[soc.religion.christian] Review: _Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism_

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!"