On Feb 14/00 Jim
J. McCrea wrote a letter to the Torono Star entitled
Heaven is not in this
Universe
This web page is Qbaal's
response.
McCrea:
Retired Episcopalian
bishop John Spong's ideas have been arrived at by
a serious confusion of
fundamental concepts.
Qbaal: There is no
confusion of concepts. It's basic to Spong's theology that
much of the New Testament witness to Christ is non-factual, imaginative
presentation. A presentation naturally centered on the use of Old
Testament history, personalities and imaginative imagery (myth).
Thus, even if Exodus, chapter 20, is pure imagination, it is imagery
zealously applied to the Christ - i.e. the Sermon on the Mount as the
giving of the New Law. Also, the flight into Egypt with Pontius
Pilate at the controls. :-)
Look at it this
way: Today I tell the world by email that God will
lift
Mount Everest exactly
ten kilometers in the sky at 15:00 GMT. This
all would agree could be
an act of God. If it indeed happens. However, even if the
mount jumps up (as Jesus said it would, if I have faith) I can't really
prove it's an act of God. Some guys over on alt.atheism (not all
mind you) will say a mini black hole out in space is attracting the
mountain and dislodging it from its eternal moorings. And there
would be thousands of other theories advanced shortly to deprive me of
my
15,000 years of
fame. So, likewise, the Bible repeatedly
advances
myth, or parable, as
pointer to God's activity in the world. In
both
something as mundane as
a sower seeding his plot of land (or young
prophet dying on a
cross) to something as "big deal" as a group of
slaves escaping ancient
Egyptian tyranny or a young prophet raised
to eternity as symbol of
God's victory and our hope of eternity.
Thus, it is no denial
of original Christianity belief to say Jesus is
spiritually raised, but not physically, as Spong maintains
vigorously. Spong's position is the only realistic and
rational way for the modern world to understand what the Bible really says
re the Resurrection. More
accurately, how the
gospels of the New Testament were written in the first
place.
In fact, the
earliest written Christian witness to the Resurrection is found in
the letters of St. Paul. There we read of no empty tomb, no
fantastic
appearance of angels and
no eating-drinking physical Jesus. All of
which the greatest
evangelist of all time would have surely been
informed
of by the apostles, etc
if they had actually historically happened.
The
gospel resurrection
stories are surely myth - i.e. historicized
spiritual
reality. It's not
difficult to accept the greatest event of human
history
as a totally spiritual
happening impinging on, of course, flesh and blood
human beings.
Yet, when the Church for upteen centuries has proclaimed and insisted on a
physical flesh and blood show -up of the crucified Lord and pounded
same into tiny little children's brains, that is the
difficult
thing to get pass and
over.
McCrea:
Spong cites Carl Sagan's
ludicrous assumption that if the ascension of
Jesus into Heaven is
real, He must still be travelling through
millions
of light years of
space. Heaven is not located in this
universe,......
Qbaal: You are
putting words in the mouth of Bishop Spong. He is
really saying:
if you take the Bible
literally (he
does not) Jesus is still locked in the cold of outer space and swimming
slowly toward heaven. This is ridiculous for both fundamentalist and
liberal Christians. Both believe Jesus is at the right hand of God
(theology, not mapping). Once again Spong is simply saying myth
cannot be understood, in total, empirically. Thus, the Virgin
Birth is obviously theology and not, in any way biology.
But it is not enough to
say this. What has to be said is the myth of
the
ascension is
now
defective and a big turn off for modern folk.
Thus,
if I were writing Acts
today I would not project Jesus jumping up
into
the clouds but have him
do a slow fade in front of his followers and
say he had entered a new
dimension, heaven or God's presence. Which still can't be understood
literally. This new dimension may be a spin off from Einstein's
theory of relativity and thus part of the modern mindset. But it
still is tied to physical reality and therefore it cannot present the
reality of the Ascension - Jesus slid from the cross - from physical
reality into a spiritual eternal one.
McCrea: The errors of
Spong would occur when one reduces theology to concepts of physical
science. Such errors happen also when symbolic accounts of things
are confused with literal descriptions of what is
true.
Qbaal: Spong is
actually saying ancient Christian myths are to be
interpreted in their
core meaning in terms of the modern scientific
worldview. How
else can they be interpreted meaningfully now? Maybe, myths like the
Virgin Birth should be totally rejected. Although
Spong
surely wants to still
retain the purpose behind the Virgin Mary
story
in the first place
i.e. God was in Christ......... In many places Spong
makes it clear he's strongly opposed to the modern Church
still pre- senting Jesus in terms of 1st century science - actually
worldview with no science - with ancient 3 level universe, demons and
God's mighty hand in every pie of physical occurrence. Spong
obviously believes theology
cannot be reduced to
physical science. But theology and Christianity's
stories of the Christ
can be, must be, informed by modern science. Today's
science and not yesterday's. And not literally.
More Qbaal
