Like a Spong...

Jason Lee Steorts has a nice review of retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spongs latest book, Jesus for the Non-Religious. The main thesis of the review is that Spong's religion fails to answer the basic question of whether it is a religion that is good for anything at all. Spong does the usual song and dance about the "story" of Jesus being a major embellishment based on Jewish folklore, that none of the supernatural events in scripture actually occurred, but somehow in this Jesus who is misrepresented in the biblical texts, we can encounter something like a god.

"'As a Christian,' Spong explains, 'I live inside a faith system which, at its core, asserts that in the life of this Jesus, that which we call God has been met, encountered and engaged.'”

This has always been curious to me. If the gospels are so full of legend and embellishment, how do we know enough about Jesus to "encounter" or "engage" him. Doesn't seem to worry Bishop Spong. Why? Because not only is Jesus unintelligible, God is beyond understanding as well.



"Spong admits to having no idea what God is: 'I cannot tell anyone who or what God is. . . . The reality of God can never be defined. It can only be experienced, and we need always to recognize that even that experience may be nothing more than an illusion.'”

Quips the reviewer:

"Spong’s position, then, is this: There is a higher reality, and we have named it “God.” Somehow we encounter this higher reality in the life of Jesus. But we have no idea what the higher reality is, and can say nothing intelligible about it."

Steorts goes on to point out that a mute, unknowable god can say nothing to us about how to live or how to die, in essense such a god has no purpose, no goal, no effect except to be 'experienced'.

One of my two heroes, Francis Schaeffer, predicted this postmodern strangeness, this escape from reason, that men would be dissatisfied with a sterile world of pure reason and would embrace not a robust link between reason and faith, but a mysticism without content. Spong is the poster child. I could name several who seem willing to follow in his footsteps...but that would be uncharitable. Enough to point out the vacuity of some ideas.