Less than a month after sponsoring an event for Virginia Episcopal clergy featuring a speaker who denies both the afterlife and unique divinity of Christ, Bishop Shannon Johnston of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia has presided over a service featuring a similarly controversial figure.
In a Good Friday service at historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, retired Bishop John Shelby Spong decried the Nicene Creed as “a radical distortion of the Gospel of John,” asserted that several of the apostles were “mythological” and declared that Jesus Christ did not die to redeem humanity from its sins.
Yeah, I hear his recent appearance in Crete, Nebraska, was a complete bomb.
“John’s gospel is about living life to fullness – not moral perfection or overcoming sin,†Spong concluded. “He [Jesus] did not die to save you from your sins. He died to free you – to empower you – to be all that you can be.â€
Poor John Shelby Spong is now reduced to borrowing US Army recruitment slogans to further his gozpell. I suppose he thinks it “fresh and new and appealing” in his dotage. A retention of the P.T. Barnum tactics of the Jesus Seminar in securing popular press attention, no doubt.
Raymond E Brown, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT (1st Edition, 1997), page 822, footnote 11:
“Some are not formally scholars, e.g., Episcopal Bishop John Spong, whose works stripping Jesus of christology Johnson REAL JESUS, treats under the heading of ‘Amateur Night.’ …
“G. O’Collins …in a withering review of Spong’s RESURRECTION: MYTH OR REALITY? … points out extraordinary inaccuracies and ends: ‘My advice for his next book … is to let some real experts check the text before publication.”
Shannon Johnston apparently has enough “creedal content” to allow the word Nicene as a descriptor of the “creed” he alleges belief in, but one must wonder frankly if it’s the one of the Fathers or John
Spong. Since the consequences are merely eternal, his behaviour suggests he doesn’t think it a matter of significance. Spong does think it matters if you let it keep you from being all you can be. Do these two also square the circle?
There is so much to say about this. None of which would survive scrutiny from the elves. Sigh.
Actually, Spong was a big help to me. I read his memior, called (I think), “Here I Stand,” and “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” After reading them. I was convinced. Convinced that what he proposed was a load of incoherent drivel, convinced that he (and those who promoted his views) had no clue about what they were talking about, convinced that the position of an up front atheist was in every way preferable to what he proposed.
I continue to struggle. But the Christianity I struggle with is not the Christianity proposed by Spong.
Most credible bible scholars I know, many of whom are certainly liberal, don’t take Spong seriously in any way, shape, or form.
I am not sure what he is saying. He is attacking the fourth gospel because of its assertion of the divinity of Jesus. But it is there in the synoptics as well. I would guess that he is saying the Jesus taught us to get rid of bad karma.