[Oe List ...] 4/26/18, Progressing Spirit: Plumer, What is God?; Spong revisited

[Jann McGuire]

I thank Goodness for the Bultmann image of living "between the arrows".

Jann

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 6:52 AM, Ellie Stock via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net
> wrote:

>
> I know of no subject that is more challenging to discuss or challenge then
> the subject of God.
> View this email in your browser
> <https://mailchi.mp/76ae5968d9de/what-is-god?e=db34daa597>
>
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=d37141add6&e=db34daa597>
>
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=06038706ef&e=db34daa597>
> What is God?
>  Essay by Fred C. Plumer on April 26, 2018
> A few weeks ago, I recommended to our *Progressing Spirit *writers that
> we should all write articles that responded to Bishop Spong’s book, *Unbelievable
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=0d633d9e45&e=db34daa597>*.
> Then it hit me. I was going to be doing the article this week and as I had
> suggested to our writers, I would have to start with Spong’s first thesis.
> “Holy moly,” what was I thinking? For Spong’s first thesis is “God.” Now, I
> am a student of the Bible. I have been studying it for over forty years.
> Nearly thirty years ago I came to the dramatic conclusion that the vast
> majority, if not the entire Bible, was written as metaphor by people who
> may have been very bright for their time in history but were largely
> ignorant of the world that inherited this book. We really do not understand
> the world they lived in, and obviously, they did not understand the world
> we live in today. Many of their sincere beliefs would be considered, at
> best, superstitions today. That is one of the reasons it has always amazed
> me people can argue for an inerrant interpretation of the Bible, using the
> Bible to “prove” their own interpretation.
> And then there is the issue of God. I know of no subject that is more
> challenging to discuss then the subject of God. Does this God answer our
> prayers? If not, why are we still saying them in most of our churches?  I
> sincerely believe if we could poll the members of a two hundred member
> church, and ask them if they believed in God, we would get two hundred
> different answers. Spong suggest that this is largely the result of
> thinking of God as a “being.” He writes, *“What we must do is find the
> meaning to which the word ‘God’ points.”*
> Now I am not overly concerned about the readers of this column. Most of us
> have not believed in a “God-being” sitting up in the skies waiting to hear
> our prayers. Most of us, I suspect, get a strange feeling when we say the
> Lord’s Prayer, whichever version we use,  when we get to the “forgive us
> our sins” or frankly any part of the famous prayer. Do we really believe
> that “God” is even listening or is going to forgive us? Do we really
> believe that “God” will answer our petitions? Do we believe in a God? If
> so, what is God?
> Spong continues, *“God is not a being, not even a supreme being. A being
> is something that exists in time and space, but we are trying to describe
> that which is ultimate, unbound, meaning that such terminology-the category
> of existence –cannot be used.”*
> This is apparently harder than it sounds. That may be one of the reasons
> several well-known theologians have suggested that we give up using the
> term “God” at least for an extended period of time until people of the next
> generation can “reconceive” its true meaning.
> Paul Tillich suggested something similar several decades ago. *“We must
> abandon the external height images in which the theistic God has
> historically been perceived and replace them with internal depth images of
> a deity who is not apart from us, but who is the very core and ground of
> all that is.”*
> Spong starts his thesis by stating once you are thinking of God not as a
> being then you begin to think of God as a “doorway” of a new experience of
> life. He writes, *“My doorway into God is to take my God experience
> seriously and then to live it as deeply as I can…How do I experience God?
> First, I experience God as Life.”*
> So what do we do with this? How do I approach the subject while offending
> the fewest number of people? I suppose I could dazzle you with something
> like Tillich wrote, but I am not Paul Tillich, or Bishop Spong for that
> matter. So I suggest we look at a few of the ideas that are out there right
> now. Certainly one of the best ways to approach this is to give some
> concrete examples.
> One is the *Oasis Communities.* Oasis communities started around 2012 in
> this country. At last count they have to over 12 communities across the
> States and two in Canada. They started as an alternative, atheist “church”
> but they have grown-up since then. Their anti-attitude toward a god has
> transitioned a bit since they first started. They now say they do not
> believe in an intercessory god or a being. They gather on Sunday mornings
> because the leaders ascertained that this was the time that most folks had
> the least commitments. Their core values that are stated on the website are:
> 1. People are more important than beliefs.
> 2. Reality is known through reason.
> 3. Meaning comes from making a difference.
> 4. Human hands solve human problems.
> 5. Be accepting and be accepted.
> Another organization you might find interesting is called *The Clergy
> Project*. It is growing rapidly. The organization works with clergy who
> want to “come out of the closet,” meaning to proclaim to their
> congregations that they no longer can in good conscious use the term God.
> They consider themselves atheist. None of them believe in a theistic god
> and have given up trying to “fake” it in church.  The Clergy Project was
> started to help these people either by learning how to reconfigure their
> ministry by becoming more honest in their churches or through helping them
> find another profession. You may want to look them up on the web. (
> clergyproject.org) If you do, you might be interested in reading the
> story by John Harkey Gibbs, currently on the front page of the Clergy
> Project.
> One of our regular writers, Gretta Vosper, is part of this organization
> and is a very effective pastor in her own church. A couple of you have
> notified us that you have stopped reading her articles because you do not
> like the term “atheist.” I suggest you take another look at what Ms. Vosper
> is writing. She does not believe in an intervening God, and does not
> believe there is anything “up there” or “out there” that she would call
> “godlike.” Vosper has been challenged by a few of her former church
> members, but far more by her denominational hierarchy.
> And yet she has a vital church that works very well for a lot of people.
> The congregation has no desire to “please” God, and most of the congregants
> are better for that. Their focus is about caring and pleasing each other as
> a community. If someone has a problem they may be more comfortable
> discussing it with a peer rather than with clergy or more importantly,
> asking “God” to fix it.  I suggest you read her first book, *With or
> Without God.
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=4af72b792f&e=db34daa597>* She
> makes a solid argument that we should remove the term *god *from our
> vocabulary in the church.
> Vosper writes, *“It is time for the church to give up that truth-testing
> role. Those in leadership positions in the church are fully aware that
> whatever god is, it is not described by the church’s doctrines. They are
> even aware that there may be no such thing as god.”*
> Perhaps John Robinson, Ph.D., D.Min who is a clinical psychologist with a
> second doctorate in ministry, has the right idea. Robinson believes that
> God exists and it is “us.” In his most recent book, *The Divine Human:
> The Final Transformation of Sacred Aging
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=7b8192044f&e=db34daa597>*,
> he writes;* “The Divine Human is someone who experiences body, self and
> the world as literally divine. It’s a state of consciousness free of
> identity, time and story, and the whole problem-ridden labyrinth of left
> brain thinking that dominates our lives. In mystical awareness, we
> experience our “own” consciousness and being as the consciousness and being
> of God.”*
> Robinson says the answer is less religion and more mysticism. He suggests
> that we have been looking in all the wrong places for God. He explains that
> Jesus was a mystic first and foremost. When Jesus said we live in a sacred
> and divine world he meant something more than, “this is a beautiful world.”
>  This beautiful world is actually an opportunity to discover who and what
> we are. He quotes Jesus, *“The father’s kingdom is spread out upon the
> earth and people do not see it…What you look for has come, but you do not
> know it.”*(*Gospel of Thomas, *Marvin Meyer and Harold Bloom p65, 113)
> And in Robinson’s same book he also quotes Joseph Campbell, *“This is it.
> This is Eden. When you see the kingdom spread upon the earth, the old way
> of living in the world is annihilated. That is the end of the world. The
> end of the world is not an event to come, it is an event of psychological
> transformation, of visionary transformation. You see not the world of solid
> things but a world of radiance.”*
> Once we “*wake up*” and see this reality, according to Robinson, we will
> also realize that we are gods or godlike. It is something we can experience
> any time…but we have to do the work. In part we have to learn how to become
> mystics through meditation, changing our attitudes and opening our eyes.
> Robinson may have a point here. If we really began to see the world as
> sacred and our lives as a divine experience, how would that change our
> vison of the world and the way we experience it? How would that change the
> world? Can we even imagine the sense of becoming godly as we work through
> our lives? It is an intriguing idea.
> And finally, for years now, I have wondered about the string theory. In
> short, it is the idea that the entire universe is connected with some kind
> of invisible string and this “string” moves in large waves. It brings me
> back to the Buddhist saying, when a butterfly flaps its wings, the world is
> changed. Is that something we could refer to as god or God? Just the idea
> of being interconnected to each other, let alone to things we do not even
> think of or know about, is tantalizing to me. The bottom line with this way
> of reasoning is that we still are responsible for our lives. Yes, other
> people, animals, plants, whatever, may be “pulling on our string” or
> strings, but we still have to decide how we are going to live our lives.
> So I bring you back to Bishop Spong’s explanation of God. In short he says
> God is explainable only through experience. And how do we experience God,
> according to Spong? “*I experience God as Life.”*
> Maybe another good start would be to keep the wisdom of naturalist John
> Burroughs in mind when we are entering that doorway:  *the more we allow
> science, reason and wonder to lead us forward down the trail, the more we
> find ourselves “at home in the universe*.”
> ~ Fred C. Plumer
>
> Click here
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=080910952b&e=db34daa597>
> to read online and to share your thoughts
> *About the Author*
> In 1986 Rev. Plumer was called to the Irvine United Congregational Church
> in Irvine, CA to lead a UCC new start church, where he remained until he
> retired in 2004. The church became known throughout the denomination as one
> of the more exciting and progressive mid-size congregations in the nation.
> He served on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Conference
> of the United Church of Christ (UCC) for five years, and chaired the
> Commission for Church Development and Evangelism for three of those years.
> In 2006 Fred was elected President of ProgressiveChristianity.org
> (originally called The Center for Progressive Christianity – TCPC) when
> it’s founder Jim Adams retired. As a member of the Executive Council for
> TCPC he wrote *The Study Guide for The 8 Points by which we define:
> Progressive Christianity*
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=64e5131890&e=db34daa597>.
> He has had several articles published on church development, building faith
> communities and redefining the purpose of the enlightened Christian Church.
> His book *Drink from the Well*
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=a9c02d7a1d&e=db34daa597> is
> an anthology from speeches, articles in eBulletins, and numerous
> publications that define the progressive Christianity movement as it
> evolves to meet new challenges in a rapidly changing world.
> Question & Answer
> *Q: By Ralf from Oklahoma*
>
>
>
> *Recently, while in the middle of a difficult and tragic event in my life,
> a friend told me not to worry because God has a hand in everything that
> happens and that means that everything that happen is meant for good. He
> even suggested I read Romans 8:28. Do you think that's what the verse
> actually means?*
>
> *A: By Rev. Mark Sandlin*
> Dear Ralph,
>
> *“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love
> him, who have been called according to his purpose.” —Romans 8:28*
>
> This verse is so chock full of issues I barely know where to start.
> Considering there are so many issues, I think I'll just focus on the
> overarching problem – certainty.
> When folks quote this they tend to say it loaded with a bunch of
> theological perspectives that they hold to strongly simply because they
> were told to, or want to, or they have blind faith in them. The thing is,
> even scholars who spend their careers looking at these theological issues
> find it hard to say, with certainty, that they definitely have one
> “correct” understanding of Romans 8:28.
> Let’s just look at one piece of the verse: “in all things God works for
> the good…”. Most folks who like to quote this scripture hear it as saying
> “all things are meant for good by God.” But, that way of seeing the world
> elevates tragedy into blessing and dismisses human grief as an inability to
> understand God’s “larger plan” or the “mystery of God.”
> From the holocaust, to Rwanda, to child abuse, to the 21,000 people who
> die every day due to hunger related causes, this take on the providence of
> God paints a picture of a God who creates death and suffering in order to
> achieve some supposed greater good.
> That’s no god.
> It’s not even what the verse says.
> It says, “in all things God works for the good.”
> Perhaps what is being said is that in all things *(even things humanity
> creates that are horrible and tragic)*God is endeavoring to create
> something good.
> And perhaps the reason God struggles to do so, is that the only tools he
> has available are us – God’s people.
> So, no. I definitely don't think that's what the verse actually means.
> PEACE!
> ~ Rev. Mark Sandlin
>
> Click here
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=7e9e12156e&e=db34daa597>
> to read and share online
> *About the Author*
> Rev. Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA)
> from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant.
> He is a co-founder of The Christian Left
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=7d7076e76e&e=db34daa597>.
> His blog
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=41bb2a00bb&e=db34daa597>,
> has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The
> Associated Church Press' Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been
> published on "The Huffington Post," "Sojourners," "Time," "Church World
> Services," and even the "Richard Dawkins Foundation." He's been featured on
> PBS's "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" and NPR's "The Story with Dick
> Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=d48e45762c&e=db34daa597> and
> Twitter @marksandlin
> Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited   Debating with Evangelicals
> Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on June 22, 2005
>
>  Twice recently, I have had the opportunity to engage in public debate two
> people who identify themselves as evangelicals, the Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler,
> the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,
> Kentucky, and the Rev. Dr. William Craig, a non-residential “Research
> Professor of Philosophy” at the Talbot School of Theology, an evangelical
> school in La Mirada, California. The venues for these debates were quite
> different. Dr. Mohler and I were in two studios in different cities so we
> never actually met, nor could I see him. Dr. Craig and I shared the stage
> before a live audience in an auditorium at Bethel College in Ohio. The
> subject matter was also different. With Dr. Mohler, it was the Bible and
> how one is to approach the sacred text, while with Dr. Craig we limited our
> subject to the resurrection of Jesus as the gospels describe it.
> These two gentlemen differed greatly in personality. Dr. Mohler was
> overtly aggressive, while Dr. Craig was quite civil, despite slipping
> occasionally into ‘cuteness.’ There was, however, little to distinguish
> their perspectives. In typical evangelical style both validated their
> points of view by describing the time when each “gave myself to the Lord,”
> suggesting in subtle ways that without this saving moment, rational
> conversation about the Bible had little relevance. Yet both of these
> guardians of the literal Bible appeared to me to be highly defensive.
> Their defensiveness was apparent first in their constant citing of the
> names of those biblical authorities they quoted to justify their
> evangelical conclusions. They worked hard to build up the credibility of
> these ‘scholars’, listing their degrees and publications and stating that
> they represented a new wave of learning. That was, they suggested, why I
> might never have heard of them. It was an argument not dissimilar from the
> way evangelicals also quote certain ‘scientists’ who, they claim “challenge
> Darwin and evolution in the name of science.” An investigation of the
> credentials of these authorities, however, reveals that the majority of
> their degrees come from evangelical schools and that their books are
> published by evangelical publishers. When these facts are raised to
> consciousness, the response is typically that “liberals do not take
> evangelical scholarship seriously because of an intellectual bias.”
> I confess that I plead guilty to that charge to this degree. I can read
> two or three pages of the work of someone described as an “evangelical
> scholar” and tell you quickly why I have no desire to read more. What they
> call scholarship is always in the service of the evangelical agenda. There
> is in fact no such thing as “conservative” biblical scholarship, any more
> than there is something called “liberal” biblical scholarship. Scholarship
> is by definition neither liberal nor conservative, it is, rather, competent
> or incompetent. The nature of scholarship is to go wherever the search for
> truth leads; it does not exist to buttress pre-conceived evangelical
> conclusions. That is to confuse both education and scholarship with
> propaganda. Most of the evangelical “scholars” that these two gentlemen
> cited are unknown in the academic circles I inhabit not, as they claim,
> because of a liberal bias but because their work is not regarded as
> academic at all. It, therefore, stands at odds with the great tradition of
> biblical scholarship that broke upon the Western world in the late 18th
> century, and that continues to challenge, deeply and successfully, the
> literal assumptions made by most evangelicals. When Dr. Mohler asserted in
> our debate, “that every word of the Bible is the inerrant word of God,” it
> was obvious that this critical work of the last 200 years has never engaged
> his mind. The inerrancy he claimed for “the Word of God” requires one to
> live in a pre-Copernican, pre-Darwinian world. To pretend that the earth is
> still the center of the universe is simply no longer credible. Old
> Testament narratives from the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis, to
> the story of manna raining down from heaven on the Israelites in the
> wilderness reflect that now-rejected world view, as do the New Testament
> accounts of a star being dragged across the heavens slowly enough to allow
> wise men to keep up with it and Jesus returning to God by ascending into
> the sky. DNA evidence also makes the idea of a separate creation for human
> life laughable. The people who wrote the Bible, knew nothing about germs,
> viruses or tumors, and assumed that sickness was punishment for sinfulness,
> that epilepsy resulted from demon possession and deaf muteness derived from
> the devil tying the victim’s tongue. One does not want to attribute such
> ignorance to God. Furthermore, evangelicals do not face the fact that a
> book which says quite literally that homosexuals should be put to death,
> women are inferior to men, slavery is legitimate or Jews deserve God’s
> wrath, should never be called “the Word of God.”
> When Dr. Craig proclaimed that the gospels were “biographies of Jesus,”
> reflecting “eye witness accounts that go back into the first decade
> following the life of Jesus,” it was apparent that he was either unaware of
> or had deliberately rejected the conclusions of two centuries of biblical
> studies. Then he stated that the Book of Acts was written in the early
> sixties, a date reputable scholars find incredible. To debate such ideas as
> if they are competent is like debating with members of the flat earth
> society. It is universally attested today that Acts is volume two of Luke
> and that Luke has copied into his gospel about fifty percent of the Gospel
> of Mark. If Dr. Craig were correct that would force us to date Luke and
> Mark early in the 50’s. Both gospels reflect a much later structure of
> church life and appear to be cognizant of such external events as the fall
> of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., each of which makes Dr. Craig’s dating impossible.
> I have no desire to impugn the integrity of either of these gentlemen, but
> I can say that their level of learning is at best naive. Like most
> evangelicals, they know much about the literal content of the Bible and can
> cite its proof texts with alacrity, but they seem to know nothing about the
> Bible’s formation, its clear conflicts, or anything else that threatens
> their primary presuppositions. Neither man understood a basic distinction,
> which is that while all people are welcome to their own opinions, none are
> welcome to their own facts. Facts can be tested. Evangelicals also do not
> seem to recognize that there is a time-honored method by which new thoughts
> enter the public debate. The one with the challenging insight writes a book
> or a paper and allows it to be circulated among those judged to be experts
> in that field so that they might react to it. If the insight opens new
> doors into truth it will ultimately win its way to acceptance. If it does
> not, it will receive the treatment it deserves and be roundly dismissed.
> Insights that are saluted only by evangelicals do not meet that test and
> all the rhetoric, designed to make credible that which has no academic
> merit, will avail nothing.
> The major problem with those who read the Bible literally is that they do
> not understand how the world has changed since the Bible was written.
> Propositional statements made in any time frame reflect the worldview of
> the one speaking. Language is always a dialogue between truth and time.
> Ultimate truth may be timeless but all articulations of truth are time
> bound and time warped. That distinction is still foreign to the
> conservative religious mind.
> My debating partners became quite contentious when trying to maintain
> their intellectually indefensible positions. Dr. Mohler revealed this by
> going into a full-scale attack. He suggested that I had rejected “every
> tenet of traditional Christianity.” He checked them off: the Virgin Birth,
> the blood atonement, the physical nature of the Resurrection, the
> supernatural God, and the reality of miracles. As he fired his
> fundamentalist artillery, he slipped quickly into character assassination.
> The oldest trick in debating is to attack the messenger when you can no
> longer deal with the message. What I do reject is not the basic ‘tenets of
> Christianity’ but the literal interpretations and dated world view that
> have been imposed on traditional Christianity by those who think they are
> ‘defending the faith.’ That is a distinction that those who identify
> Christianity with their own narrow definitions of it cannot make. Dr.
> Mohler’s assertions were almost identical with those things outlined by
> evangelicals in a series of early 20th century tracts called “The
> Fundamentals,” every one of which has been dismissed by the academic world
> of Christian scholarship. No scholar of world rank today, treats the birth
> narratives of Matthew and Luke as literal biology, the resurrection as
> physical resuscitation or envisions God as a deity who requires a blood
> offering and a human sacrifice as the means of achieving salvation. Such
> literalizations have become nothing less than a source of Christian
> embarrassment.
> Dr. Craig sought to distance himself from such strict fundamentalism by
> announcing that he was not an absolute literalist. When the Bible suggested
> that the hills clapped their hands, he explained, he did not believe that
> “hills actually had hands that could clap.” If that’s the mentality that
> tempers his literalism, he has a long way to go before he can enter the
> contemporary theological dialogue. His wife actually articulated the real
> problem at the end of the debate. I had related the story of how my
> evangelical church had taught me as a child that segregation, patriarchy,
> anti-Semitism and homophobia were the will of God, quoting the literal
> words of the Bible to ‘prove’ it. She expressed her sorrow “for the way I
> had been treated as a child by evangelicals.” If I had just had a wise and
> loving evangelical as my childhood pastor, perhaps someone like Dr. Craig,
> none of these dreadful things would have happened and, presumably, I would
> be a good evangelical today. I smiled inwardly, for clearly her comment
> revealed no insight at all into the things we had been discussing for two
> hours.
> Christianity is in desperate need of reformation but dialogue with
> evangelicals is not the way to pursue that task. As the old love song
> suggests, ‘we live in two different worlds.’
> ~  John Shelby Spong
> Announcements
>
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=1590ab359d&e=db34daa597>
> Events and Updates
>
> *Pilgrimage as a Journey of the Heart*
> *Online eCourse offered by Spiritual & Practice April 30th - May 25th*
>
> Pilgrimage transcends religious, national, cultural, and linguistic
> boundaries. This e-course will explore the many dimensions of pilgrimages
> as a spiritual practice and offer resources to aid those called to the
> journey today. We will look specifically at the value of pilgrimages in
> Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and psychology.
>
> *Click here for more information/registration ..*
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=26bcddb64a&e=db34daa597>
>
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=2b9c5bca4f&e=db34daa597>
>
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=17644b7237&e=db34daa597>
>
> <https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=1bcc67d575&e=db34daa597>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OE mailing list
> OE at lists.wedgeblade.net
> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20180426/6064bfbe/attachment-0001.html>