Review: "Why Christianity Must Chrange or Die" (part 3, Ch.2)

In this next chapter entitled "The Meaning of Exile and How We Got There" Spong describes the current status of the Church as being in "Exile". He borrows this imagery obviously from the Old Testament history of Israel and explains that just like Israel was conquered and taken away into captivity so has the Church been conquered by Modernism. Spong spends the first half of the chapter explaining the OT history and what "Exile meant" then (of course he removes any Providence and guts the heart of the OT historical account of a people that are being punished by a sovereign God for turning from Him to idols) but this is not the main problem with what Spong has to say, it is merely a symptom.

The real heart of the problem as I have stated in the last post and it only becomes more clear as I read on is Spong's presuppositions. Spong really presupposes a naturalistic closed system in regards to the universe, or put simply he has a deistic view of God, namely God does not act in time space and history. God is just out there somewhere...we can not in any way make definitive statements about God because Spong has rejected propositional Revelation (had he not he wouldn't presuppose naturalistic closed system). This is at the heart of Spong's error, he operates on materialist presuppositions. And really that is what he is calling all "believers" to do (operate on these same presuppositions), this is what needs to change in Christianity in the modern/post-modern world.

The Exile:

So Spong begins giving a bit of background from the OT history which is VERY POORLY understood if not manipulated altogether by Spong. Spong gives the reader the idea that the Jews god was conquered, they had the notion that the Temple was god's house in a literal sense and the Jerusalem would never be conquered because of this fact. Yet Jerusalem was conquered. The results according to Spong were devastating as he closes this section summing up what he wants us to get out of this, he writes:

"These Jews had once believed that God fought at their side against their enemies. They could believe no longer. They once believed that God might punish them for their waywardness but that God would not destroy them. They could believe that no longer. They once believed they were a specially chosen people. They could believe that no longer. They once believed that God had instructed them on where to live and how to worship. They could believe that no longer. They once believed that God dwelled in Jerusalem and ruled over Judah. They could believe that no longer. They once believed God could hear their prayers. They could believe that no longer. They once believed that they had a destiny and a future. They could believe that no longer. They once believed that God could and would care for them. They could believe that no longer.

They could not sing the Lord's song again, for they were in a strange and devastating exile, and in that exile the God they had once served lost all meaning. This God, quite frankly, could no longer be God for them. It is traumatic to watch the God who has given shape, definition and meaning to life be removed from a peoples awareness. there are but two alternatives for such a displaced deity. This God must grow or die. That is what being in a spiritual exile is all about." (p.28-29)

Now to anyone who has a decent grasp on OT history and Theology almost everything Spong just concluded about the Babylonian exile is simply wrong. In this whole section Spong chooses not to mention the prophets who spoke of the coming captivity to an unrepentant people (Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel) the three largest books in the OT all predicted the captivity that was to come! These men were moved by God to speak to the unrepentant idolatrous Jews of the judgement God was about to bring for their sins. But of course because Spong doesn't believe in an open system or propositional truth prophecy simply doesn't happen. Again this comes back to presuppositions, which is why when someone who has Biblical presuppositions everything Spong said just is obviously inaccurate and cherry picking the data. Spong because he is operating upon a materialist set of presuppositions simply can not accept the majority of what the historical narratives surrounding the captivity really say, because the involve a personal God who sovereignly operates in real time and space with people.

Let's look Biblically at some of Spong's assertions as to what happened to the Jewish faith because of the captivity:

"These Jews had once believed that God fought at their side against their enemies. They could believe no longer."

Well, not really. Prior to the captivity the people were looking to Egypt for help, NOT God:

"The army of Pharaoh had come out of Egypt. And when the Chaldeans who were besieging Jerusalem heard news about them, they withdrew from Jerusalem. Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet:
"Thus says the LORD, God of Israel: Thus shall you say to the king of Judah who sent you to me to inquire of me, 'Behold, Pharaoh's army that came to help you is about to return to Egypt, to its own land.
And the Chaldeans shall come back and fight against this city. They shall capture it and burn it with fire. Thus says the LORD, Do not deceive yourselves, saying, "The Chaldeans will surely go away from us," for they will not go away." (Jer 37:5-9)

The reason God did not fight for the people is not that he couldn't because we live in a closed system in which God does not operate in, but rather because they had rejected Him and were serving idols. This simple yet repeated truth is completely missing from Spong's analysis, again because he simply doesn't really think He is there in any substantial way of speaking about God really being there.

"They once believed they were a specially chosen people. They could believe that no longer."

Actually it was BECAUSE they were a chosen people that they went into captivity, they had broken their covenant with God thus God was casting them off. The theme of the election of the Jewish people continues on throughout Biblical history in the captivity and beyond, just read Daniel, Nehemiah and Zechariah and you will see that the captivity in no way extinguished the idea of being the chosen people to the Jews, rather it was reinforced because the captivity was prophetically predicted and brought on by God Himself.

"They once believed that God had instructed them on where to live and how to worship. They could believe that no longer."

Again actually the notion of Revelation was reinforced by the captivity, because the captivity was clearly prophetically predicted by men moved by the God who acts in time and space. We see this strongly in Nehemiah which reads:

"They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, "This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep." For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law." (Neh 8:8-9)

These were tears of repentance and sorrow over disobedience to the revealed word of God. This is again post-captivity. So the captivity rather than extinguishing a trust in special revelation as Spong asserts really causes a return to the revealed word of God mixed with sorrow over past disobedience. I will address but one more as Spong writes:

"They once believed God could hear their prayers. They could believe that no longer."

Well, the Bible says:

"Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession, saying, "O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.

To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open shame, as at this day, to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you. To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets." (Dan 9:3-10)

It seems clear that Daniel (who was in captivity) trusted that God heard prayer, and that God had spoken, and acted in time and space. The interesting thing is that God answered Daniels prayer while he was still praying!(see 8:20-27) Daniel, Nehemiah, Ezra, and Zechariah all reached drastically different conclusions regarding the captivity then Spong paints in the first half of chapter 2. This is because they were not operating on materialist presuppositions, but on Biblical presuppositions, namely that God is there and He interacts with man in an open system.

The Exile Today:

Spong proceeds to try to apply this exile/conquered notion to the modern church, saying that just like the Jews "God" was conquered so has the Fundamentalist "God" been conquered. Not by armies taken the Church into a literal captivity but by a growth in knowledge and scientific discovery. This growth in facts/knowledge make the classical Christian God completely obsolete and in need to be cast off in favor of a more modern "God" that has adapted to the new knowledge.

I will not be too tedious with citations here but one in reading this chapter gets the idea that Spong really thinks people of antiquity were stupid. That really is the picture he is trying to present here, people used to be really stupid and now we are smarter and need to cast off their ideas of deity. He paints the picture that people used to believe the earth was flat, the sun went around the earth, and that God was floating around in outer space on a golden throne somewhere. To give you a taste, Spong writes:

"In this cozy three-tiered world everything that was not understood or that seemed either irrational or inconvenient was assumed to be a manifestation of this heavenly God's specific divine intervention. Concepts like miracle and magic abounded." (p.29-30)

I don't fully disagree, I think people were superstitious, but I think we are just as superstitious today. And I would not merely apply the label of superstition to the religious (Catholics kissing relics) but also to the secularists, with their "lucky" baseball caps or whatever other ritual to try to bring good fortune. Spong goes on to talk about how the Christian view of theism "evolved" out of the tribal deity notions. This I think really is the only avenue if you operate upon materialist presuppositions to explain the existence of Christianity away, it just evolved, which I am beginning to think is the greatest form of magical invocation and gap filler of our day... just say "evolution did it" and the problems disappear.

Of course Spong next points us to the Catholic Churches dealings with Galileo and Copernicus to try show that their "God" just wouldn't cut it as the world modernized and grew in knowledge. The classic Christian theology was based upon the ideas of God that stupid ignorant people created in the first century. As we grew in knowledge these ideas grew absurd. Spong writes:

"The Church began to wonder how it could continue to talk about a God beyond the sky who, according to the biblical story, had once sent fire from those same heavens to burn up the sacrifices offered by Elijah on Mount Carmel and thus to defeat the priests of an alien deity known as Baal )1 kings 18) How could the story of Jesus ascending into the sky to return to God after his death still be proclaimed with intellectual integrity? The stories of Jesus appearing out of the sky to his disciples on a mountaintop in Galilee (Matt 28) or of Paul seeing a heavenly Jesus in that same sky on the road to Damascus (Acts 9) became increasingly problematic. Those Biblical accounts were so obviously shaped by the ancient three-tiered worldview that no longer existed." (p.33)

So because Paul probably didn't have as much understanding about how the solar system operated as we do today what he saw and recorded has no real relevance for today? That's a pretty schlocky conclusion to draw. As for the ascension what we have is a recording of what people saw, that is what they saw, Jesus going up. Now I doubt there is a throne somewhere in outer space floating there with Jesus on it, but that doesn't change what these people saw. In going up did Jesus go into outer space? Maybe, but why is that ridiculous and unbelievable if He did? I tend to think that He in some sense went into a different dimension, where God is. I don't have all the metaphysical mechanics of the ascension pinned down but I don't see why we need to in order to believe that this is what these men saw. There is only a problem if you are operating on materialist/naturalistic closed system presuppositions like Spong and deny that miracles, or Divine intervention are possible to begin with.

I also don't think that Spong has accurately represented the first century Judaeo-Christian view of heaven. Spong would have us to believe that these people crudely believed (and need I remind you they were stupid) that God was somewhere in outer space basically. Actually this is really inaccurate. The concept was that there were three heavens, the first heaven was where the birds and the clouds (now planes) all flew. The second heaven was outer space where the stars are. Then there is the third heaven and that is where God dwells. Paul speaks of being in this third heaven as he writes:

"I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. " (2 Cor 12:2)

Paul says he doesn't know all the intricacies of what happened but he knows that he was taken to the third heaven and saw wonderful things. I would say the same thing, I don't know all the mechanics of the how and where the heaven in which God dwells is but I know it is there just as much as I know God is there.

Spong continues on and gives a brief recap of the "progression" of Western science and how it has basically destroyed the believability of the classic Christian faith. He goes through Newton, to Darwin to Freud and Einstein to show how there really in our modern world is no room if you want to be intellectually honest for classic Christian theism. Apart from evolution theory Spong simply fails to explain how any of the discoveries made really challenge classical Christian theism. I think just because people like Freud and Sagan were operating on rationalistic (autonomous man starting with the presupposition that his reason alone will answer all of the questions eventually leaving no room for any gods) that somehow anything they discovered was yet another blow to classical Christian Theism.

Spong's argument for how Classical Christian theism is unable to be tenable in a world that has made these scientific advancements remains to be found. He basically just lists a bunch of men and announces that because of Sagan Christianity became all the more ridiculous without explaining how and why. Perhaps it is because all of the men (except for Newton) which Spong points to unabashedly rejected Christianity and based upon their fields tried to make arguments against it. Sagan is popular for the quote:

"The universe is all that there is was and ever will be." Carl Sagan

Basically he is saying only things that are material, and empirically testable exist. Unfortunately for Sagan there is no way for him to prove that above statement. Anyway supposedly all these developments have dealt crushing blows upon classical Christian theism. Again the problem is that Spong completely fails to explain how and why. I think Spong really thinks that these men have crushed classical Christian theology because he seems to have a rather brutish understanding of classical Christian theology. So when some one like Yuri Geiger (A Russian Cosmonaut) goes into space and says, "I don't see any god up here." people like Spong view it as another nail in the coffin of classical Christian Theism which views God and Jesus as floating around in outer space.

Conclusion:

So how do we react to all these modern changes according to Spong? Well you can be like the dumb Fundies as Spong writes:

"These people maintain their pre-modern convictions with hostile vigour while asserting that everyone must be wrong but them. With great vehemence, they deny the realities that have produced the exile. They refuse to engage the debate. They even produce bumper stickers..."God wrote it! I believe it! That settles it!" (p.41)

Well I think that first sentence is really the issue, do we adopt the modernist convictions about reality or the Biblical? Which presuppositions do we begin with? Spong says we need to be "modern" which means adopt a sort of enlightenment rationalistic epistemology. By that I mean we begin our search for answers with autonomous man and his reason alone. The Biblical epistemology says we start with the God who is there and has revealed Himself to man, not exhaustively but truly in the Bible.

As for not engaging the debate, I think that is a real problem and I agree with Spong here. We need greater intellectual integrity in the Evangelical church. Believers should be able to apologetically talk with guys like Spong and explain why everything he is saying is simply wrong. I think the most obvious manner of doing so is to address Spong's presuppositions, which are really based upon man's autonomous reason.

"Still others like me and perhaps the audience to which I have some appeal, have begun to define themselves as believers in exile. They refuse to abandon the reality of God, yeth they have been driven by the forces over which they have no control to sacrifice much of the content of that God reality. So they are left with an almost contentless concept, which must be allowed to find new meaning or it will die." (p.41)

To that I completely agree, the God of Spong and the Liberal theology has become an utterly contentless concept, as I said earlier 'god' is just a word. This is because they have abandoned the Biblical system based upon propositional revelation. All they are left with is subjective god words. In the following chapters I think it is Spong's goal to give content and meaning to the god words.