Who do YOU say that I am? Where I Think Spong is Wrong 3

This reflection is the third in a series of responses to John Shelby Spong’s book ‘Why Christianity Must Change or Die.’    I have read the book on several occasions and, together with other books by Spong and other more liberal Christian theologians, it was responsible for shifting me away from hard line evangelicalism towards my current self- identification as thinking evangelical.  This does not mean that I agree with Spong about everything.

Chapter 8 of Why Christianity Must Change or Die is entitled ‘What Think Ye of Christ?’  In this chapter Spong gives his view of who Jesus Christ is for him and who Christ must be for the changed Christianity he is proposing.  In this chapter Spong is answering the question Jesus asked his disciples, ‘Who do you say that I am?’  Spong is telling us who he says Jesus is.

There is much that I agree with in this particular chapter of Why Christianity Must Change or Die.  Spong writes near the beginning of the chapter ‘I still find the power of Christ compelling.’  I would have no argument with that statement as the power of Christ compels me day by day. 

Spong writes ‘I am moved by the generations of believers whose lives have been enriched, even transformed by this Jesus.’  I too love hearing the stories of those who have met with Jesus and be irrevocably changed by him.  Spong further writes that ‘time after time my relationship with Jesus has propelled me beyond limiting barrier after limiting barrier.’  That too has been my own experience of the Jesus I call Lord.

Spong gives a good summary of the four different but complimentary gospel portraits of Jesus, pointing to him as a person who embodied the God who is love and who broke through barrier after barrier because of that love; always being authentically himself.  Again I can find nothing to disagree with here.  Spong, in this sense, has a view of Jesus that very few Christians would dispute.

Where I profoundly disagree with Spong is in his interpretation of the nature of Jesus.  Spong feels that in our time the traditional language used to describe Jesus will not do.  He feels that we cannot use the language of incarnation; we cannot say that Jesus was the Son of God and that he was both fully human and fully divine.  As we saw in my first reflection on Spong’s book, he doesn’t believe in a theistic God at all, but a God who is ‘a presence discovered in the very depths of my life, in the capacity to live, in the ability to love and in the courage to be.’  If, as Spong believes, God has no independent existence as a being and personality, then God cannot have a Son as Christians have traditionally understood the term.  Spong believes that Jesus is ‘a revelation of the Ground of Being.’  He sees Jesus as ‘the life where God has been seen and can still be seen in a human form under the limitations of our finitude.’

I find Spong’s view of Christ too limiting.  He cannot accept the idea of a theistic God at all; yet that is the God I believe in.  Spong cannot accept the first century understanding of Jesus and yet offers an alternative that many would find equally unacceptable.  Yes, the early Christian explanations of who Jesus truly is are inadequate because the incarnation of God in the world is ultimately a mystery.  Spong is trying to take what is inexplicable and explain it in terms that he perceives will be acceptable to 21st century people.  As I wrote a couple of day­s ago, if we could understand God then God wouldn’t be God.

Furthermore, a Jesus who isn’t fully human and fully divine could not have secure our salvation on the cross.  For Spong this isn’t a problem, as we will see in tomorrow’s reflection; but for me this would rip the heart out of my Christian faith.