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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Bishop John Shelby Spong:
Divinity is not the opposite of humanity
but an expression of humanity’s fullness
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In the gospels we are told that Jesus prayed. Was he talking to himself?
The traditional Christian message, which is rooted in the theology of Augustine in the Fourth century and expanded by Anselm in the twelfth century, is based on the assumption that human life began as perfection, only to fall into sin and, therefore, it needed to be rescued, saved or redeemed. So Jesus is presented as savior, redeemer or rescuer. By defining Jesus in this way, we also inevitably define human life as fallen or lost.
I think that is an incorrect description of the origins of human life and any theological system based on that primary assumption will inevitably contribute to the destruction, not the enhancement, of human life. We human beings are not fallen sinners so much as we are creatures evolving toward some future destiny. We have never been perfect, we have never fallen, and we do not need to be saved...
It is not the explanation of how God became human that I regard as important, it is the reality of the human experience that the explanations seek to explain. In the mystical tradition, the union of the human with the divine is said to be the goal of life. Humanity is not destroyed by the presence of God, it is expanded. Divinity is not the opposite of humanity; it is an expression of humanity’s fullness. Divinity does not take over our humanity or even Jesus’ humanity; it becomes the depth of expression of who we are...
- I do not see the crucifixion of Jesus as the moment when salvation came by having Jesus pay the debt for my sinfulness. I regard that as little more than a guilt-producing expression of a bankrupt theology of atonement. The sooner we can abandon atonement theology, I believe, the better and healthier Christianity will be. This atonement theology turns God into an unforgiving monster; it turns Jesus into a chronic, perhaps even a masochistic, victim, and it turns Christians like you and me into guilt-filled Christ killers.
Besides that, it is based on an assessment of human origins that no longer has credibility in scientific or academic circles. By that I mean that we know now that there was no original perfection from which human life has fallen. That is an incorrect religious attempt to account for the presence of evil. There is instead an ongoing and unfinished evolutionary process of becoming. If there was no original perfection, there could not have been a fall from that perfection, so the old concept of “original sin” becomes inoperative and must be jettisoned.
If there was no fall into sin from our original perfection, there is no need to be “saved” from our sinfulness, redeemed from our fall or to be rescued from our lostness. So the traditional way we tell the Jesus story becomes inoperative. The cross is not the moment when the price of our sins was paid by Jesus and the idea that “Jesus died for my sins” becomes nonsensical. To the degree that the cross is a symbol of this theology, it would be a symbol I would not want to use. That, however, is not my conclusion. Instead of abandoning the symbol of the cross, I choose to abandon the traditional theology that focused on a particular interpretation of the cross.
I see in Jesus one whose humanity transcended the survival mentality that not only defines our humanity, but also opens this Jesus into being a channel for that quality that we have tended to use the word “divine” to describe. It is in his ability to love beyond the limits of his definitive boundaries and in his ability to live into a new dimension of what it means to be human that we come to discern that which we call God in him. It was in his ability to give his life away, to love those who abused him that I see his divinity.
That is what the cross means to me. Jesus is not a sacrifice that God required to enable God to forgive and restore me to oneness with God. That idea is repulsive to me.
Jesus is the life so whole, so full and so free that he could give himself away and in that free giving I now see the presence of God. So the cross is for me a symbol of the fullness of humanity in which the meaning of God can be and is met and experienced. I want to claim the cross for this understanding and to rescue it from the barbarity to which atonement theology has reduced it...
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Editor's note: "Father Accused of Trying to Sacrifice His Son, NBC News, San Diego, April 30, 2012." This headline features a patent barbarity - yet, most Christians, mind-numbed by Big Religion, would deem such reprehensible action to be respectable if they heard it referenced in church! Something is wrong here.
The problem with all religion in its organized forms is that it believes, I think, that it knows who God is and, before long, it is making incredible claims in the name of this God such as “my religion is the true religion;” “my church is the true church;” “my Bible is the inerrant Word of God,” or “my pope is infallible.”
Scriptures, creeds and doctrines can at best point beyond the limits of human words to a reality those words could never contain, but that we are certain is real. The Christian life is really about a journey into the mystery of God. The trouble with most churches, and I fear with most clergy, is that they think they have already arrived, so no further journey is necessary. John’s gospel has Jesus tell his disciples that the Holy Spirit will lead them into all truth. The presumption of that text is that no one now possesses all truth...
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The following is Bishop Spong's response to an accusatory letter from a fundamentalist:
I wrestled long before deciding to use your letter in the Q&A section of my column. I sense an obvious sincerity in your words and a concern for me that I appreciate. At the same time, Michael, your letter reveals a serious lack of theological understanding and a very childlike misunderstanding of what the Bible is all about. I have no desire to point this out to you since it is clear that you, with your level of knowledge, will not understand anything I say. I also find no pleasure in attacking you in public, but the fact is that you made these issues public by your letter and by doing so you have opened the door to the possibility that you might be ready to grow and to learn. On that assumption I have chosen to respond to your public letter in this column.
Let me begin by saying that your letter makes all kinds of assumptions that are typical of those who have confused a version of evangelical fundamentalism with Christianity. I can understand why, given your presuppositions, you are puzzled that I do not need a savior. You clearly do not understand that what I reject is a literal understanding of the ancient Hebrew myths that suggest that human life has fallen into “original sin.” Because of this I do not think that “savior” language is either meaningful or necessary. I see no evidence in the study of human origins that human life was ever created perfect only to fall into sin as the stories in the book of Genesis suggest... What I do see is overwhelming data to support the idea that human life has evolved from single cell simplicity into self-conscious complexity over the 3.8 billion years that we now know that life in some form has been on this planet. If that is so, I believe Jesus needs to be understood as empowering us to become more deeply and fully human, not as a divinely sent invader who came to save us from our sins.
No, Jesus is not the same as God. That is biblical non-sense. Even the doctrine of the Trinity was designed to prevent so simplistic an identification. In the gospels we are told that Jesus prayed. Was he talking to himself? We are told that Jesus died. Can God die and still be God? To suggest, as you do, that the Old Testament tells of the coming of the savior or that Psalm 22:27 speaks of Jesus as nothing more than a Christian misreading of the messianic hope of Israel. Only John’s gospel contains the claim that Jesus is the only way to God and for that to be used as a justification for religious triumphalism and imperialism, as you seem eager to do, is to do a grave injustice to the Fourth Gospel.
The prayer, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” occurs only in Mark and Matthew. These authors are actually quoting Psalm 22, a psalm that early Christians used to provide content to the first narrative of the cross, which was not written, you need to know, until more than forty years after the crucifixion. It is not an eye-witness report. Luke and John, who wrote some 20 to 25 years after Mark, both omit that saying from the cross so that we must assume that they did not see it as Jesus taking on the sin of the world. Each of these later gospel writers adds other sayings that were supposed to have been said by Jesus from the cross about which neither Mark nor Matthew seemed to be aware and neither Luke nor John contains a saying from the cross that the other includes. So, given this conflict we have grave doubts that any of the words attributed to Jesus from the cross were ever spoken by him.
I welcome your prayers for me, but your religious judgment, based on your total lack of biblical knowledge, renders these prayers as little more than pious insincerity. Your real agenda is to affirm your own religious authority, which, based upon your limited knowledge, is hardly inspiring or impressive.
I have been a Christian all of my life and have served as a priest in my church for 21 years and as an elected bishop for 24 years. Yes, I have been wrong lots of times, but escaping the fundamentalism of my childhood was not one of those times. I walk the Christ path daily and I trust it will carry me into the mystery of God, the God who is ultimately real and yet who is beyond all of the pious formulas that religious people have tried to place on the Ultimate and Holy One; and no, I do not believe that Jesus died for my sins, nor am I attracted to that guilt-producing, God-destroying kind of pious rhetoric.
~John Shelby Spong
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