mangoe@tove.cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) (06/04/91)
In this book, Spong turns from morality and applies himself to biblical scholarship. To be frank, I don't think it's a particularly good book. A good comparison for this book is John A.T. Robinson's famous _Honest to God_, which caused a similar stir and had the similar aim of presenting some responses to various new theological ideas. What is interesting in the comparison is how different the books are. Robinson's book has, in my copy, about five footnotes a page; Spong has five notes a *chapter*, and all of them are for quotes. Robinson's book was tentative; Spong is bold. Spong's book is obvously meant to be a popular work rather than scholarly, hence the absence of footnotes. This brings us to one of the major flaws of the work, in my opinion. Everything is cited from anonymous "scholars", who uniformly represent the most extreme "modernist" school of argument. There is almost no explanation of HOW these scholars came to these opinions, and no admission at all of any controversy. The book defies critical reading because there is nothing to hold for criticism; if one is not familiar with the subject, one can do no more than accept Spong's authority as a compiler, or reject it. Spong also depicts the field quite unfairly. This book arose out of Jerry Falwell's refusal to debate Spong. What we get out of this is a totally spurious dichotomy between "fundamentalism" on the one hand and Spong's version of liberal theology on the other. On top of falsely depicting fundamentalism as a wooden literalism, and thus knocking down a straw man, Spong completely ignores the *vast* range of ideas in the middle, all of which offer different resolutions to his arguments against literalism. Spong's biggest symbolic opponent within his own church is not Falwell, but C.S. Lewis. It is more than ironic that one of Lewis's most frequently appearing figures is a characture before the fact of people like Spong. In _Pilgrim's Regress_ he appears as Old Mr. Enlightement; in _The Screwtape Letters_ he appears as Rev. Spike; in _The Great Divorce_ he appears as the episcopal ghost. Lewis, as a real genuine sholar in medieval and ancient writings, comes by his contempt for these figures honestly. Spong's argument, by contrast, relies conspicuously on the device of claiming to know what the ancients could or couldn't have imagined, together with many other miscellaneous speculations on their thinking. Lewis gives, in _Miracles_, a much more plausible explanation of how the ancients confronted changes in their worldview than Spong does. Spong version is basically that scripture is mostly a rationalization; about the only texts which servive his scrutiny are some of the Gospel of John, and some of Paul. The problem I had with this is that I couldn't kick the feeling that Spong is basically rationalizing his own opinions into scripture. Modern man is conspicuously the measure of all things in this book. This leads to a few pratfalls, such as the observation that if Jesus were ascending at the speed of light, he wouldn't even have left the galaxy by now! About the only section of this book that is worth reading is the section on Paul. The controversial suggestion that Paul was plagued with homosexual feelings is in fact presented (properly) as speculation, and is explored in a way that demonstrates real reading of the texts. While I think this line of thought is taken a bit further than the texts really support, the ideas presented are interesting and do offer a respite from the one-sided picture of Paul as a lawgiver. What we end up with is the Christ Event rather than the resurrection. Baiscally what Spong is telling us is that chruch tradition has been selling us a bill of goods ever since the fall of Jerusalem. Frankly, I find this attitude to be more like fundamentalism than anything else. I also find it absurd and snobbish. Readers of t.r.misc and alt. atheism will find much of Spong's arguing familiar. The only problem is that in those groups, these arguments come out of the mouths of those arguing against christianity. Well, I'm sorry. I really cannot accept Spong's shallow-end liberalism; I'll take a real swim, thank you. -- C. Wingate + "How blest are they who have not seen, + and yet whose faith has constant been, mangoe@cs.umd.edu + for they eternal life shall win. tove!mangoe + Alleluia!"