sophiaserpentia | (no subject)

So, 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?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

With something as old as scripture, it is moreso the reader, and not the author(s), who holds the ethical key to meaning.

"Doesn't any scripture-centered approach carry within it the seeds of fundamentalism?"

From your description, it doesn't appear to me that scripture, qua objectively existent text, is the center to Spong's approach.

"Haven't we had enough of looking in books for answers to flesh-and-blood questions?"

A good hermeneutic of scripture is not a book--it is more like a mirror. How one interprets scripture says more about the interpreter than about the text itself. I'd compare this to the old arguments about Dungeons and Dragons--there is nothing inherently wrong with hermeneutical processes themselves, only the pre-existing proclivities of those who interpret.

"think of it as something that will save the world"

The "world" is a bit too big, I think. Do you get the impression that the "world" is Spong's target? Or, perhaps, he is out to speak to a few people ready to receive his message?

I've seen your recent retraction over the past couple of years, and I think it is healthy for you (i.e. backing away from your website, not trying to convince people of a certain laundry list of things you see as ethically/morally critical). I've done something similar, I think, though I was never as expansive as you with regards to the size of the audience (which still consists, apparently, of more than 500 people on this journal alone!).

Anyway, I guess I'm talking about a 2nd order observation. Back away from the hermeneutic of the text and take a look at yourself interpreting scripture--a hermeneutic of hermeneutic, so-to-speak.

With something as old as scripture, it is moreso the reader, and not the author(s), who holds the ethical key to meaning.

I disagree. The people who originally wrote the various parts of the bible did so to fill certain needs, and i think that is where ethics demands the focus should remain. We, 2-3000 years removed from scripture's authorship, may get things from scripture that were never intended, and it's okay to acknowledge that -- as long as we treat our reading of scripture as such. To do otherwise is to give scripture a kind of "time-transcendent" status, which i think is very dangerous: it is barely a step removed from saying, "God knew we would face modern issues and sought to give us guidance on them, even though the people who wrote scripture could not possibly have conceived of them."

From your description, it doesn't appear to me that scripture, qua objectively existent text, is the center to Spong's approach.

I've read three or four of his books now, and virtually everything he writes focuses on the bible. He wants us to learn how to read it in a way that is more respectful of the culture that produced it and put in the context of a text written before 2000 years of scientific and cultural advance. But he still wants us to draw inspiration from it. He wants to quote from it and show us the wisdom in those quotes.

I can understand his fascination; we are all taught to see the bible as something great and wonderful. And i have no small amount of fascination myself with early Christian literature, though my fascination has mostly focused on the Gnostic works.

My fear is that maybe even a liberal hermeneutic is not enough to keep us from sliding into literalism and dogmatism. I fear that even a liberal approach to scripture may teach us to seek to view the world through the prism of scripture. I think this is ultimately a problem.

There's a brilliant passage in the first chapter of this book where he writes about how bibles are printed with two columns on each page, like a dictionary or encyclopedia, so that we will be encouraged to think of it as a reference book. And i thought, "Aha! he gets it!" But even while he dedicates time to debunking fundamentalism he is also defending scripture as something inspirational and holy.

"There's a brilliant passage in the first chapter of this book where he writes about how bibles are printed with two columns on each page, like a dictionary or encyclopedia, so that we will be encouraged to think of it as a reference book. And i thought, "Aha! he gets it!" But even while he dedicates time to debunking fundamentalism he is also defending scripture as something inspirational and holy."

Wow, I never thought of that! but it's true.
You just reminded me of some small part of the (very basd) dream I had last night, which was ocnfusing and random so it doesn't even relate well as a story, but there was something about burning a bible in there.

(deleted comment)

Both people are giving the book a certain sort of importance outside of the understanding of the object as what it is.

To an extent i agree, but some would take this argument to the next step of saying that promoters and critics of religion are equally responsible for the problems that come from religious ossification, with which i would have to vehemently disagree.

I think that 'salvation' for the world will come when any two given people can enter into a discussion of the bible or the Koran or Jesus Christ or anything else without there being some kind of underlying tension.

This would indeed be a wonderful thing.

I haven't read the book, but... (famous last words)

I agree with

pooperman that at least from your description it looks like you've made a conceptual leap from Spong's valuing the Bible to placing it in the "center" of his theology, and with underlying hopes to "save the world" using it. None of which I got the feeling reading previous , even rather early, works was Spong's overt position or underlying intent.

Please see my response to

pooperman above.

Even though Spong does not take a literalistic view of scripture, he still wants us to find it as inspirational and holy. This is a step beyond merely saying that it has good bits and bad bits.

As for it being at the center of his theology, perhaps that is a bit of an overstatement, but it does still play an IMO overly important role.

A lot of the problem comes from those who think the bible is the direct word of god. I wish there were a way to help them understand that it is historically more manmade than godmade.

I've come to fear the suggestion that it is anything other than entirely and utterly man-made.

I don't think the Bible is inherently good or evil. It is a book. It is the organizations that created it and still surround that are a problem. They are willing to promote evil based on a passage in a book their predecessors wrote.

The Papal decree of infalliability? Dangerous.
The Church-based backlash against science? Dangerous.
The Sharia Laws that accompany the Quo'ran? Dangerous.

It's not the books that are the problem. It is the people who champion the books as infallible, morally-perfect, words from God that are the problem. Even then it's not most of them either. It's the few among them who believe bending the rules is ok, as long as it's for the greater good.

As for your questions (rhetorical as they may be):
Yes and yes.

(no subject)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Tools