Monday, August 28, 2006
Insight from Bishop Spong on Theism
Matthew Baugh from the Internet writes:
"I've wondered for a while about the definition of theism and its implications. There seem to be three central points you use most often. The God of theism is 1) external, 2) supernatural, 3) intervenes in human lives. Does this statement imply that God is the opposite of these three things?
Much of what you write suggests that this is clearly true of point 3. You present God as not intervening and not capable of intervening. The opposite of point 2 would seem to be that God is natural. Is this a correct assumption and, if so, how do you see God as manifest in the natural world? The opposite of point 1 would seem to be that God is internal.
I'm very aware that I might be reading too much into your words but the sense I get is that you suggest that God is internal to human experience. This seems to fit with some modern brain research that suggests that human beings are "hard-wired" to believe in some higher power and to worship it. This research suggests that belief in God is a natural part of being human rather than a social construct imposed from without.
Is this the non-theistic understanding of God? Internal, natural (thought not manifest outside of human consciousness) and unable to intervene in the world (except perhaps through God's effects on the consciousness of each believer?"
Dear Matthew,
Thank you for your penetrating and perceptive letter that gives me an opportunity to think publicly once more about the meaning of the word "God" in human experience.
Let me begin by making a distinction. I try not to talk about the "God of theism." I regard theism as a human definition of God. It is not who or what God is. Theism is a human attempt to describe a God experience in pre-modern language. Prior to Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, people inevitably thought of God as a supernatural presence over the natural world.
Before Isaac Newton, they thought of God as setting aside the laws of the universe to do miracles or to answer prayers. Before Darwin and Freud, they thought of God as the external creator and portrayed God as a heavenly parent. Prior to Einstein, they assumed that these perceptions were objectively true and not subject to the relativity in which all human thought dwells since both the time in which we live and the space we occupy are relative, not absolute. So when I dismiss theism, I am not dismissing God. I am dismissing one human image of God that sought to define a human experience of the divine.
To suggest that if theism is not true then the opposite of theism is true is to make the same mistake. Every human attempt to define God is nothing more than a human attempt to define the human experience of the divine. We can never tell who God is or who God is not. We can only tell another of what we believe our experience of God has been. Even then we have to face the possibility that all of our God talk may be delusional.
When I try to talk of God, I am only talking of my God experience. That is not what God is, that is only what I believe my experience of God to be.
I do not experience God as a supernatural power, external to life invading my world in supernatural power. I see no evidence to think this definition is real. The problem is that most people have most deeply identified this definition of God with God that when this definition dies the victim of expanded knowledge, we think that God has died.
I am not trying to form a new definition. I am only trying to share an experience. In my human self-consciousness at both the depth of life and on the edges of consciousness, I believe I encounter a transcendent other. In that encounter, I experience expanded life, the increased ability to love and a new dimension of what it means to be. I call that experience God and that experience leads me to say that if I meet God in expanded life, God becomes for me the source of life. If I meet God in the enhanced ability to love, God becomes for me the source of love. If I meet God in an increased ability to be all that I am, God becomes for me the ground of being.
I can talk about my experience. Having only a human means of communication I cannot really talk about God. Horses can experience a human being entering their horse consciousness, but a horse could never tell another horse what it means to be human. Somehow human beings have never quite embraced that fact that this is also true about the human being's knowledge of God.
I do not know how God acts therefore I can never say how God acts. For me to say God is unable to intervene would be to say more than I know. For me to explain how God intervenes or why God does not intervene is to claim knowledge of God that is not mine.
I test my experience daily in the light of evolving human language. The result of that is that every day I believe in God more deeply, while at the same time, every day I seem to have less and less beliefs about God. Human beings seem almost incapable of embracing mystery, especially ultimate mystery. I am content to walk daily with the mystery of God. I walk past road maps, past religious systems, even my own but never beyond the mystery of God. I suppose that makes me a mystic, but an uncomfortable, never satisfied, always-evolving one.
I find great meaning and great power in this approach. I commend it to you. Thank you for your superb letter.
-- John Shelby Spong
"I've wondered for a while about the definition of theism and its implications. There seem to be three central points you use most often. The God of theism is 1) external, 2) supernatural, 3) intervenes in human lives. Does this statement imply that God is the opposite of these three things?
Much of what you write suggests that this is clearly true of point 3. You present God as not intervening and not capable of intervening. The opposite of point 2 would seem to be that God is natural. Is this a correct assumption and, if so, how do you see God as manifest in the natural world? The opposite of point 1 would seem to be that God is internal.
I'm very aware that I might be reading too much into your words but the sense I get is that you suggest that God is internal to human experience. This seems to fit with some modern brain research that suggests that human beings are "hard-wired" to believe in some higher power and to worship it. This research suggests that belief in God is a natural part of being human rather than a social construct imposed from without.
Is this the non-theistic understanding of God? Internal, natural (thought not manifest outside of human consciousness) and unable to intervene in the world (except perhaps through God's effects on the consciousness of each believer?"
Dear Matthew,
Thank you for your penetrating and perceptive letter that gives me an opportunity to think publicly once more about the meaning of the word "God" in human experience.
Let me begin by making a distinction. I try not to talk about the "God of theism." I regard theism as a human definition of God. It is not who or what God is. Theism is a human attempt to describe a God experience in pre-modern language. Prior to Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, people inevitably thought of God as a supernatural presence over the natural world.
Before Isaac Newton, they thought of God as setting aside the laws of the universe to do miracles or to answer prayers. Before Darwin and Freud, they thought of God as the external creator and portrayed God as a heavenly parent. Prior to Einstein, they assumed that these perceptions were objectively true and not subject to the relativity in which all human thought dwells since both the time in which we live and the space we occupy are relative, not absolute. So when I dismiss theism, I am not dismissing God. I am dismissing one human image of God that sought to define a human experience of the divine.
To suggest that if theism is not true then the opposite of theism is true is to make the same mistake. Every human attempt to define God is nothing more than a human attempt to define the human experience of the divine. We can never tell who God is or who God is not. We can only tell another of what we believe our experience of God has been. Even then we have to face the possibility that all of our God talk may be delusional.
When I try to talk of God, I am only talking of my God experience. That is not what God is, that is only what I believe my experience of God to be.
I do not experience God as a supernatural power, external to life invading my world in supernatural power. I see no evidence to think this definition is real. The problem is that most people have most deeply identified this definition of God with God that when this definition dies the victim of expanded knowledge, we think that God has died.
I am not trying to form a new definition. I am only trying to share an experience. In my human self-consciousness at both the depth of life and on the edges of consciousness, I believe I encounter a transcendent other. In that encounter, I experience expanded life, the increased ability to love and a new dimension of what it means to be. I call that experience God and that experience leads me to say that if I meet God in expanded life, God becomes for me the source of life. If I meet God in the enhanced ability to love, God becomes for me the source of love. If I meet God in an increased ability to be all that I am, God becomes for me the ground of being.
I can talk about my experience. Having only a human means of communication I cannot really talk about God. Horses can experience a human being entering their horse consciousness, but a horse could never tell another horse what it means to be human. Somehow human beings have never quite embraced that fact that this is also true about the human being's knowledge of God.
I do not know how God acts therefore I can never say how God acts. For me to say God is unable to intervene would be to say more than I know. For me to explain how God intervenes or why God does not intervene is to claim knowledge of God that is not mine.
I test my experience daily in the light of evolving human language. The result of that is that every day I believe in God more deeply, while at the same time, every day I seem to have less and less beliefs about God. Human beings seem almost incapable of embracing mystery, especially ultimate mystery. I am content to walk daily with the mystery of God. I walk past road maps, past religious systems, even my own but never beyond the mystery of God. I suppose that makes me a mystic, but an uncomfortable, never satisfied, always-evolving one.
I find great meaning and great power in this approach. I commend it to you. Thank you for your superb letter.
-- John Shelby Spong
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Bishop Spong on "Why Jesus Died"
Don Peacock from the Internet writes:
In your answer of May 10, 2006, you wrote, 'I see Christianity at its heart as deeply humanistic. The core doctrines of the Christian faith suggest that God is revealed through a human life...so I see secular humanism as the residual remains of Christianity once the supernatural elements have been removed.' In the next paragraph, you say you do not think 'the supernatural understanding of God is essential to Christianity.'
In your answer of May 3, 2006, you reject 'the interpretation of Jesus' death as a sacrifice required by God to overcome the sins of the world' as making God 'barbaric' and 'Jesus the victim of a sadistic deity.' This 'deeply violates the essential note of the Gospel, which is that God is love calling us to love' and is not 'found in the pious but destructive phrase, "Jesus died for my sins."'
My question is: If Jesus did not die on the cross to atone for humanity's sins, why did he have to die to bring us the message that 'God is love, calling us to love'? "
Dear Don,
First, let me say that you have rightly summarized my thinking, for which I am grateful. Second, this understanding does challenge the traditional understanding of the cross as the place where the price of our redemption was paid and leaves many people with a gaping vacuum at the center of their understanding of Christianity. You have articulated that well.
I believe what you need to do is to free yourself of the theistic God who lives above the sky and who guides human history to accomplish the divine will. That mentality forces us to find purpose in everything. Locked into this view of God, the early Christians sought to find purpose in the cross. That is how we got substitutionary theories of the atonement and began to view the cross through the lens of the sacrificial Day of Atonement that the Jews called Yom Kippur. In the liturgy of Yom Kippur a perfect Lamb of God was slain. Its blood spread on the mercy seat of the Holy of Holies that was thought of as God's place of occupation. Therefore, to come to God, people had to come through the blood of the lamb. Then a second animal was brought out and the priest began to confess the sins of the people. As the priest confessed, the sins of the people were thought to leave the people and land on the back and head of this animal. Then burdened with the sins of the people, this animal was driven into the wilderness. The sin bearer (called 'the scape goat') thus carried the sins of the people away. Both the sacrificial lamb and the sin-bearing goat became symbols by which Jesus was understood. In our liturgies today, we still say "O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."
If that understanding is removed from the cross, as I believe it must be, then questions like 'What is the meaning of the cross?' and 'Why did Jesus die?' become perennial questions. Take purpose out of them and what is left is a picture of a free man – whole, complete, with his life being taken cruelly from him. In the portrait painted in the gospels of the cross, the dying Jesus speaks a word of forgiveness to the soldiers who drive the nails. He speaks a word of encouragement to the thief who is portrayed as penitent. He speaks a word of comfort to his mother in her bereavement. Whether these are historical memories or not is not important to me and I do not think any of them literally happened. They are, however, expressions of the corporate memory of Jesus. Here was a life being put to death unjustly but instead of clinging to his fleeting existence, he is still giving life away. That is a picture of a new level of human consciousness. The cross reveals for me the infinite love of God calling the world and me to a new humanity, calling us beyond survival toward the deepest secrets of transcendence. That is what the cross means to me and it moves me deeply.
I hope this helps you.
-- John Shelby Spong
In your answer of May 10, 2006, you wrote, 'I see Christianity at its heart as deeply humanistic. The core doctrines of the Christian faith suggest that God is revealed through a human life...so I see secular humanism as the residual remains of Christianity once the supernatural elements have been removed.' In the next paragraph, you say you do not think 'the supernatural understanding of God is essential to Christianity.'
In your answer of May 3, 2006, you reject 'the interpretation of Jesus' death as a sacrifice required by God to overcome the sins of the world' as making God 'barbaric' and 'Jesus the victim of a sadistic deity.' This 'deeply violates the essential note of the Gospel, which is that God is love calling us to love' and is not 'found in the pious but destructive phrase, "Jesus died for my sins."'
My question is: If Jesus did not die on the cross to atone for humanity's sins, why did he have to die to bring us the message that 'God is love, calling us to love'? "
Dear Don,
First, let me say that you have rightly summarized my thinking, for which I am grateful. Second, this understanding does challenge the traditional understanding of the cross as the place where the price of our redemption was paid and leaves many people with a gaping vacuum at the center of their understanding of Christianity. You have articulated that well.
I believe what you need to do is to free yourself of the theistic God who lives above the sky and who guides human history to accomplish the divine will. That mentality forces us to find purpose in everything. Locked into this view of God, the early Christians sought to find purpose in the cross. That is how we got substitutionary theories of the atonement and began to view the cross through the lens of the sacrificial Day of Atonement that the Jews called Yom Kippur. In the liturgy of Yom Kippur a perfect Lamb of God was slain. Its blood spread on the mercy seat of the Holy of Holies that was thought of as God's place of occupation. Therefore, to come to God, people had to come through the blood of the lamb. Then a second animal was brought out and the priest began to confess the sins of the people. As the priest confessed, the sins of the people were thought to leave the people and land on the back and head of this animal. Then burdened with the sins of the people, this animal was driven into the wilderness. The sin bearer (called 'the scape goat') thus carried the sins of the people away. Both the sacrificial lamb and the sin-bearing goat became symbols by which Jesus was understood. In our liturgies today, we still say "O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."
If that understanding is removed from the cross, as I believe it must be, then questions like 'What is the meaning of the cross?' and 'Why did Jesus die?' become perennial questions. Take purpose out of them and what is left is a picture of a free man – whole, complete, with his life being taken cruelly from him. In the portrait painted in the gospels of the cross, the dying Jesus speaks a word of forgiveness to the soldiers who drive the nails. He speaks a word of encouragement to the thief who is portrayed as penitent. He speaks a word of comfort to his mother in her bereavement. Whether these are historical memories or not is not important to me and I do not think any of them literally happened. They are, however, expressions of the corporate memory of Jesus. Here was a life being put to death unjustly but instead of clinging to his fleeting existence, he is still giving life away. That is a picture of a new level of human consciousness. The cross reveals for me the infinite love of God calling the world and me to a new humanity, calling us beyond survival toward the deepest secrets of transcendence. That is what the cross means to me and it moves me deeply.
I hope this helps you.
-- John Shelby Spong
