A New Christianity for a New World
Encyclopedia
A New Christianity for a New World : Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born is a theological book by Episcopalian bishop John Shelby Spong
in which he outlines his ideas for doctrinal changes within Christianity in the modern world
.
, hamartiology
, mariology
, biblical theology
, natural theology
, hermeneutics, theodicy
, eschatology
and moral theology
, instead of simply making cosmetic pastoral reforms within the Christianity.
, gay rights, and racial equality
within both Christianity and society at large. Towards these ends, he calls for a new Reformation
, in which many of Christianity's basic doctrines should be reformulated.
through to the Gospel according to John is a result of active embellishment on behalf of the those authors postdating Mark
and the Q document, as a result of ideological tension resulting from initially unforeseen and increasing hostility between Jews and Christians in the early history of the church.
uses in Galatians
1:15f. shows that the bishop [Spong] has forgotten any Greek
that he knew. [Spong argued his case based on a Greek word that is not in the passage] ... [my] advice for his next book is to let some real experts check it before publication."
, the current Archbishop of Canterbury
, wrote a response to Spong's 12 points in 1998, when he was the Bishop of Monmouth
. Williams wrote that "... I cannot in any way see Bishop Spong's theses as representing a defensible or even an interesting Christian future. And I want to know whether the Christian past scripture and tradition, really appears to him as empty and sterile as this text suggests."
John Shelby Spong
John Shelby "Jack" Spong is a retired American bishop of the Episcopal Church. He was formerly the Bishop of Newark . He is a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator and author...
in which he outlines his ideas for doctrinal changes within Christianity in the modern world
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
.
Challenges to Christian teaching
The book was controversial when it was first published because it proposed to entirely re-invent core areas of Christian teaching, such as fundamental theology, christologyChristology
Christology is the field of study within Christian theology which is primarily concerned with the nature and person of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament. Primary considerations include the relationship of Jesus' nature and person with the nature...
, hamartiology
Hamartiology
Hamartiology is the branch of Christian theology, which aims to develop and articulate a doctrine of the biblical concept of sin....
, mariology
Mariology
Roman Catholic Mariology is theology concerned with the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ as developed by the Catholic Church. Roman Catholic teachings on the subject have been based on the belief that "The Blessed Virgin, because she is the Mother of God, is believed to hold a certain...
, biblical theology
Biblical Theology
Biblical theology is a discipline within Christian theology which studies the Bible from the perspective of understanding the progressive history of God revealing Himself to humanity following the Fall and throughout the Old Testament and New Testament...
, natural theology
Natural theology
Natural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning.Marcus Terentius Varro ...
, hermeneutics, theodicy
Theodicy
Theodicy is a theological and philosophical study which attempts to prove God's intrinsic or foundational nature of omnibenevolence , omniscience , and omnipotence . Theodicy is usually concerned with the God of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, due to the relevant...
, eschatology
Eschatology
Eschatology is a part of theology, philosophy, and futurology concerned with what are believed to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world or the World to Come...
and moral theology
Moral theology
Moral theology is a systematic theological treatment of Christian ethics. It is usually taught on Divinity faculties as a part of the basic curriculum.- External links :*...
, instead of simply making cosmetic pastoral reforms within the Christianity.
New Reformation
Spong has also been a strong proponent of feminismFeminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, gay rights, and racial equality
Racial equality
Racial equality means different things in different contexts. It mostly deals with an equal regard to all races.It can refer to a belief in biological equality of all human races....
within both Christianity and society at large. Towards these ends, he calls for a new Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
, in which many of Christianity's basic doctrines should be reformulated.
Martin Luther ignited the Reformation of the 16th centuryProtestant ReformationThe Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
by nailing to the door of the church in WittenbergWittenbergWittenberg, officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg, is a city in Germany in the Bundesland Saxony-Anhalt, on the river Elbe. It has a population of about 50,000....
in 1517 the 95 Theses95 ThesesThe Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences , commonly known as , was written by Martin Luther, 1517 and is widely regarded as the primary catalyst for the Protestant Reformation...
that he wished to debate. I will publish this challenge to Christianity in The Voice. I will post my theses on the Internet and send copies with invitations to debate them to the recognized Christian leaders of the world. My theses are far smaller in number than were those of Martin Luther, but they are far more threatening theologically. The issues to which I now call the Christians of the world to debate are these:
Twelve points for Reform
- TheismTheismTheism, in the broadest sense, is the belief that at least one deity exists.In a more specific sense, theism refers to a doctrine concerning the nature of a monotheistic God and God's relationship to the universe....
, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found. - Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the ChristologyChristologyChristology is the field of study within Christian theology which is primarily concerned with the nature and person of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament. Primary considerations include the relationship of Jesus' nature and person with the nature...
of the ages is bankrupt. - The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-DarwinianCharles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense. - The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
- The miracle stories of the New TestamentNew TestamentThe New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
can no longer be interpreted in a post-NewtonianIsaac NewtonSir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
world as supernaturalSupernaturalThe supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
events performed by an incarnate deity. - The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
- Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
- The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
- There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
- Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
- The hope for life after deathAfterlifeThe afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...
must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior. - All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, genderGenderGender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
or sexual orientationSexual orientationSexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.
Role of Judas in the Gospels
Spong holds fundamentally that the expanding detail given to Judas' betrayal from the synoptic gospelsSynoptic Gospels
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. This degree of parallelism in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence structures can only be...
through to the Gospel according to John is a result of active embellishment on behalf of the those authors postdating Mark
Mark the Evangelist
Mark the Evangelist is the traditional author of the Gospel of Mark. He is one of the Seventy Disciples of Christ, and the founder of the Church of Alexandria, one of the original four main sees of Christianity....
and the Q document, as a result of ideological tension resulting from initially unforeseen and increasing hostility between Jews and Christians in the early history of the church.
Gerald O'Collins
Gerald O'Collins, Professor of Fundamental Theology, Gregorian University, Rome, argued that Spong’s "work simply does not belong to the world of international scholarship. No genuine scholar will be taken in by this book. ... What is said about a key verb St. PaulPaul of Tarsus
Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...
uses in Galatians
Epistle to the Galatians
The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians, often shortened to Galatians, is the ninth book of the New Testament. It is a letter from Paul of Tarsus to a number of Early Christian communities in the Roman province of Galatia in central Anatolia...
1:15f. shows that the bishop [Spong] has forgotten any Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
that he knew. [Spong argued his case based on a Greek word that is not in the passage] ... [my] advice for his next book is to let some real experts check it before publication."
Can a Bishop Be Wrong ?
One critical book is entitled Can a Bishop Be Wrong? Ten Scholars Challenge John Shelby Spong, edited by Peter Moore.Views from Rowan Williams
Rowan WilliamsRowan Williams
Rowan Douglas Williams FRSL, FBA, FLSW is an Anglican bishop, poet and theologian. He is the 104th and current Archbishop of Canterbury, Metropolitan of the Province of Canterbury and Primate of All England, offices he has held since early 2003.Williams was previously Bishop of Monmouth and...
, the current Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...
, wrote a response to Spong's 12 points in 1998, when he was the Bishop of Monmouth
Bishop of Monmouth
The Bishop of Monmouth is the diocesan bishop of the Church in Wales Diocese of Monmouth.The see covers the historic county of Monmouthshire with the bishop's seat located at the Cathedral Church of Saint Woolos in Newport, which had been elevated to that status in 1921.The Bishop's residence is...
. Williams wrote that "... I cannot in any way see Bishop Spong's theses as representing a defensible or even an interesting Christian future. And I want to know whether the Christian past scripture and tradition, really appears to him as empty and sterile as this text suggests."