Bishop Spongs 12 Points of Reformation of Christianity

[Rick O'Shez]

That is much what my take on it was. The Spongist Reformed Church? Yet another Christian sect. It's like the man wants to wear modern clothes but is still in love with his now thread-bare tie-dyed T-shirt that he can bring himself to part with.

Indeed. It's a little embarassing to watch.

 

[YmirGF]

Indeed. It's a little embarassing to watch.

Yeah, when you can see the holes in the tapestries, it's probably a good idea to redecorate and call it a day.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Yeah, when you can see the holes in the tapestries, it's probably a good idea to redecorate and call it a day.

I used to do "silent worship" with some Quaker friends, and I met a couple of "non-theist Christians" who I chatted to. It quickly became apparent that they were now atheist humanists who couldn't quite bring themselves to make the break with the tradition they had got used to.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Yeah, when you can see the holes in the tapestries, it's probably a good idea to redecorate and call it a day.

Yeah, and real holes, not metaphorical ones.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Bishop Spongs is but a mere mortal entitled to his opinions educated or not.
That does not make his opinions any more valid than yours or mine.
Opinions are like ###****'s.
Everyone has one.
Some are more willing to expose them in public than others. :>)

And making an opinion SOUND educated doesn't mean that it actually is. Some people are just good at BS.

 

[Windwalker]

That is much what my take on it was. The Spongist Reformed Church? Yet another Christian sect. It's like the man wants to wear modern clothes but is still in love with his now thread-bare tie-dyed T-shirt that he can't bring himself to part with.

No doubt.

I've had somewhat similar, if less cruel thoughts. I think his voice is certainly still relevant to many, but it is a good first step as I see it. But a lot of folks already get that take on things, but have already moved down the road to the next step beyond that, and the step beyond that. The reality of it is, what seems revelatory to us today, which it is, becomes 2nd nature to the next generation. They're like, "So?"

One day the bleeding edge thoughts will seem old-school too, and we'll be seen as fossils arguing the obvious. But you have to remember the "so what?" response is only possible because others who did the hard work made what's 2nd nature to them now possible in the first place. They aren't the ones who plowed the hard earth as they feast on the harvest it brought to them.

But Spong's points of view still speak to large segments grappling with those earlier stages of shedding mythic-literal dogma in favor of a more liberal, larger picture that includes others outside their own comfort zones. Just like at some point I'll be talking my 'old-school' stuff to those still working on sorting stuff out in that part of the conversation. Hopefully, I'll keep myself going on this trajectory rather than just start repeating the same old stuff. But again, that still does have its place and relevance. A constant drip of water wears a groove in stone.

 

[YmirGF]

I've had somewhat similar, if less cruel thoughts. I think his voice is certainly still relevant to many, but it is a good first step as I see it. But a lot of folks already get that take on things, but have already moved down the road to the next step beyond that, and the step beyond that. The reality of it is, what seems revelatory to us today, which it is, becomes 2nd nature to the next generation. They're like, "So?"

One day the bleeding edge thoughts will seem old-school too, and we'll be seen as fossils arguing the obvious. But you have to remember the "so what?" response is only possible because others who did the hard work made what's 2nd nature to them now possible in the first place. They aren't the ones who plowed the hard earth as they feast on the harvest it brought to them.

But Spong's points of view still speak to large segments grappling with those earlier stages of shedding mythic-literal dogma in favor of a more liberal, larger picture that includes others outside their own comfort zones. Just like at some point I'll be talking my 'old-school' stuff to those still working on sorting stuff out in that part of the conversation. Hopefully, I'll keep myself going on this trajectory rather than just start repeating the same old stuff. But again, that still does have its place and relevance. A constant drip of water wears a groove in stone.

I really do agree and it must be somewhat agonizing for folks to grapple with deeply held, cherished belief in light of 'modern' pragmatic reality. I applaud the attempt to reach a higher ground of understanding and can simply add that they may as well get used to that stance because it is a stance that should never be abandoned... and one that will serve them far better than the ossification of certainty.

 

[Omega Green]

Well you can become a Christian - at a time when you think that what it's about could be truthful; then you learn that this cannot be the case. Spong is trying to keep Christianity in tact in the 21st century and claims that honest, truth-seeking christians can still exist. I like that a Bishop has finally acknowledged what atheists have been saying for 200 years. I like that he consults the worlds most conclusive scholars. I like that he points out - that if Jesus rose from the dead and ascended, then he really went into planetary orbit. These issues need to be brought up by someone; and if you read Spongs books, he does devote quite a bit of time to discussing what is still important in Christianity once you remove the non-sensical. He's got about 15 books on this subject.

 

[Windwalker]

Well you can become a Christian - at a time when you think that what it's about could be truthful; then you learn that this cannot be the case.

Doesn't that depend on what "truth" you are looking for it to provide you? If you are looking for it to provide scientific truths, then off course you set yourself up, or allowed others to set you up to not be satisfied. I think it's a matter of expectations for certain things, like expecting your spouse to give you everything you ever wanted to the point you end all your other friendships and interests. The same thing can be said to looking to science to be your one-stop-shop for everything.

Spong is trying to keep Christianity in tact in the 21st century and claims that honest, truth-seeking christians can still exist. I like that a Bishop has finally acknowledged what atheists have been saying for 200 years.

I think any honest Christian has to acknowledge what atheism has to say. After all, so many of their ranks are draining into it. It behooves anyone to acknowledge what truths those who differ from you have to bring to the discussion and their own knowledge. Everyone benefits from that.

I like that he consults the worlds most conclusive scholars.

Anti-intellectualism is never a good idea.

I like that he points out - that if Jesus rose from the dead and ascended, then he really went into planetary orbit.

Yes, those who read that literally have a problem considering we've been up there above the clouds quite routinely these days! One guy just lived up there for over a year! So when he came back down from orbiting up there, should that be considered the "2nd Coming"?

These issues need to be brought up by someone; and if you read Spongs books, he does devote quite a bit of time to discussing what is still important in Christianity once you remove the non-sensical. He's got about 15 books on this subject.

Sure, he and others do believe there is a baby in that bathwater that's worth rescuing. Others just choose to discard the whole thing.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Respectfully, aren't you trying to define atheism by how you see it from your vantage point, much the same way many traditional theists try to limit the meaning of the word God to their understanding (guy in the sky sort of deity)?

No, I'm not. I'm just pointing out that "god" and "theism" are tied together. If you expand thd definition of "god" to include some new, revisionist concept of god, "theism" expands along with it.

Like Spong rejecting that understanding of theism, while feeling both free and justified to use the word God, there are plenty of atheists who don't like other atheist defining what atheism means to them. I certainly didn't care for that while I still continued to identify myself with that term, atheist, eventually just dropping it because of that very reason, finding it too limiting to my thinking beyond just that definition - like Spong not liking the term theist.

Theism is nothing more than belief in a god. However we define "god", belief in such a thing is theism. Non-theistic belief in a god is a contradiction in terms... despite Spong's likes and dislikes.

I would disagree there is no atheistic way to speak about Ultimate Reality or "God" (as they as atheists hold it without a deity figure of classic theism). "God" is a metaphor, after all.

"'God' is a metaphor" is an atheistic position.

One does not have to literally believe it is Orion up in the sky to refer to the constellation as "Orion". That understanding is key to understanding those like Bishop Spong, or myself.

Then you and he are both atheists. Welcome!

If you use the term "God" the same way I use "Mother Earth", "Lady Luck", or "Old Man Winter", then you no more believe in God than I do.

 

[Scott C.]

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
3. The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender orsexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

That's an elimination of Christianity, not a reformation.

 

[Windwalker]

No, I'm not. I'm just pointing out that "god" and "theism" are tied together. If you expand thd definition of "god" to include some new, revisionist concept of god, "theism" expands along with it.

Sure, but then it's no longer necessarily that definition of God that those who call themselves atheists rejected. How can they reject something they have no knowledge of? It's outside anything anyone can claim to either believe or not believe in.

Theism is nothing more than belief in a god. However we define "god", belief in such a thing is theism. Non-theistic belief in a god is a contradiction in terms... despite Spong's likes and dislikes.

Calling Ultimate Reality by the word "God" does not mean you believe the Guy in the Sky God. If theism is expanded to be more than what someone was aware of when they decided they don't believe theism, then rightly so, they can't be an atheist to a theism that doesn't fit what they rejected. In other words, they are atheist to a specific idea of God.

"'God' is a metaphor" is an atheistic position.

Actually, if that understanding of what a metaphor was truly the case in how I am saying and meaning it, then they aren't necessary rejecting God, but the disagreeing with the turning of a metaphor about the Unknown into a codified doctrinal definition. At such a point of understanding saying "I'm an atheist" becomes unnecessary. What you would say is, "I understand Ultimate Reality more symbolically, not literally, and I may choose to use the word God or not. It has nothing to do with questions about a literal being that either literally exists, or literally does not."

You can have a "spiritual atheist", who while not taking literally the idea of God as a Guy in the Sky, do accept that there is something more to reality that transcends what we can think about it with our reasoning minds. It's in this sense, I am an atheist; one that actually understands the role of metaphors. I personally see the divide more between literalists and non-literalists, than I do between theists and atheists. Underscore that last sentence. It's the key that unlocks the door to almost everything.

Then you and he are both atheists. Welcome!

Everyone is an atheist to one definition of God or another! No one can be to all of them.

If you use the term "God" the same way I use "Mother Earth", "Lady Luck", or "Old Man Winter", then you no more believe in God than I do.

I certainly wouldn't use the word "God" to metaphorically speak about snow. I'd use the word snow for that. But when you attempt to speak about that Mystery, that transcendent quality of reality to us, "Old Lady Luck," doesn't exactly fit. Some other word would have to at least begin to point to that. God is a convenient word since that's been its function for quite some time, amongst other things that don't really work. Another word that does something similar, to point to the transcendent, to the ineffable, will suffice too. As long as it does the job.

 

[Omega Green]

That's an elimination of Christianity, not a reformation.

There are still meaningful ways to talk about God beyond theism; the ground of all being; a presence at the heart of life itself. These are just two examples going beyond theism. Another would be God as the condition of possibility for all life. Benedict Spinoza, who was kicked out of church and hated by his church in his day, said he knew "God" by two attributes, Thought and Extension. It's a reformation because God is still discussed and also the importance of Christ is still discussed. However, this movement goes beyond the theistic stipulations of the council of Nicea. Basically the line goes; why is there any reason we should take dogmas from the men who sat at these councils? Why do we assume that they had anymore authority to dictate to us what the Christ experience means to us, than we do?

 

[Omega Green]

Theism is nothing more than belief in a god. However we define "god", belief in such a thing is theism. Non-theistic belief in a god is a contradiction in terms... despite Spong's likes and dislikes.

No it's contingent on the particular definition of "God" - and theistic Gods are generally defined to be supernatural. I'll quote bishop Spong again.
"Let's take God and strip him of the supernatural elements which we have created in him, and placed on this divine being. And lets begin to think of God as a presence at the very heart of life. That means God is in you. God is in me. And in the whole created order".

This is an atheistic (non-theistic) definition of God. Atheists do not admit the existence of the supernatural in God. Theists do.

 

[Omega Green]

I used to do "silent worship" with some Quaker friends, and I met a couple of "non-theist Christians" who I chatted to. It quickly became apparent that they were now atheist humanists who couldn't quite bring themselves to make the break with the tradition they had got used to.

Which can be simply because there remains more meaning to be drawn from the tradition itself. One example I like and have previously mentioned here is that of Jesus teaching in Mark 9 that He who is not against us, is for us. And the way such text is changed in Matthew 12, into He who is not with me is against me. Matthew was a bit like an american country preacher, he tried to prove everything with a text and he frequently picked the wrong text and he changed Jesus' words. Fundamentalists do not accept this, they figure Jesus taught both. Can you see him saying both of those statements? So you can look at things in terms of Christianity v.s. Atheism, but people like Spong have proved that as far as their essence is concerned, one can be both.

 

[Scott C.]

There are still meaningful ways to talk about God beyond theism; the ground of all being; a presence at the heart of life itself. These are just two examples going beyond theism. Another would be God as the condition of possibility for all life. Benedict Spinoza, who was kicked out of church and hated by his church in his day, said he knew "God" by two attributes, Thought and Extension. It's a reformation because God is still discussed and also the importance of Christ is still discussed. However, this movement goes beyond the theistic stipulations of the council of Nicea. Basically the line goes; why is there any reason we should take dogmas from the men who sat at these councils? Why do we assume that they had anymore authority to dictate to us what the Christ experience means to us, than we do?

I agree there are many ways to talk about God. My point is simply that this proposal is so dissimilar from Christianity that it is not Christianity at all.

 

[YmirGF]

I agree there are many ways to talk about God. My point is simply that this proposal is so dissimilar from Christianity that it is not Christianity at all.

It sounds more like theistic Humanism with a slight nod to Christ. A far cry from mainstream Christianity.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

No it's contingent on the particular definition of "God" - and theistic Gods are generally defined to be supernatural. I'll quote bishop Spong again.
"Let's take God and strip him of the supernatural elements which we have created in him, and placed on this divine being. And lets begin to think of God as a presence at the very heart of life. That means God is in you. God is in me. And in the whole created order".

This is an atheistic (non-theistic) definition of God. Atheists do not admit the existence of the supernatural in God. Theists do.

I think we're going to talk in circles unless you realize something about how I'm using terms: to me, "theism" refers to all god-belief. I think what you're describing is something more like "classical theism" (or maybe "classical monotheism"), which is only one subset of theism.

By the way I understand the term "theism", pantheism, panentheism, deism, polytheism, monotheism, etc., are all subsets of theism. Basically, if it's valid to call a thing a god, then it's valid to call belief in that thing some sort of theism.

And when I say that I'm an atheist, I'm not just saying that I don't believe in some "bearded man in the sky" god-concept; II 'm saying that I don't believe in any god-concepts. It means that of all the things I believe exist, I've yet to find any that I think could be reasonably described as a god.

Also: I've found the word "supernatural" to be so poorly defined that it's basically useless, so I have no idea what you mean when you say "theistic Gods are generally defined to be supernatural."

 

[Windwalker]

And when I say that I'm an atheist, I'm not just saying that I don't believe in some "bearded man in the sky" god-concept; II 'm saying that I don't believe in any god-concepts. It means that of all the things I believe exist, I've yet to find any that I think could be reasonably described as a god.

If you saying nothing can be reasonably defined as "a god", then you have a very clear and definite image of what that looks like in your mind. And if you put that on the table, do you honestly think that things like pantheism, panentheism, etc, truly resemble that? No pantheist I know would ever, ever use your language which you have stated repeatedly as "a god". That betrays a lack of knowing how these other views think, and why your saying it's all a "subset" of that, simply does not hold water.

 

[Omega Green]

I think we're going to talk in circles unless you realize something about how I'm using terms: to me, "theism" refers to all god-belief. I think what you're describing is something more like "classical theism" (or maybe "classical monotheism"), which is only one subset of theism.

By the way I understand the term "theism", pantheism, panentheism, deism, polytheism, monotheism, etc., are all subsets of theism. Basically, if it's valid to call a thing a god, then it's valid to call belief in that thing some sort of theism.

And when I say that I'm an atheist, I'm not just saying that I don't believe in some "bearded man in the sky" god-concept; II 'm saying that I don't believe in any god-concepts. It means that of all the things I believe exist, I've yet to find any that I think could be reasonably described as a god.

Also: I've found the word "supernatural" to be so poorly defined that it's basically useless, so I have no idea what you mean when you say "theistic Gods are generally defined to be supernatural."

Theism refers to anthropomorphic God belief in which God is said to be a being, or an independent/disembodied mind of some sort, generally endowed with supernatural powers.

By "supernatural" I mean that God is said to be of some essence beyond the natural world and to possess powers (e.g. omniscience) due to gods super-nature. You could take "supernatural" to mean "from beyond nature", or "not of nature".

What I am talking about here is not monotheism in any sense in which God is described as a being existing independently to the human mind.

Do you not believe that energy exists within your own mind and the minds of others?