Bishop Spong’s Critique of the Traditional Christianity

Institutional Christianity seems fearful of inquiry, fearful of freedom, fearful of knowledge – indeed, fearful of anything except its own repetitious propaganda, which has its origins in a world that none of us any longer inhabits. (John Shelby Spong [1])

Sanctified ignorance is still ignorance. (John Shelby Spong [2])

John Shelby Spong was the Bishop of the Diocese of Newark at the time of his retirement in 2000. He has impressive credentials, academic, literary and professional. He earned his degree of A.B. from University of North Carolina in Philosophy with Minor in Zoology. In view of his stupendous scholarship evidenced by his published papers, books and lectures, he was honored with degrees of Doctor of Divinity by St. Paul’s College in 1976, and Virginia Theological Seminary in 1977, and Doctor of Humane Letters by Muhlenberg College in 1998.

He was brought up in a traditionally religious family and grew up with a copy of the Bible given him by his mother when he was still in high school. His love for the bible is life long.

As he matured and expanded his academic horizons, he found himself at the skeptical crossroads of traditional Christianity and rationalism buttressed by physical sciences. He found it difficult to reconcile the literal understanding of the traditional Christianity (Christianity of the Church so to say) with the modern science and rational truths. As a result of his critical study of the Bible and the traditional Christianity, he came to a traumatic conclusion “..that everything written in the Bible is first of all not eternal, and, second, not necessarily true,” (3). His faith in his religion is however so deep and profound that in spite of all the doubts and skepticism he came to have of the literal understanding of the Bible, he could not and would not relinquish his faith in God and Jesus Christ. That is the tightest bond that holds him to Christianity, which he believes and passionately professes is in need of reinterpretation that should rid it of the historical inconsistencies and nonsensical outdated stories.

Here I will try to describe his critical views of the traditional faith of Christianity by quoting generously from several of his books. Later on, I will also describe rather briefly what kind of faith he seems to have in God and Christianity in view of his self-profession. I’ll also provide a few comments from at least one of his critics regarding his residual belief in Christianity.

He stated in his book “Living in Sin” (4), “In the Bible there are conflicting accounts of creation, conflicting versions of the Ten Commandments, conflicting understandings of who Jesus is and was, conflicting details concerning what happened on the first Easter, conflicting views on the meaning of Pentecost, and even on when, or if, the end of the world will come. Despite the fact that these conflicts and alternatives are present in Scripture, there are still some who insist that the Bible is inerrant and that its texts can be quoted to define and support a wide variety of moral activities.” He has stated elsewhere, “ the words of the Bible are not the words of God,” (5) and, “if a religion requires that a literal Bible is embraced, I must walk away from that system,” (6). He also wrote, “The Bible becomes not a literal road map to reality, but a historical narrative of the journey our religious forbears made in the eternal human quest to understand life, the world, themselves, and God,” (7).

Don Closson (8) in his review of Spong’s book “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism” concluded in view of Spong’s above views on the Bible, “The Bible is thus only a book of religious experience, not special revelation from God.” Regarding whether the Bible is indeed the revealed word of God, Spong said, “I could not believe that anyone who has read the book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in every literal word was the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God. Have these people simply not read the text? Are they hopelessly misinformed? Is there a different Bible? Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and naïveté?” (9).

His criticism is so pervasive and poignant that one starts to wonder if there is anything in the Bible that is right and free of error. At one place in his book on “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism”, he wrote, “..there are concepts in the Bible that are repugnant to the modern consciousness. There is a vicious tribal code of ethics that prohibits internally behavior that is actually encouraged in dealing with outsiders. Moses was a murderer, but this was not a character flaw because his victim was an Egyptian (Exod. 2:11 ff)…Adultery was said to be evil, but both Abraham and Isaac tried to pass their wives off as their sisters, even though this meant having them sexually used by Abimelech, king of Gerar (Gen. 21:1-18; 26:6-11)…Captive peoples, if spared from death, were reduced to slavery. Captive women were used for sexual sport by their Hebrew conquerors. Judah treated his daughter in law Tamar as a prostitute and then proposed to kill her when she became pregnant (Genesis 38)…God appeared in some passages to be not only a nationalistic deity but also as a sadistic one who delighted even in killing the first-born in every Egyptian household (Exod. 11:4-6),” (10). So on and so forth.

Although it is difficult to cover comprehensively all the ground which is spanned by Spong’s criticism of the literal Bible and the traditional Christianity, a few of the specific issues are discussed in the following.

Virgin Birth and God Incarnate

His (Jesus Christ’s) body and brain were those of a common man; His personality was the personality of God, so far as that personality could be expressed in human terms. He was not a kind of demon or fairy pretending to be human; He was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be “like God” – He was God. (Dorothy Sayers [11])

Jesus Christ is traditionally believed to be born of virgin birth. The Holy Spirit divinely implanted the ‘seed’ of God in Mary, Jesus’ mother. That is how Jesus Christ came to be called Son of God. It is in this sense that ‘God was in Jesus.’ According to Spong, “The doctrine of incarnation, as it has been typically framed, assumes that an external God has been enfleshed in Jesus of Nazareth,” (12). Spong discards the theory of virgin-birth on the grounds of modern knowledge of genetics and biology. It was commonly believed in the past and the remote past that woman did not have a participatory role in conceiving a baby other than providing a warm and comfortable space in her womb for the baby to develop and grow. The cause of conception was indeed the male seed (sperm). The male’s role in the virgin-birth was played by the Holy Spirit and that was all there was to it.

The modern comprehension however is that conception cannot take place unless woman provides an egg cell for fertilization by the male sperm. So physical intercourse is needed for conception in which the sperm seeks and fertilizes the woman’s egg cell. Virgin-birth is thus a fairy tale and not necessarily true.

Spong (13) wrote, “the deepest problem that the virgin-birth story faces is that it reflects a pre-modern understanding of the human birth process – an understanding that, because of our expanded knowledge of genetics, biology, and reproduction, educated people today could not possibly believe without closing their minds to vast amount of data. The early Christians did not understand the woman’s role in reproduction, “. He (13) continued further, “The woman is thus an equal co-creator with the man of every child. From that moment of scientific insight on, the virgin-birth tradition could never again be thought of as producing a divine child in human form. At best this understanding of genetics would produce a strange creature who would be half human and half divine.”

Death of Jesus Christ, Resurrection, and Ascension

According to Spong since God was enfleshed in Jesus Christ, He needed to be released from His confinement; hence the story of Christ’s resurrection and ascension to beyond the heaven, the abode of God. Spong criticized the traditional three-layered Christian cosmology, which visualized Earth at the center of the universe, sky or heaven above the Earth (Earth being flat) and the transcendental God beyond the heaven. This concept is totally opposed to the modern day-astronomers’ comprehension of the cosmos. So the resurrection and ascension story according to which Christ ascended beyond the heaven after his death at the cross is unbelievable. The ‘empty tomb’ is quoted in evidence of this claim, which is controversial at best.

If God was in Jesus as is traditionally believed, He also died physically at the Cross together with Jesus.

Dorothy Sayers’ description is in conformance with the preceding incomprehensible theory. She (14) wrote, “He (Jesus) talked too much and uttered too many disconcerting truths. So we bribed one of His friends to hand Him over quietly to the police, and we tried Him on a rather vague charge of creating a disturbance, and had him publicly flogged and hanged Him on the common gallows, “thanking God” we were rid of a knave. All this was not very creditable to us, even if He was (as many people thought and think) only a harmless crazy preacher. But if the Church is right about Him, it was more discreditable still; for the man we hanged was God Almighty.”

God Almighty! Men hanged God Almighty, good grief. Nietzsche only proclaimed that God was dead; here Sayers (and together with her the traditional Christian believers) is saying that “man we hanged was God.” Bishop Spong (9) wrote, “what the mind cannot believe the heart cannot adore.”

Apropos of crucifixion of God together with Jesus Christ, Spong (9) remarked, “..any god who can be killed ought to be killed.” He (9) also wrote, “If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic description included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus’ resurrection, also is not believable.”

Original (First) Sin

…the deliberate sin of the first man is the cause of the original sin. (St. Sugustine)

…the sin of Adam was one thing but the sin of children at the birth is quite another, the former was the cause, the latter is the effect. (St. Anslem)

The concept of the original sin is quite perplexing like other biblical concepts, e.g., the virgin-birth, Trinity, etc. The fall of Adam occurred, as is commonly believed due to his disobedience of God (by eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge). Due to this, Adam’s posterity was doomed to death and mortality, although they were originally destined to be immortal as many believe; many others however believe that Adam was created a mortal man from ordinary earth to which he would return at his death.

The sin however is not situated in disobedience, which led to the loss of immortality; it is situated in concupiscence, which is “rebellion of the lower appetite transmitted to us by Adam (and) is an occasion of sin and in that sense comes nearer to moral evil,” (15). Spong (16) wrote, “The connection between sin and sex was clearly established. All human beings were lost, incapable of saving themselves, and destined to die in their sin.” He (17) also wrote, “Men were made to feel guilty for having any sexual desires, guilty for having power, guilty for loving a woman….Sex was evil. Sex was universal. So evil was universal. It was said to be the heritage of Adam.”

Since the babies are conceived through sexual intercourse, they are believed to be ‘fruit of sin’ at birth. They are baptized to rid them of the ‘first sin.’

Holiness is sexless according to this understanding as described by Spong.

Spong has described the whole story of Adam’s fall in his book “Why Christianity Must Change or Die”. How he was tempted by Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, how Eve was temptingly goaded by the serpent to persuade Adam into disobedience, how God found out that Adam had disobeyed Him, Adam’s expulsion from the paradise, how the serpent was accursed to always crawl on his belly for his part in the crime, and how Eve was doomed to suffer pain and agony in the delivery of the babies. All this appears like a good fictional story.

The concept has become quite complex as a result of the philosophical and theological discussions over a period of the last two millennia and it is really difficult to make any sense out of it. Spong discards it simply using the theory of evolution. He asserts that human life did not begin from Adam and Eve; it gradually evolved over a period of some five billion years. So the concept of the first sin and its atonement by Jesus Christ by giving his life on the cross is just fabrication. He (18)) asserted, “The unraveling began with the realization that Adam and Eve were not the primeval human parents and that all life did not stem from these two. The theory of evolution made Adam and Eve legendary at best.”

Atonement

The fall of Adam, the virgin-birth, death on the cross, resurrection and ascension to the heaven are all pieces of a religious mythology of sin and sacrifice. Once the myth of the fall of Adam came into being, the story of atonement became inevitable for the redemption of Adam’s progeny for God is just and merciful; He wouldn’t doom Adam and his descendants to eternal punishment.

According to popular belief, “..a man however righteous, cannot be free from sin, he is begotten of Adam, who sinned, and whose sin is being transmitted hereditorically to the generations that follow. Thus there is no escape from sin and for a sinful man there is no salvation to attain, except by means of Atonement by a sinless man,” (19). Since no man is sinless, according to this theory, God Himself had to come to Earth in the form of a man, Jesus, and offer His own sacrifice for atonement. “So Jesus, appeared at the appointed time to carry out the act of atonement, was put on the cross and crucified. The body remained in the sepulcher for three days and three nights while the spirit suffered in Hell in atonement for the people who believe in him. Thus the Resurrection took place. Forty days later, he ascended to Heaven bodily.” What an incredible story! The people however, not only the gullible ones, believe in it.

Spong concluded after a detailed discussion of the virgin-birth, Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, death at the cross as atonement, resurrection and ascension to heaven certifying the divine acceptance of the sacrifice, “This view of Christianity is increasingly difficult for many of us to accept or believe. I would choose to loathe rather than to worship a deity who required the sacrifice of his own son. But on many other levels as well, this entire theological system, with these strange presuppositions, has completely unraveled in our postmodern world. It now needs to be removed quite consciously from Christianity,” (18).

In spite of atonement, every child is still born in sin and still needs baptism for cleansing his sin from him.

Status of Women – Misogyny

I do not care to worship a God defined by masculinity. I am no longer tolerant of gatherings where all the participants are men, sitting in a solemn assembly, clothed in their ecclesiastical dress, and acting as if they can determine what a woman may do morally with her own body. I have no interest in being part of an institution that is so deeply biased against women and intends to stay that way. (John Shelby Spong [20])

Another issue about which Bishop Spong felt rather strongly is the plight of women in the traditional Christian faith. Effectively, women are considered as property of the men, their personal possession. God created Adam Himself but Eve was created from the ribs of Adam, according to the traditional belief. Thus man is in direct communion with God and woman is not. Boys are baptized but the girls do not need it. While this certainly is discriminatory for the women because they also need to be cleansed, it can also be interpreted positively in favor of women, e.g., the boys are born in sin so they need baptization; the girls, on the other hand, are born sinless needing no cleansing per se. I don’t think this is a popular interpretation because the women are definitely subservient to men.

In the context of the Ten Commandments, Spong (21) observed, “These laws also reflected the patriarchal mentality present among ancient people in that they assumed that a woman was the property of a man. This sexist attitude is overtly present in the last commandment, “You shall not covet,” and by implication it is present in the commandment “You shall not commit adultery.” The full text of that final commandment says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbor’s,” (Exod. 20:17). Please note there is no written prohibition anywhere in the Torah against coveting your neighbor’s husband.”

Commenting further on the misogynic language of the above quoted commandment, Spong (21) wrote, “The reason for this was that a husband was not property, but a wife was. The neighbor was a male. His assets were listed in descending order of value. His house first, his wife second, his slaves third, and then his ox, his ass, and his other possessions. The strange view of a woman as the property of a man is still vestigially present today in many marriage ceremonies celebrated in Christian churches, where one man ‘gives the woman away’ to another man as if she were a male possession.”

Bishop Spong has taken up cudgels with other traditional Christian beliefs also and criticized them in the light of the modern scientific discoveries in biology, genetics, etc. He has written a whole book “Living in Sin” on homosexuality, which he believes is a biological condition and not a free human choice. All this is quite applauding but then one is puzzled as to how does he square up his Christian belief with his rationalism?

What Kind of Faith Does Bishop Spong Have?

A Christianity that is not changing is a Christianity that is dying. (John Shelby Spong)

Considering the extent of Bishop Spong’s discontent with the traditional Christianity and his self-profession that he is a believing Christian, one is perplexed to place him and his faith in true perspective. It would be much easier for him to relinquish his faith in religion and keep his rationalistic stance. (However, I am not suggesting that he should; it is of course his own choice.) It is also a relatively simple matter for a third person who has read his books and papers, to adjudge which traditional beliefs he has discarded than to determine what residual belief he is keeping.

Still in the narrow sense of the minimal requirements needed to be a Christian as defined by Bertrand Russell, Bishop Spong is certainly a Christian. By his profession also, it seems he is a believing and practicing Christian otherwise he would have been excommunicated by the Church. Russell (22) prescribed “..that there are two different items which are quite essential to anybody calling himself a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature – namely, that you must believe in God and immortality. If you do not believe in those two things, I do not think that you can properly call yourself a Christian.” These two requirements however are not sufficient by themselves to be a Christian because the Muslims also believe in God and immortality but they are not Christians. The third ingredient that is required to be a Christian, according to Russell, is that “..you must have at the very lowest the belief that Christ was, if not divine, at least the best and the wisest of men, . If you are not going to believe that much about Christ, I do not think you have any right to call yourself a Christian.”

Spong tried to elucidate the kind of God he can believe. He (1) wrote, “The God I know is not concrete or specific. This God is rather shrouded in mystery, wonder, and awe. The deeper I journey into this divine presence, the less any literalized phrases, including the phrases of the Christian creed, seem relevant. The God I know can never be enclosed by propositional statements….The way reality was perceived when the Christian creeds were formulated has been obliterated by the expansion of knowledge. That fact is obvious that it hardly needs to be spoken. If the God I worship must be identified with these ancient creedal words in any literal sense, God would become for me not just unbelievable, but in fact no longer worthy of being the subject of my devotion….We are that silent majority of believers who find it increasingly difficult to remain members of the Church and still be thinking people.” Spong’s concept of God is mystical and steeped in rationalism. He is feeling a strong tug of rationalism and yet wants to remain a believing Christian in some meaningful sense. In this way, his belief is subjective; majority of rationalists can relate to it but the conventional Christians find it hard to accept it and go with him all the way. He is definitely a Christian in the sense of Russell and a cultural sense also, but he will have to elaborate his belief in a little more tangible and specific way to gain credibility with the traditionalists, even with those who are sympathetic to him and his way of thinking.

Criticizing Spong, Closson (8) wrote, “He (Spong) writes, ‘..Jesus means love-divine, penetrating, opening, life-giving, ecstatic love. Such love is the very essence of what we mean by God. God is love. Jesus is love. God was in Christ.’ This is why he feels that the church should reject the ideas of original sin, God’s wrath, and the atoning sacrifice of Christ. It should also be broken of its prejudices, particularly towards those who commit sexual sin. Spong appropriately calls this a ‘terrifying, barrier-free love. The problem with all this is that the Bible, the primary record we have of Jesus’ life and teachings bears nothing similar to Spong’s views. It seems that he would be much better off being a disciple of Mahatama Gandhi who believed that God is Supreme Good and that our goal in life is self-realization.” It is also curious that Spong wrote God was in Christ while he also criticized the concept of God’s incorporation in Christ.”

Conclusion

Spong’s views are indeed explosive bearing in mind that he is a retired bishop. Purely from a rational viewpoint, such candid criticism should be welcome; it provides incentive for the theologians to ponder seriously on dogmatic belief and attempt to make religion more realistic in whatever manner they can. The outdated notions need to be de-emphasized so that religious dogma becomes more credible. Such persistent criticism does introduce steady and imperceptible changes over a period of time in the religious outlook, which in due time becomes more realistic. For example, Earth is no longer flat and the center of the universe now, as it was believed to be in the past. A degree of faith is being exhibited by the modern theologians in the theory of evolution also. Although the religious dogma is still hopelessly archaic and unrealistic, insightful critiques, such as Spong’s, do help in modernizing it somewhat.

References

1.John Shelby Spong, “Why Christianity Must Change or Die?” HarperSansFrancisco, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, 1998, p.4.
2.John Shelby Spong, “Living in Sin,” HarperSanFrancisco, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, 1988, p.79.
3.Ibid, p.136.
4.Ibid. pp. 111-112.
5.John Shelby Spong, “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism,” HarperSanFrancisco, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, 1992, p.249.
6.Ibid, p.107.
7.Ibid, p.33.
8.Don Closson, “Rescuing the Gospel from Bishop Spong – (Review of Ref.5),” http://www.probe.org/docs/spong.html.
9.“Quotations on Freethought and Religion – Bishop John Shelby Spong,” About.
10.Ref.5, pp.16-17.
11.Dorothy L. Sayers, “Creed or Chaos – Why Christianity Must Choose Either Dogma Or Disaster,” Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, New Hampshire, 1949, p.6.
12.John Shelby Spong, “A New Christianity For a New World,” HarperSanFrancisco, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, 2001, p.116.
13.Ibid, p.117.
14.Ref. 11, p.8.
15.“Original Sin,” New Advent.
16.Ref.1, p.93.
17.Ibid, p.91.
18.Ibid, pp.95-96.
19.“Doctrine of Atonement,” http://www.islam4all.com/new_page_110.htm.
20.Ref.1, pp.5-6.
21.Ref.1, pp.152-153.
22.Bertrand Russell, “Why I Am Not A Christian?” http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html.