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

Fri Aug 5 10:36:52 EDT 2011

This is a good issue to reflect on what EI's "demythologizing" work meant to
me.

Spong writes: "Can we, apart from that mythological content, retell the
Christ story in the accents of our day?"  and he writes "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."
I will call these Spong's first point.

He also writes: "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." I will call this Spong's second point.

I believe that we were about Spong's second point.

With regard to Spong's first point, I believe we were about both
demythologizing (Spong's first point) and remythologizing. The
remythologizing involved not taking the language of the Bible and creeds as
fact but as pointing to a phenomenological-existential truth. We would ask,
not if the virgin birth was a true fact, but what is the existential meaning
of a virgin birth. (Which by the way, I interpret that we are all sons and
daughters of God and all given the chance to come into the world as our own
selves, new beings, pure, loved, and not carrying the guilt and sin of our
parents.)

Marcus Borg has written: "[C]onflict about the Bible is the single most
divisive issue among Christians in North America today."[1] Borg says this
division is between those who take a "literal-factual" approach to the Bible
and those who take a "historical-metaphorical" approach."

We tend to jump to the conclusion that it is only the conservatives who
adopt the literal-factual approach. I think, however, Berg Lundeman, whom
one would identify as liberal, also adopts the literal-factual approach. If
the Bible is not literally factually true then it is not true and I cannot
therefore be a Christian anymore. I have heard that in secular research
universities this understanding has become so pervasive that one would have
difficulty being admitted to the faculty of religion if one were a
professing Christian . . . or, at least, this would not be considered a
positive.

I am not sure whether Spong has worked this through. He seems to want to do
away with that which is not literally factually true and remove the
mythology. My position, which I learned from EI and therefore associate with
EI, is that we come to understand the truth of the Bible, and also Christian
theology, by studying history and letting things speak to us as metaphors
for truth. After all when we say a person is as tall as a tree, we don't
feel we have to correct the person because what he is saying is not
literally factually true. Metaphor is a critical, necessary part of language
because some truths cannot be expressed in factual terms.

It was modernity, the Protestant reformation and the Enlightenment that
brought us to distinguish fact, value and meaning. As I understand it prior
to this time people did not regard the question is the Bible factually true
as a meaningful question. They spoke and wrote without a sense of the need
to distinguish between myth and fact and the truth they communicated was
heard without a need to distinguish between truth and fact. 

I do believe that we must make this distinction today, however, to, as Spong
writes, enter into the "authenticity of the Christ experience and then [be]
able to enter it as a citizen of the 21st century." We did that. We
demythologized but we allowed the mythology to speak, phenomenologically and
existentially, to us in the truth that is in myths. Myth has the capacity in
certain dimensions of experience to expresses truth that is truer than fact.
I doubt that many would be inspired by a story that went there was a guy
from Galilee who was a cult leader and apparently died at the hands of the
Roman authority by crucifixion. Further I would ask whether such a story
would express the truth about Jesus . . . Christ.

The Christian message has its origin in the life of a person who in fact
lived, Jesus, but the historical facts of Jesus's life are not the Christian
message per se (and yet neither can the message be separated from this
factual origin).

I earned a D.Min. in Sustainability and Spirituality in 2005. A section of
my final paper was on these questions. It is attached for those who may be
interested.

Herman

  _____  

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Subject: [Oe List ...] 7/04/11, Spong: Lecture Tour of Germany,Part II:
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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
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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
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Deiniol's Church Lane, Hawarden, Flintshire CH5 3DF United Kingdom.

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5Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the
Bible Seriously but Not Literally (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco,
2001), ix. 

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