Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Radical Skeptic about the Bible and Episcopal Bishop John Spong by Bart D. Ehrman Read by John Paul Middlesworth I'm with a group of travelers just now who are interested in critical approaches to the Bible. Not views that are criticizing per se, but views that approach the Bible using historical methods, biblical criticism. One of them, as usually happens, has asked me about the very popular writings of John Shelby Spong, who was an unusual who was an unusual figure in numerous ways, most famously because he was both highly skeptical about the reliability of the New Testament and a longtime bishop in the Episcopal Church. How does that work?
[00:00:42] Well, work it he did. He had a deservedly huge following.
[00:00:46] Years ago I posted comments on a book he wrote near the end of his career on the Gospel of John, which takes an even more skeptical view of its reliability than I do.
[00:00:55] But I realize I should first set the context for those of you who don't know who he was by reposting my memoriam for him, written soon after he died. So here is that first, then my summary discussion of his book.
[00:01:09] I was very sorry to learn last month that John Shelby spong died on September 12, 2021, at age 90.
[00:01:16] Many of you know who he was, but for those who don't, he was one of the most important spokespersons of our generation for a critical understanding of the Bible for the general public, in particular for Christians.
[00:01:28] He himself was a Christian. In fact, for many years he was a bishop in the Episcopal Church, the bishop of Newark, New Jersey, from 1979 to 2000.
[00:01:37] Even though spong never left the Christian faith, he certainly had a rigorously historical understanding of the faith, and he spent many years writing influential books and lecturing around the world to proclaim it. He was not well loved among traditional Christians and was openly declared a heretic by other church leaders.
[00:01:55] That was because his historical studies led him to realize that the Bible cannot be interpreted as the literal historical truth.
[00:02:03] Some other Christian bishops found his views dangerous, and many people today, both Christian and non Christian, do not understand how a real Christian can have a seriously critical view of the Bible and as he did deny the literal virgin birth of Jesus, his preexistence, and his physical resurrection.
[00:02:22] But Spong did deny these views and insisted that other Christians needed to do so as well if they wanted to live and think as modern, educated, rational people and yet still be followers of Jesus.
[00:02:34] He explained why in his many books and myriad lectures.
[00:02:38] It really does seem weird to people that you can be a Christian without believing the literal truth of the Bible and without accepting the traditional doctrines of the faith. But that is because the fundamentalists of the world have succeeded spectacularly in their mission of defining what Christianity Christian fundamentalists have convinced everyone, not just fellow fundamentalists, but nearly everyone, including atheists, even highly outspoken atheists who write books about religion, that Christianity is fundamentalism and that there is no way to be a Christian. If you realize there are contradictions in the Bible, historical errors and radically different views from one New Testament author to another, or if you recognize that the Bible came into a single canon of scripture through historical circumstances that not divine intervention, or that the doctrines of the church were long, much debated and uncertain, and that different beliefs could just as easily have emerged as orthodox, Spong would have none of it. You don't have to employ critical thinking in every other area of your life. Accepting what science knows when you go to the dentist or look up at the stars and then lock away your brain when it comes to what you believe, you should not be rational except when it comes to what ultimately is most important to you, your understanding of yourself in relation to the world.
[00:03:56] Accepting religious views formulated 2000 years ago is like accepting ancient understandings of astronomy and anatomy. But doesn't being a Christian mean accepting views formulated 2,000 years ago?
[00:04:09] Well, does being an astronomer mean accepting the universe revolves around the earth?
[00:04:13] If you're interested in seeing how Spong thinks about the Bible and traditional doctrines and what it actually does mean to be a follower of Jesus in our day and age, check out some of his important books on the topic from the past 30 years.
[00:04:26] Rescuing the Bible from A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture Born of a Woman A Bishop Rethinks the birth of Jesus 1992 resurrection myth or A Bishop's Search for the origins of Christianity 1994 why Christianity must change or Die A Bishop Speaks to believers in exile 1999 here I stand My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love and Equality 2001 God in Us A Case for Christian Humanism with Anthony Freeman 2002 The Sins of Scripture Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of love 2005 Jesus for the non religious 2007 Eternal life a New Vision Beyond Religion Beyond Theism Beyond Heaven and Hell Reclaiming the Bible for a Non Religious World Biblical a Gentile heresy 2016 unbelievable why neither ancient creeds nor the Reformation can produce a living faith today.
[00:05:46] 2018 spong was not a professionally trained biblical scholar, and biblical scholars never read his material to acquire knowledge. But the scholars who were sniffy about that most of Them, I guess, have completely lost the plot. His work was not about advancing scholarship for scholars. It was about reaching people who were not scholars, especially people in the churches, to urge them to find a better way, a way to retain the best of the Christian faith without sacrificing their brains, without having to believe what most other people think is fairly ridiculous.
[00:06:20] I did not know Jack the name he went by. Well, we met once and had a nice chat when we were both speaking at the same event.
[00:06:29] Now that he's gone, I regret not making an effort to get to know him better. We had a lot in common. He grew up in North Carolina, graduated from UNC Chapel Hill, received his Masters of Divinity the year I was born, had his first clerical job as a rector at the Episcopal Church next door to the Whole Foods I frequent, and was bishop of New Jersey for the 10 years I lived there.
[00:06:51] He and I had similar backgrounds, raised in literalist Christian circles, going into ministerial training, becoming enamored with serious biblical scholarship, recognizing its challenge for the traditional understanding of the Christian faith, and then moving to declare this good news to broader audiences instead of letting it hide out only among critical scholars.
[00:07:12] In a sense, we had similar missions, but unlike me, he stayed within the Christian community as a church leader who took scholarship and modernity seriously, whereas I left the church to pursue scholarship.
[00:07:26] We need more people like him, people with the courage to recognize the truth about the Bible and traditional Christian doctrine, and the courage to remain within the Christian community as a prophet to declaring the truth. Even while being pilloried by traditionalists who refused to move beyond the early centuries of the church into the modern world.
[00:07:45] Staying within the community as a prophetic voice takes far more courage than leaving it to start a new life.
[00:07:52] And so in Memoriam John Shelby spong June 16, 1931 to September 12, 2021.
