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Apr. 24th, 2006 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaSo, about a third of the way into Spong's Sins of Scripture, i am starting to have... i don't know if misgivings is exactly the right word. I don't have disagreements with him and i can't really fault what he has to say. I'm just not sure how relevant his message is.
Spong's heart and mind are in the right place. He has a zeal for honestly and forthrightly addressing the misdeeds of Christianity in the past and present, and demonstrating that they are the result of error. He has a particular talent for illuminating new ways to see familiar passages of scripture, as well as calling our attention to lesser known gems.
But i wonder how relevant this kind of theology is. He sees the Bible with a sense of wonder, even while criticizing the fundamentalists for worshipping it. His hope is that people who have come to doubt or hate it will come to think of it as a misunderstood treasure from a previous age, and not a horrible instrument of evil.
It is hard, having stepped back from my own fascination with that style of theology, to think of it as something that will save the world. Doesn't any scripture-centered approach carry within it the seeds of fundamentalism? Not everyone possesses the skill to read texts in a nuanced way; and so long as there are power imbalances in human society, authoritarian structures will always tend to favor literalistic text-centered theology. Also, haven't we had enough of looking in books for answers to flesh-and-blood questions?
Spong's heart and mind are in the right place. He has a zeal for honestly and forthrightly addressing the misdeeds of Christianity in the past and present, and demonstrating that they are the result of error. He has a particular talent for illuminating new ways to see familiar passages of scripture, as well as calling our attention to lesser known gems.
But i wonder how relevant this kind of theology is. He sees the Bible with a sense of wonder, even while criticizing the fundamentalists for worshipping it. His hope is that people who have come to doubt or hate it will come to think of it as a misunderstood treasure from a previous age, and not a horrible instrument of evil.
It is hard, having stepped back from my own fascination with that style of theology, to think of it as something that will save the world. Doesn't any scripture-centered approach carry within it the seeds of fundamentalism? Not everyone possesses the skill to read texts in a nuanced way; and so long as there are power imbalances in human society, authoritarian structures will always tend to favor literalistic text-centered theology. Also, haven't we had enough of looking in books for answers to flesh-and-blood questions?
