Why Christianity Must Change or Die (part 4 Chapters 3 and 4)

The last chapter ended with Spong explaining how even though he basically agrees with all of the arguments of Atheism yet he remains a "Christian" because he has experienced something "other". This is a reduction to sheer mysticism, and Spong is more forth coming with this confession in following two chapters. It really was evident to me in reading chapters 3 and 4 that Spong was really beginning to contradict himself in several areas. I will point out these areas as I go along through these chapters.

Chapter 3:


This chapter is rather uneventful as Spong is basically trying to explain why he is just not an Atheist. In this chapter he relies fairly heavily on using outdated Atheistic arguments against Christianity (the straw man understanding Spong has of Biblical Christianity). He relies very heavily on the argument against God's existence posed by Freud which basically goes as follows:

1) People view God as a Divine Parent who is watching over them, and caring for them.

2) People would like to think that 1) is true because it gives comfort.

3) Therefore, people invent an omnibenevolant prayer hearing/answering God to provide a sort of comfort. (This is out of the longing for father figures in our lives as we grow up away from our parents, or just pie in the sky hopes for heaven)

/.:4) Therefore God does not exist, He is just a figment of our imagination longing for comfort.

Spong simply loves Freud's arguments and uses it to slap around the classical Christian ideas of a God who acts in time and space, hears and answers prayer, and tenderly cares for His people. Unfortunately for Spong if he had spent just a little time in critical thought on Freud's argument he would see how it can easily be flipped right around as follows:

1) People don't believe God exists.

2) People would like to think that 1) is true because it gives them comfort.

3) Therefore, people who reject the existence of God do so out of a desire for psychological comfort. (To eliminate the sense of moral accountability, and fear of judgement.)

/.:4) Therefore, God exists, the denial of His existence is out of wishful thinking motivated by a longing for comfort.

So in short with chapter 3 we have Spong basically agreeing with all these Atheistic statements. This is because he works from the same Materialist presuppositions as Atheists do. So why then does Spong still consider himself a believer, nonetheless a Christian? At the very end of the chapter he dedicates an entire two sentences to tell us why he still believes in God as he writes:

"It was when I reached this conclusion [Freud's argument against God's existance] but still could not dismiss what seemed to me to be an experience of something other, transcendent, and beyond all my limits that I knew I had to find another God language. Theism was no more." (p.55)

A couple of things need to be noted here. Firstly we see that Spong's belief in God is not rational. Spong can not give any rational reason as to why he is a believer higher than "I have felt things mystically I know it is God." Now I don't fault him entirely on this, I don't think every person needs to have an airtight explanation for why they believe. But if this is all we have and we don't go beyond this as we grow then we have divorced our belief from reason. And that is precisely what Spong's faith is, an irrational mystical leap into an area of non-reason. His materialist presuppositions logically lead to Atheism, yet Spong rejects that in favor of an irrational mysticism.

Secondly, I guess what I just don't understand is why at this point Spong didn't stop calling himself a Christian, and just dub himself a mystic. If God does not hear prayer, Jesus did not rise from the dead, nor is there any real judgement to come, than I would say, with I think common sense, I don't think Christianity needs to change in order to stay alive (As the book title states). I would say that Christianity is already dead, (being never really alive to begin with, just a big fat lie) and in need of being abandoned altogether.

Chapter 4
The chapter begins with Spong recounting a question a parishioner asked him:

"Bishop, is it possible to be a Christian without being a theist?"

Now for those of you who aren't immersed in Spong's language games, theist does not properly mean belief in God. Spong uses the word "theist" as a dirty word referring to man's placing of attributes to God (statements like: "God is personal", or "God answers prayer") . So reworded the person is asking: "Can I be a Christian and not believe in propositional truth?"

No. You can be a mystic, but not a Christian.

Spong goes on to explain how his view of God really has become one that can not be defined, just experienced. This is particularly clear as he recounts a trip to China where he was deeply touched by the Buddhist religion:

"Buddhists believe in God, but not in a deity who is defined in theistic terms. Exploring the levels of meaning that can be found in an Eastern faith tradition can help us learn to see through such limited words as theism. It also reveals that our ancient Western definitions of God do not exhaust the reality of God." (p.57-58)

Spong clearly finds a more kindred spirit in Eastern faiths than he does with the faith of the Apostle Paul. This is because the Eastern beliefs really are not logical, they are mystical leaps into non-reason and that is all we are left with when you are operating upon materialist assumptions.

Now as for the "sxhausting" of God, I don't think any Orthodox theologian has claimed that we as Christians have an exhaustive knowledge of God. However, simply because we do not have exhaustive knowledge that does not necessarily mean that we do no have true knowledge of God. He has revealed Himself truly, although not exhaustively in His word the Bible.

Having, defined his view of religion really as mystic, Spong begins to try to attack the traditional view of God the Christian faith has held to, he again points to the Jewish captivity to give support for gods needing to change with the social setting as he writes:

"The God worshiped by the Jews before their Babylonian exile was not the same God who emerged from the exile. Much later a longer-range view of Jewish history reconnected the two, but that was not the sense of the people who lived at the time of the exile...The Jew's came out of the captivity as a people of faith with a God who had been transformed from the tribal deity of Israel's past." (p.59)

This is all he says about this. If you read the post where I dealt with this you will see that this idea has no merit whatsoever. That is why Spong continues to give no references which would lead us to think a change occured in the Jewish view of God due to the exile, there simply are no passages to support this notion. This is simply put an unjustified statement. In the previous post I gave numerous Biblical examples of Jews in exile (Daniel) and those coming out (Nehemiah) to show that their ideas of God were simply nothing like Spong has repeatedly asserted throughout this book. They still believed God was sovereign, they still believed He heard prayer, and they still believed He was worthy of worship. This is in radical contrast to Spong's assertions, that continue to go uncited, alleging that they no longer believed these things.

The Jews in no way viewed their faith in God prior to the exile as faith in a mere tribal deity, at least that is not what is represented in the Law. Jehovah is represented as the sovereign Lord over all the earth, the one true God, not some tribal deity.

Moving on Spong begins to attack the precious truths that God is a personal God. Again this is because Spong assumes a closed system, it necessarily cuts off any possibility of personal relationship between Creator and creature. So Spong states that God is simply not personal. He writes:

"To go beyond all definitions, it is necessary to pose the religious questions not by pretending we have a source of divine revelation, but by looking at the human experience in a different way. That is why the word what [In reference to God] instead of who becomes important as our guide." (p.59-60)

I think Spong is logical here, if you hold to a closed system, that cuts off the possibility of revelation. If there is no revelation from God than God can not be seen as being personal. He goes on to try to use Scirpture to support his view that God is impersonal as he writes:

"Still another impersonal image for God found in the Hebrew scriptures was contained in the word rock. Surely one cannot imagine an image less personal than a rock. Yet we find in the book of Samuel the phrase, 'There is no rock like our God' (1 Sam 2:2), and the rock like aspects of God was celebrated in the Hebrew scriptures. The Psalter proclaims, 'The Lord is my rock and my salvation' (ps 18:2) and later, 'Who is a rock except our God?' (ps 18:31) Paul even called Christ the rock from which the Hebrews drank water during the wilderness years (i Cor 10:4)" (p.61)

Now if your a Bible believing Christian and you just read this quote and you see ho Spong is using scriptures you probably muttered the words: "This man is an idiot." Well, I don't think that is wrong given how wretchedly Spong handles the Scriptures every time he points to the Bible. To state with honesty that you think when David said "The Lord is my rock" that therefore God is impersonal is to be guilty of the most absurd form of literalism. Spong's exposition of scripture seems akin to a caveman selling car insurance.

Seriously though there are multiple things wrong with Spong's reasoning here. Not only does his citation of scripture have absolutely nothing to do with what the writers of scripture meant when they penned those words, but also he is in a contradiction with past things he has said here.

Firstly, the use of "Rock" is not remotely talking about the personhood of God, that idea is smuggled in by Spong.
A) The term "rock" is in reference to the steadfast trustworthiness of God that these men had come to celebrate. Just like a large rock is immovable, constant, always there, so is God.

B) The concept of God being a "Rock" was based upon men who claimed to have personal relations with God, so Spong's citation really completely backfires. You can't use scripture, which was penned by men who claimed to know God personally to support arguments that God is impersonal.

C) Why is Spong pointing to Scripture anyway? After all it is just the reflection of archaic thinking about God, it is not authoritative in any way. These are just the projected ideas of ancient men onto God (as Spong said earlier), as such why even bother citing it?

Secondly, this contradicts Spong's notions that we can not define God. He is really engaged in defining God here, he is saying God is not personal, that is a proposition. So in reality Spong is guilty of the disease that he seems to be at war with. The only way to truly avoid it is for Spong to just write about his private experiences with God, he can in no way criticize anyone else's view, for in doing so you necessarily begin to define God, albeit in negative terms but it is still defining God. This conflict begins to become all the more clear as Spong writes:

"The mystics of every religious tradition have always cried out against every specific definition of God." (p.61)

Well, by saying God is an impersonal force I would say you are engaged in defining God. Spong might not use any positive statements but he can not escape propositions about God, he just avoids positive ones about God because they seem arrogant in our relativistic culture. He seems to think that by not defining God, God is "bigger" (inclusive of all faiths except evangelicalism) and therefore better.

Spong goes on and begins to openly admit his mysticism, which really is pantheistic. He views God as an impersonal force which we are all part of. It is again in his definitions of what true belief in God should look like that yet another blatant tension/contradiction in Spong's ideas surfaces, as he writes:

"So to the Mystic, the God of one person is never quite the same as the God of another person. Idolatry is thus countered. In the mystical tradition no one can claim objectivity for his or her insight. Each person is called to journey into the mystery of God along the pathway of his or her own expanding personhood". (p.62)

There are a few obvious problems with this statement when placed alongside everything else Spong has been saying.

1) Why is he so harsh on Fundamentalist literalist Christians if what he just said above is true? They are on their own personal trip with God and Spong throughout this book has the audacity to do what he says is arrogant, namely say that the Fundamentalist is wrong in their views on God. Spong is guilty of arrogance as he himself has defined it.

Spong has had no problem at all writing mockingly and polemically against classical Christian theology, yet if we put those writings/actions beside the above quote we have a flagrant contradiction. Spong in the above quote relegates all truth/knowledge about God to the subjective sector of private experience thus shunning any hope for objective knowledge of God. Yet, he does not act as though there is no objective knowledge of God. This is clear as he wants to and does attack the Classical Christian theology. This I think is because the statement "Objective knowledge of God is impossible" is self contradictory, it in itself is an objective proposition about God.

2) Spong in dubbing himself a mystic and a rejector of any objective propositions about God is simply out of step with the men who wrote the Bible. That said I again question why Spong wants to hold to the label "Christian" when really he has more in common with mystics and Eastern thinkers than the men of the Bible.

What follows next in chapter 4 is pages of an appeal to authority. Spong points to numerous famous Christians and thinkers who embraced a sort of mysticism, among these are Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Towards the end of the chapter Spong begins to make more assertions that contradict previous statements as he writes:

"Does this reality not reflect a new way to view and to understand that biblical dictum, 'in the image of God, created God him. Male and female created God them"? Is it possible that we bear God's image because we are part of who God is? Those are the concepts that beckon our consideration as believers in exile." (p.69)

This is the pantheism I referred to earlier. What I mainly have beef with is his use of scripture again. Earlier Spong asserted that when we say God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent he accuses the Bible writers of making God in man's image (projecting human qualities to the infinite degree onto God). I say he had it backwards. We as human beings have knowledge, and love and personality because we are made in God's image. That's is what the Biblical authors mean when they refer to man being made in the image of God, there is simply not any hint of pantheism in the Biblical context of that proposition. Spong and the mystics import their Eastern ideas into the text.

To conclude, I just want to reiterate what I said earlier. If what Spong is saying is true (which it simply is not) than there is no hope of saving "Christianity" from death, because in never was alive. Just go smoke some pot and listen to some Zepplin and have some irrational "other" experiences.