Posted by
D W W Robertson on Monday, April 21, 2008 2:51:42 PM
Bishop Spong charges money to read his column. But I got this introductory column for free. I resonded to Bishop Spong, who I think is the scum of the earth, in the italics. He is one of the worst human beings alive becuase he has been blessed with so much power and authority from God and he uses it to mislead gulible Christians in order to advance his liberal agenda and to destroy traditional Christianity in exchange for secular religion. G.K. Chesterton said it. I paraphrase him, "if you don't believe in God, you won't belive in nothing. You'll believe in anything."
The Word of God? Yes.
"This is the word of the Lord"
That is the liturgical phrase used in Christian churches to mark the end of a reading from the Bible. It is a strange, even a misleading, phrase. Yet Sunday after Sunday it is repeated, reinforcing in the psyches of worshipers a rather outdated attitude toward Holy Scripture. And Bishop Spong does not reinforce the psyches of those who practice behavior contrary to the teachings of the Bible by denouncing Biblical teaching?
In many of its details, the Bible is simply wrong! Epilepsy is not caused by demon possession. No one ever said that every case of epilepsy was caused by demon possession, just that some cases were. Spong commits a straw man fallacy and argues something that he could not possibly know. David did not write the Psalms. David did write the Psalms. The earth is not the center of the universe. Nor does the Bible teach that the earth is the center of the universe. What is the center of the universe Spong? Certainly not your pitiful soul. On other issues of great public concern, the Bible is no longer even regarded as moral. If you basis this claim against the morality of the men and women who believe that it is right and good to rip an unborn child from it’s mothers womb by tearing it apart or burning it with chemicals, then I say you are right. Its verses have been used to affirm war, slavery, segregation and apartheid. For every institution, there will be those who exploit it for power. Problem is that those exploiters had to misinterpret or misrepresent the Bible in order to use it for evil purposes. I don’t suppose you use its verses to encourage people not to stand up to evil in the world, which is all to common on the left. You must be in line with those against standing up to militant Islamists, are you not? It defines women as inferior creatures and suggests that homosexual persons be put to death. The Bible is clearly revolutionary in its affirmation that men and women are joint heirs to Christ’s inheritance. The Bible is correct in its judgment that men and women are different. I have a secret for you Spong men have more testosterone than women do. It is biological, not social construction and it is God-ordained.
Church people try to ignore or suppress these biblical deficiencies, (I wish they would suppress your brain deficiencies.) but when the Scriptures are read to a listening congregation the response is increasing incredulity. Still they respond, "This is the word of the Lord." As opposed to, “this is the lies of corrupt chauvinists”?
Outside the church, where Spong’s beliefs are more common, this presumed authority of Scripture is generally ignored. Secular people live in a post-religious world where the idea that a literary work, written between 1000 B.C.E. and 135 C.E., B.C.E. is a way secularists discount the huge positive impact Jesus Christ had on the world by pretending that the years are not marked by his birth. can be "the Word of God," is simply too far-fetched to believe. For a Christian, the idea that the Bible is not the word of God is too far-fetched to believe. Strangely, Spong accepts this. This obvious ecclesiastical power play is no longer even passively accepted as benign. Your motives are better Spong? One has only to chart the evil and pain that many people have endured in history because someone regarded the Bible as the "Word of God." That claim is no longer regarded as valid. Would you care to chart the goodness and the blessing that many people have experienced as well? Or if you prefer we could compare it with the atrocities committed by good hearted communists that you esteem so highly?
In a series of essays that will appear periodically over the next few months in this column I will examine some of the more frightening examples of these tragedies. My purpose will be quite specific. I will be seeking to call the Christian Church in all of its forms to look closely at what it is, overtly and covertly, teaching its people about the Bible and at the enormous gap that exists between what biblical scholars know and what the leaders of the churches actually say to their congregations. Hmm…if what Biblical scholars “know” is contrary to what God knows, then I don’t care what they believe. Furthermore, I attended classes at UCSB one of the top five schools in the nation for religious studies. In my classes, discussion as to whether there is historical merit to the claim that Jesus physically rose from the dead was not permitted. It was assigned to the category of “religious myth.” So if these godless, liars and hypocrites are your scholars, I will gladly ignore their favored doctrines. If our clergy do not really believe what they are saying, and if our liturgies affirm things that the scholars universally reject the word of God is foolishness to those who are perishing, then something is clearly amiss in contemporary Christianity that does not augur well for a Christian future. We do not judge our future by how receptive contemporary scholars are to Christianity. Scholars have been wrong time and again throughout history. The Bible has not.
First, we need to state some basic biblical facts.
The people who wrote the books in the Bible did not think they were writing "The Word of God." That is a quite elementary but singularly important place to begin. I agree that it is important, but what Spong states is a lie, not a fact.
In regard to the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah or the Books of Moses, scholars have known/wrongly thought since the 19th century, that they are not the work of a single hand. They are rather a compilation of at least four strands of Jewish writing that were composed over a period of some 500 years. Those strands were first, the Yahwist document, written in the tenth century B.C.E. and sometimes called the Hebrew Iliad, which reflects the national history of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The second was the Elohist document, written in the 9th century B.C.E. and sometimes called the Hebrew Odyssey, which reflects the national history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. After the fall of the Northern Kingdom to the Assyrians in 721 B.C.E., these two national stories were woven together into a single narrative. The third document was the product of one known as the Deuteronomic writer, composed in the late 7th century B.C.E., and consisting of the book of Deuteronomy and a general editing of the newly merged national Jewish story. The fourth source of the Torah was not so much a document as it was an expansive editorial commentary applied to the entire faith story by those called the Priestly Writers and written during the Babylonian Exile somewhere between 586 and 450 B.C.E. That is the process, briefly described, that produced the oldest part of the biblical story.
One can identify the places where these versions of the story were woven rather inexactly together, producing many of the conflicting details in the Torah itself. The Sabbath day law, for example, developed during the Exile, is read back into the manna in the wilderness story to make sure that the miraculous food was not gathered on the seventh day in violation of the Sabbath. The ritualistic laws governing sacrifices were used to alter the Noah story so that during the 150 days on the ark, Noah could offer the proper sacrifices without destroying that species.
Finally, there are three versions of the Ten Commandments in the Torah. The oldest one, from the Yahwist document, is found in Exodus 34. The version with which most of us are familiar, found in Exodus 20, comes from the Elohist document but was significantly doctored by the Priestly Writers. The third version is in Deuteronomy 5 and though close to Exodus 20 has some revealing differences. The Deuteronomic version of the 4th Commandment makes the reason for rest on the Sabbath, not that God rested from the work of creation and thus hallowed that day, but that the Jews should remember that they were once slaves and that even slaves need a day of rest. The seven-day creation story, with which the Bible now opens, was written by the Priestly Writers well after the Deuteronomic document had been completed.
Spong is right that this is the popular view among many scholar. This view though has very little basis. The scholars believe that they can determine that different authors wrote different portions of the torah classically attributed to Moses by the name they use for God among a few other literary techniques. I’m sorry, but using different names for God in different sections of the Torah is more likely an effort to emphasize different characteristics of God in different sections than it is a sign that a different author must have written that section. Those scholars have closed themselves off to contrary opinion. In my classes, not a single book by a Christian author was assigned. Zondervan publishers have some very well researched books on this topic and when I asked my professors and T.A.s about introducing a Zondervan book to the class, it was shot down because a Christian author would be “biased.” It was as though they were blind to the fact that non-Christians have just as much at stake in being right as Christians do. Who wants to be accountable to an all-knowing God? The refusal to engage the Christian authors totally undermines the academic enterprise as learning is predicated upon disagreement. Furthermore it is an affront to freedom of speech in these publicly funded universities. This is no surprise. Jesus said there would be trouble. I’m just having trouble understanding why Spong would side with the non-Christian anti-discussion “scholars” and not those with whom he shares the self-title “Christian.”
My faith doesn’t hang in the balance here anyway. If the classic belief that Moses wrote the Torah is wrong, that doesn’t matter to me because the Bible doesn’t claim that about itself.
The idea that the Bible came into being in some sort of miraculous way and is either the literal dictation of God or even the "inspired message of God" is simply not supportable on its face. The idea that the Bible is the inspired message of God is the only position supportable on its face. No other ancient book has such historic accuracy. And no other book accurately predicts future events such as the life, death, and resurrection of Christ than the Bible. The Bible is a profoundly human, deeply flawed, tribal history that has created as much pain as blessing in our world. No collection of 40 some-odd authors of varying backgrounds, birth places, languages, education, and with over a thousand years been the lives of the authors have ever produced a book with so much similarity as to the truth about God. It is truly remarkable that the Bible accomplishes such an amazing feat. Furthermore, the message of the Bible has done far more good than the pain it has caused in this world. Although it is painful for some to admit that they are a sinner in need of a savior.
Moving on to the Hebrew prophets, this analysis produces a similar difficulty. The prophets tended to explain every disaster that befell the chosen people as the direct result of their laxity in obeying God's laws or in their inability to worship God properly. Not every disaster is an act of God, but surely God’s relationship with his people involved more punishment than it does not because live under the grace of the savior. They lived under the condemnation of the law. It is not to say that every disaster is a direct act of God. Just to say that it is possible. Not so strange for those of us who believe in Noah’s flood and for those of us who believe that God gave us the rainbow. God seemed to have little more to do than to organize the whole universe so as to teach the chosen people how to be faithful or to demonstrate the dreadful price that unfaithful ones would have to pay. Once again, now we have forgiveness. When we turn to the first part of the New Testament to be written, we need to register the fact that Paul's letters were just that, letters. They are time bound and time specific. They express irritation at and praise for the behavior of the actual recipients. A letter is not necessarily time bound. Some comments may be time bound, but even specific expressions of irritation and specific praise teaches us something about what is universally sinful and what is eternally good. They were composed in a dialogical manner in order to address real issues bothering real people in real time. Good thing! We are also real people in real time. When Paul wrote in anger, "I hope those who bother you will mutilate themselves," was that the Word of God? Surely it was nothing more than the word of Paul! Surely this is nothing more than the word of Spong!
Similarly, when Paul suggested that a woman's head must be covered in public worship, he was expressing a cultural norm not a universal principle. Agreed and well said! Covering a women’s head was a practical and cultural application of a universal principle-modesty. Is the message of modesty that which has done so much harm in the world or as we are seeing today is immodesty a bigger problem? When Paul said, "I forbid a woman to have authority over a man" under specific circumstances or when he suggested that those who do not worship God properly would have their sexual identities confused which is true, does one really want to suggest that this badly dated bit of human ignorance is to be reverenced as the voice of God? Is Spong willing to admit that he does not know everything? There are two ways to take an argument, 1) God says x is wrong, 2) Anything God says is true, therefore 3)x is wrong. Or 1a) God says x is wrong, 2a)x is not wrong, therefore 3a) God is wrong. Bishop Spong argues the latter. Can we respect such a hubristic approach?
Later the Gospel writers would violently twist out of context the writings of the prophets to prove such things as the literal accuracy of the Virgin Birth (how can Spong claim to know that the Virgin Birth was not historically accurate?) or to demonstrate that the ancient prophets supported the doctrinal and creedal development of the 4th and 5th Centuries of the Common Era. He means A.D. “in the year of our Lord.” Jerry Falwell, in a published book, has suggested that the divine nature of Jesus is "proved" by the fact that he fulfilled in a very specific way, the messianic expectations of the prophets. That attitude, however, has been revealed by modern biblical scholarship what Biblical scholarship? The Bible scholars he speaks of assume at the outset that miracles are impossible and do not welcome dissenting opinion to be nothing less than profound ignorance. The idea that a God, living somewhere above the sky, God is not physical, he does not live above the sky. would drop hints into the texts of writers, He didn’t drop hints. He spoke clear, specific truth. some 800 years before the birth of Christ, determining exactly what Jesus would do in the 1st century, is fanciful enough. The amazing part is that it is true. Why won’t Spong rejoice in an awesome God who has given us confirmation of our faith? But when one adds that God would need to guard these divine hints through the centuries when these texts were copied by hand, protect them from destruction in war and guide the minds of Jewish decision makers centuries later to include these prophetic works in the Jewish Canon of Scripture, the elements of miracle and magic become heightened to incredibly superstitious levels. Heaven forbid we believe in a God that can do all of that!!
Next, one needs to understand, that contrary to the way Christian theology has interpreted the Gospels from the 2nd century on, Jesus did not miraculously live out these prophetic expectations. It was exactly the other way around. It would have to be the “the other way around,” if God is impotent or worse, fabrication. The story of Jesus was crafted some 40 - 70 years after that earthly life came to an end, to make it conform to the biblical expectations! Micah, for example, did not predict that the birth of Jesus would occur in Bethlehem. That was the way that later Christians interpreted Micah. Jesus' birth, which probably occurred in Galilee, was shifted to Bethlehem in order to make the birth of Jesus fulfill this expectation. This would all be very convenient, if it were true. But it is patently false. We now have archiological proof that Caesar called for a census at the time of Jesus’ birth. Three decades ago, Spong’s beloved scholars were proved wrong!
The story of Jesus' crucifixion was, likewise, deliberately and liturgically shaped by their authors who had Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 in front of them as they wrote the passion narrative. The crucifixion of Christ is one of the best documented events of ancient history. Almost no one takes exception here. We forget, conveniently I would suggest, that the earliest Gospel, Mark, says that when Jesus was arrested, all of the disciples "forsook him and fled." Jesus died alone with no eyewitnesses. This is not inconsistent with the idea that there were eyewitnesses including John who came back, his mother, the other Mary, the Roman soldiers, and the Jewish locals. The Gospel writers later wrote the story of his death to "reveal the fulfillment of Scripture." A great part of the crisis in faith today derives from the fact that the authority once claimed for the Bible cannot and should not be sustained in the light of modern knowledge. How important then is this traditional view of the Bible to the future of Christianity. I’ll tell you this, without a physical resurrection of Christ your faith is in vain. Can this view of Scripture be abandoned without Christianity, as we have known it, not also collapsing? That question remains to be answered but it will be the present in the background of many columns written during the coming year. The answer is clearly and emphatically, “no!” Stay tuned! Fight the good fight Christians! Bring down Spong!
What interest does Spong have in attacking the authority of the Bible? He has every interest so that he can reshape the Bible to fit his own liberal agenda. He has neutered God by claiming that God is incapable of delivering to us an unadulterated scripture. The Bible is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and admonishing. Without scripture, anyone can say anything about Christianity. If anything offends you, get out your black highlighter cause that wasn’t part of the accepting Dalai Jesus in which liberals would like to believe. Liberals know that the real Jesus would never have offended anyone. If he had offended people, they would have crucified him!
— John Shelby Spong
— Daniel William Robertson