Bishop John Shelby Spong’s controversial demolition and (hopeful) rehabilitation of Jesus of Nazareth.

by John C. Snider © 2008

Jesus was born in a perfectly natural way in Nazareth.  His mother was not the icon of virgin purity.  His earthly father, Joseph, was a literary creation.  His family thought he [Jesus] was out of his mind.  He probably did not have twelve male disciples.  He had disciples who were both male and female.   He did not command nature to obey him.  He did not in any literal sense give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf or wholeness to the paralyzed and infirm.  He did not raise the dead.  There was no stylized Last Supper in which bread was identified with his broken body and wine with his poured-out shed blood designed to symbolize his final prediction of death.  There was no betrayal and no romance connected with his death, no mocking crowd, no crown of thorns, no words from the cross, no thieves, no cry of thirst and no darkness at noon.  There was no tomb, no Joseph of Arimathea, no earthquake, no angel who rolled back the stone.  There was no resuscitated body that emerged from that tomb on the third day, no touching of the wounds of Jesus , no opening by him of the secrets of scripture.  Finally, there was no ascension into a heaven that exists above the sky.

Sounds reasonable to me.  But this is no Dawkins or Dennett or Hitchens or Harris writing such a scathing dismissal of the veracity of the New Testament.  These iconoclastic words are from no less than John Shelby Spong, author of over twenty books, and retired bishop of the Episcopal Church.  Sure, Episcopalians gather on the left side of the religious spectrum, but surely Spong’s conclusion goes too far even for most of them.

Spong is a man who openly scoffs at the idea of the Bible as the inerrant word of God, but at the same time he states his unflagging devotion to Jesus Christ.  But how is it that Spong can reject nearly everything historical and supernatural that surrounds the story of Jesus, and still recognize Him as someone who can inspire religious devotion?

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