first generation of Jewish believers in Jesus who mined the scriptures to find hints and pointers to Jesus as the promised Messiah. In the process, he let his desire to find texts that in his mind pointed to Jesus overwhelm his knowledge of the scriptures. Like many a preacher since, he made the text say what he wanted the text to say in order to confirm his understanding of Jesus. Matthew gave us the story of the virgin birth based on Isaiah 7:14, even though we now know and have known since the early years of the second century that the word "virgin" does not appear in that text and that text is not a predictor of a future event. The first century did not have the benefit of modern biblical textual criticism and as a result , frequently misread and certainly misinterpreted the Hebrew Scriptures.
This subject is far too complex to make it clear in a Q and A format. My book, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes, was the place where I devoted a whole book to this thesis. I hope that you will find that book helpful and that it will clear up your present misunderstanding.

– John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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