- Dialogue - lists.wedgeblade.net

6/06/13, Spong: Part II Introducing The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic
by Ellie Stock 06 Jun '13

06 Jun '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Part II Introducing The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic When writing the opening chapter of my soon-to-be released book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, I felt the need to issue a warning to my readers. This warning needed to go in two quite different directions. There will certainly be those who think of themselves as “traditionally religious people,” who may well be scandalized by the content of this book. It will present them with ideas about the Bible about which they have never heard. There will also, however, be others, who are what I describe as members of the “Church Alumni Association,” those who have long ago given up on organized or institutional religion, who might actually be intrigued to hear a gospel being talked about in a different way. They might be fascinated to learn of the actual origins of the Fourth Gospel. This gospel was certainly not thought of as “the literal word of God” by its primary authors. I say “authors and editors” because this gospel was not ever a single volume that dropped from heaven in a completed form and divided into chapters and verses, as most church teaching has suggested over the centuries. Scholars now believe the Fourth Gospel was written in layers over a period of close to 30 years and by more than one primary person. The academic debate is not about whether there were multiple authors, that is assumed, but about how many there were. In this volume, I will identify only three Johannine layers or primary editorial revisions. If there were more than three, and no less a person than Raymond Brown argues for five, then some of them would have had to have been in the oral period rather than additional written sources and, as such, are much more difficult to isolate. Allow me to sketch the three layers I can identify briefly. The earliest written layer of this gospel appears to date from the mid 70’s, which makes it a near contemporary to Mark. It reflects the shaping influence of the life of the synagogue on the community’s memory of Jesus. It recognizes that the Christian faith was born as a movement within the synagogue and thus is deeply and consistently Jewish in its frame of reference. In this strand of John’s text, we can see, feel and experience in its background, the high holy days of the Jewish liturgical year. Here we touch what might be called “primitive Christianity” as the disciples of Jesus, all of whom were Jews, sought to incorporate Jesus of Nazareth into the faith of their fathers and mothers. That was a process that had happened many times in the past as Judaism grew and developed. The fact is that in the Jewish experience, one prophet after another from Isaiah and Micah to Amos and Zechariah had been added into the Canon of the Jewish Sacred Scriptures. Judaism was an expanding not a static religious system. Jesus’ followers believed that he had brought to Judaism something new and fresh, but nonetheless, something consistent with their ongoing faith story. That incorporation of Jesus into Judaism is seen in this layer of the Fourth Gospel primarily in the way that they sought to show him as the fulfillment of the expectations of the “law and the prophets,” or indeed, as “that prophet of whom Moses spoke.” At its earliest level, the Fourth Gospel was and is a profoundly Jewish book. The second editorial layer that has been discovered in this book seems to date from the mid to late 80’s of the Common Era. This was a time in the history of the Christian movement of exacerbating tensions between the followers of Jesus, who came to be called “Revisionists” and the leaders of the synagogue, who called themselves the “Orthodox” or right-thinking party. This growing negativity ultimately resulted in a fracture when the orthodox leaders excommunicated the followers of Jesus from the synagogue. This occurred around the year 88 of the Common Era. In a major revision of this gospel that occurred at this time, we see rising hostility and elements of what we now call anti-Semitism clearly creep into the text. Hostile words pass between the two groups. The Johannine text begins to call the enemies of Jesus simply “the Jews.” Those using this term pejoratively were, interestingly enough, also Jews. They meant the “Orthodox” party, whom they perceived as the enemies of those who follow Jesus. Before the split, the two groups had been engaged in what each thought was a battle to determine the true direction that Judaism was being called to travel. They were struggling with each other, as it were, for the “soul” and the future of Judaism.” The third major editorial revision that is clearly visible in this gospel comes after the reality of this excommunication began to set in. This would place it in the mid 90’s. Up until this time, the whole thrust of those Jews, who were followers of Jesus, was to portray him as the fulfillment of the hopes of the Jews, based on the messianic scriptural images. He was a new and expanded version of such Jewish heroes as Moses, Samuel, Elijah and the Servant figure of II Isaiah. Now, however, they had been cast out of that Jewish context and they had to rethink their understanding of Jesus, for loyalty to Jesus had carried them beyond the boundaries of Judaism. This freed them to look at him in a new context, perhaps a post-Jewish context; the boundaries of Judaism no longer restrained them This was the time when, as I shall seek to demonstrate, they began to define Jesus according to the thinking of the 1st century school of thought known as “Merkabah or Jewish throne mysticism.” This mystical approach was still related to the faith of the fathers and mothers, but it was free of all “limits and all boundaries.” Mysticism always transcends the barriers that religion creates and presses its adherents toward a universalistic understanding. This was the time when, under the guidance of this form of Jewish mysticism, the next major editor of the Johannine text began to speak of Jesus’ “oneness with God.” I am now convinced that this editor never intended the words he chose to use in this revision would ever to be read or understood in terms of the language of “incarnation.” That was a fourth century idea that would later be imposed on this gospel by the likes of Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. He certainly was not writing an apologia for Jesus as the “second person of the Holy Trinity.” His words, however, did open this gospel to these possible interpretations and, following the development of the creeds at Nicaea and beyond, this theology was attached to the Fourth Gospel so firmly that it is still the primary lens through which the gospel of John is read today. So the oneness with God, found in Jewish mysticism in the first century, came to be understood as the external deity invading the flesh of human life. It was in this final editorial revision I am now convinced that we begin to get the language in the Fourth Gospel that has Jesus say: “I and the Father are one” or “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” This is also when the holy name of God, “I AM,” began to be placed on to the lips of Jesus and the “I AM” statements became part of the gospel: “I am the bread of life;” I am the “living water,” I am “the gate,” the “vine,” the “good shepherd,” the “way,” the “resurrection” and the “life.” This is also, I now believe, when the prologue identifying Jesus with the “word of God” spoken in creation, was added to the text of John. In that prologue the suggestion was made that the “word of God” met in Jesus was preexistent and had been part of God since the foundation of the world. The Jews felt the same way about the “wisdom” of God and the prologue to John is based on a hymn to wisdom found in the book of Proverbs. Under the skillful quill of this third major editor, the mysterious presence of God in the life of Jesus was given a new form. This mystical oneness also signaled for its Jewish readers that this book was never intended by its author to be read or understood literally and, indeed, would never lend itself to a literal understanding. The clear idea that this gospel was never to be read as if it were literally true will be the source of the scandal that traditionally religious people will feel as they read these pages. That will, however, also be the source of the “intrigue” that those who have stepped outside all formal religious structures might feel as they realize that the Christianity that they have rejected is not at all what Christianity was intended to be. So, in my opening chapter, I outlined some of the things that would produce these dual responses, of both scandal and intrigue. Readers who might be in either of these groups will discover in this book such sentence as these: “In all probability, none of the sayings attributed to Jesus in this gospel were ever spoken by him,” that “none of the miracles called “signs” and attributed to Jesus in this gospel, ever actually happened,” that “most of the characters who populate the pages of this gospel are literary or fictionalized creations of the author and were never real people who actually lived,” and “that the language of an external deity entering into the flesh of our physical existence, which shapes the way most people still inform both their understanding of Christianity and the way they read this gospel is not even close to what the writers of this gospel intended.” So reading this book will be for some people an adventure leading to a radically new understanding of Christianity, while for others it will be a blasphemous book that constitutes an absolute attempt to destroy what they mistakenly believe to be “biblical truth.” I will live with both responses. For me it is the result of years of study and it represents an honest attempt to discover the essential Christian understanding, which has for centuries been smothered under the presumed authority of creeds, which are in turn under-girded by either the unbelievable claims of an inerrant Bible or the distorted infallibility claims of an inflexible church hierarchy. While surely some will call this book an attack on Christianity itself, I call it an attempt to rescue the Christ experience from the increasingly dated and unbelievable explanations that through the ages we have wrapped around Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, I see this book as an essential building block in the development of what I have called “A New Christianity for a New World.” ~JSS Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Hector Timourian, from Livermore, California, writes: Question: I’ve read many of your books. The two books that have helped me most understand Jesus have been Liberating the Gospels and Reclaiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World. However, I don’t see a clear explanation of Jesus’ parables, for example, The Prodigal Son. To me these parables reveal a teaching method that’s not highlighted in your writings. Did Jesus tell these parables? Answer: Dear Hector, Thank you for your question. Parables are certainly part of the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke. Paul never suggested that Jesus used parables in his teaching and the Fourth Gospel does not include any parables or references to parables. I suppose that someone writing solely of Mark, Matthew or Luke would have to deal with the subject of parables. My current study is on the gospel of Matthew and I will do exactly that before that study is complete. In a book dealing with the Bible as a whole, the probability is that the author will not get down to the level of discussing the parables in a single book. You are correct in that they reveal a teaching method that was attributed to Jesus. They are memorable, concise and appealing. Yet the three most powerful parables, the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son and Lazarus and the Rich Man (sometimes called Dives) are found only in the writings of Luke, whom I would date in the late 9th or early 10th decade, or 58-63 years after the crucifixion. Once that date is embraced, one is forced to wonder why no earlier gospel mentioned these three parables or where these parables were hiding until Luke included them in his gospel. Were they originally given by Jesus? Or did a later teacher develop them as a way to make his understanding of Jesus more memorable. Those parables are certainly consistent with what we know of Jesus’ teaching. The parable of the Good Samaritan attacks the boundaries of prejudice; the parable of the Prodigal Son describes the infinite capacity of the “Father” to forgive, and the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man affirms the value of a life sensitively lived. May I recommend the best book I have ever read on the parables? It is an old book but still should be available in public libraries. It was written in the 1950's I believe by a German Lutheran scholar whose name was Helmut Thielicke and is entitled simply, The Parables. I remember being excited by this book when I first read it and the parables of Jesus have never been the same to me since. I hope you will find it equally exciting. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements Find out who really wrote John's gospel and why... Pre-Order The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic Today! John Shelby Spong, bestselling author and popular proponent of a modern, scholarly and authentic Christianity, argues that this last gospel to be written was misinterpreted by the framers of the fourth-century creeds to be a literal account of the life of Jesus when in fact it is a literary, interpretive retelling of the events in Jesus’ life through the medium of fictional characters, from Nicodemus and Lazarus to the “Beloved Disciple.” The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic was designed first to place Jesus into the context of the Jewish scriptures, then to place him into the worship patterns of the synagogue and finally to allow him to be viewed through the lens of a popular form of first-century Jewish mysticism. The result of this intriguing study is not only to recapture the original message of this gospel, but also to provide us today with a radical new dimension to the claim that in the humanity of Jesus the reality of God has been met and engaged. Click here to read the: Preface of The Fourth Gospel- by Bishop Spong “We now approach our scriptures with a literalism that is unparalleled in the history of religion. This new and imaginative book by John Shelby Spong will liberate many people from this unnecessary complication of the religious life.” — Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam “No one has done more to articulate a vibrant, post-mythic vision of Christianity than John Shelby Spong. Bishop Spong’s masterful interpretation is destined to become a classic.” — Michael Dowd, Author of Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World “Spong is always readable and informative, but this book reads like a cross between a detective story and an adventure saga that is founded on excellent scholarship. I could not put it down.” — Fred C. Plumer, President of ProgressiveChristianity.Org (read this whole review here) Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book

1 0

Archives Sojourn Report Spring 2013
by Timothy Wegner 05 Jun '13

05 Jun '13

(Jean Long and Rosemary Albright asked me to post this to the mailing lists. What follows is a note from Jean with a link to the report.) Report from Global Archives Team What a wonderful journey the Global Archives Team – on site and off – have been on this past year .At last fall’s sojourn event we had an imaginal breakthrough relative to how we would share the programs which were so successful in enabling people and communities to take charge of their own futures. Our question had always been, “So we get these 200 file cabinets organized – how do we share them with the world?” The image of The Tip of The Iceberg answered that for us. As a huge iceberg is underwater and not seen except for the tip, the thousands of Town Meeting files would not be displayed on line – only chosen files, a video, a music piece, and an imaginal intro explaining how the methods could be of use to those who clicked on – only these would be in the “tip of the iceberg”. If people wanted to know more, info about that would be included. At this Spring Sojourn, we worked on getting the appropriate documents and videos, etc .for Town Meeting, Accelerate 77, Imaginal Ed and Service Learning. They are close to being available online. When they are we will send all of you the link to see them and get back to us with feedback. We left the Spring Sojourn program with 8 additional collections to create “tips of the iceberg” for. …and we SANG – like we have not sung since the late ‘70’s. The spirit is alive and well and working on projects for future generations. What a crew! What a task! What a legacy! For more details, click here: http://wedgeblade.net/files/ICA_Archives_Spring_2013_Sojourn_Report-U-Draft… Jean Long Rosemary Albright

1 0

Marge, we celebrate your being
by Janice Ulangca 01 Jun '13

01 Jun '13

Dear Marge, When I think of you I think of sparkle, and fun, and always welcoming hospitality. Oh yes - and the most dedicated, determined work ethic when you decide something is necessary! Better not get in your way - people, discouragements, or "that's impossibles"! You have cared for your family with such love and insight - then you have reached out to extend that care to your colleagues and people in the communities you have served. Just a few of the many reasons you inspire us. Happy, happy 85th birthday. Gee, we're glad we have known you! Let's see - at least several hundred people from all around the world would love to be at your celebration. Have a wonderful time. And Paula, thanks for honoring this terrific woman. With much affection, Janice Ulangca

1 0

"Journey Reflection" May 2013 Top-viewed Blogs
by Lynda Cock 31 May '13

31 May '13

Dear colleagues, Following are the top-viewed blog posts during May <blocked::http://rejourney.blogspot.com/2013/05/journey-reflection-blog-revi ew-may-2013.html> 2013. As always, we appreciate your quote suggestions, comments, and sharing blog posts with others. Gracious June to you all, Lynda and John >Daily Blog: "Journey Reflection" at 4 links ... Google: <http://www.rejourney.blogspot.com/> www.reJourney.blogspot.com Google Plus: <https://plus.google.com/u/0/114307312715975337692/posts> Journey Reflection/Google Plus Facebook: <https://www.facebook.com/transcribebooks> https://www.facebook.com/transcribebooks Twitter: <https://twitter.com/transcribebooks> https://twitter.com/transcribebooks >Web Page: <http://www.transcribebooks.com/> www.transcribebooks.com >Books: <https://www.amazon.com/author/johnpcock> https://www.amazon.com/author/johnpcock

1 0

5/30/13, Spong: Part I: The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic
by Ellie Stock 30 May '13

30 May '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Part I: The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic The publication date is June 11, 2013. The books will actually be shipped to bookstores across the nation in the last week of May. The rights to publish this in Italian and Korean have also been sold and these two translations will appear in their two respective countries later in the year. I live now in a quiet state of expectation, anxiety and emptiness; the emotions that always seem to grip me in the time between the book being finally finished, all its corrections entered, its index and bibliography done, its copy editing and fact checks completed and the moment the first reader opens this volume and begins to read. So to relieve my emotions let me introduce this book to you through this column. The title is The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. I think it is fair to say that I could not have written this book 25 years ago. For most of my career, I was almost repelled by the Fourth Gospel. It seemed to me to portray Jesus with his humanity no longer intact. In this gospel, he does not appear to suffer. There is no sense of the Jesus who was portrayed in the synoptic gospels as apprehensive in anticipation of his death. John’s Jesus never prays that “this cup might pass from me.” Indeed, he actually rejects that idea with the statement, “It was to drink this cup that I was born!” The Fourth Gospel relates to the cross of Jesus, not as a place of suffering, but as the place where Jesus is to be glorified. From John’s cross the cry of dereliction (“My God, why have you forsaken me?”) has disappeared and has been replaced by the triumphant assertion, “It is finished!” Jesus is informing God that the work “Thou hast given me to do” has been successfully completed. John’s Jesus appears to have no human limits. This gospel seems to claim for him a pre-existent status. “Before Abraham was, I am!” he is made to say and “Moses rejoiced to see my day.” This gospel has God designate Jesus as the son of God not at the resurrection, as Paul appears to do (Romans 1:1-4) or at the baptism by John the Baptist as Mark appears to do or even at the miracle of the virgin birth as both Matthew and Luke appear to do. John’s Jesus was, according to the prologue, the son of God from the dawn of creation. He was “the Word of God” that said “Let there be light” and thus called the world into being. That same “Word of God” simply became flesh in human history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. One cannot, however, be fully human and at the same time be a part of who God is since the beginning of time. The Jesus of John’s gospel seemed to me to be related to God in the same way that Clark Kent was related to Superman. Clark Kent was not really a newspaper reporter, he was Superman in disguise. The Jesus of John’s gospel does not appear to be a real human being; he is God in disguise. In this gospel, Jesus was made to say such things as “The Father and I are one” and, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” To affirm this divine status the author of this book has taken the name of God, “I AM,” out of the story of Moses and the burning bush and has placed it into the mouth of the Jesus of history. So Jesus is made to identify himself with the God “I AM” over and over again in the Johannine text. “I AM the bread of life,” “I AM living water,” “I AM the door,” “I AM the way, the truth and the life,” “I Am the vine,” “I AM the good shepherd” and “I AM the resurrection.” Jesus is also made to claim that he alone is the only way to God and that only when he is lifted up (on the cross) will that “I AM” presence be revealed. Only in that picture of the dying Jesus on the cross will the world see God. Since I could find no way to relate to this non-human Jesus I tended to hope that portrait would go away. The Fourth Gospel has also, in my opinion, served to feed the anti-Semitism that has stained Christian history through the ages. From the Fourth Gospel it appeared to spread through the church fathers (there were no mothers) culminating in the horrifying genocidal outburst in the 20th century that we know as “The Holocaust.” There are times when this gospel seems to spit the words “the Jews” out of its author’s mouth with contempt. This gospel is the only place in the Bible where Jesus is quoted as calling the Jews “the children of the devil.” Those were some of the reasons I was never drawn to this book and why attempting to study it deeply was not something I would have chosen to do at an earlier part of my life. There was one other reason for this negativity that comes out of Christian history. The Fourth Gospel was installed at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE as the ultimate and final arbiter of what came to be called “Christian orthodoxy.” In that council, the battle not only for the soul, but also for the future of Christianity, was fought out under the watchful eye of the Emperor Constantine, who wanted unified Christianity to be a unifying force in his empire. In that defining debate, the chief protagonists were a priest named Arius and a deacon, soon to be a priest and later a bishop, named Athanasius. The content of this battle was over the nature of Jesus, that is, was he of “like substance” or “identical substance” with God? Arius, using quotations from all four of the gospels, argued passionately that Jesus was of “like substance” with God. Athanasius, quoting only the Fourth Gospel as his authority, argued that Jesus was of “identical substance” with God. When the smoke of the battle cleared, Athanasius was declared the winner and the Nicene Creed was adopted, sealing Athanasius’ victory with these words describing Jesus: He was “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father.” This creed closed every loophole used in the debate with Arius and magnified Jesus’ divinity to the exclusion of his humanity. It also opened the door to what became the defining doctrines that we call “Incarnation” and “Holy Trinity,” which were not fully developed until the 5th century. This Fourth Gospel-supported definition became the substance of Christian orthodoxy. In time this definition of Jesus led to religious wars, religious persecutions, heresy trials, the Inquisition and the condemnation of anyone who dared to think outside the box. Thus this gospel came to be associated with everything that repelled me about Christianity and so it had little appeal. That is why I did not have any interest in studying it much less trying to write about it earlier. Well, things change and my latest book on the Fourth Gospel will soon be in bookstores and a new debate of John, I hope, will ensue. How did that change occur? It took two steps. First, I discovered that the Fourth Gospel had been misread for centuries; that it is a deeply and passionately Jewish book. That insight was initiated when I discovered only a dozen or so years ago, a book written in the 1960′s by an English scholar named Eileen Guilding, herself the academic child of two gigantic New Testament scholars, F.F. Bruce and Austin Farrer. It was as if I had just found a long lost key. Guilding’s book was entitled The Fourth Gospel and Jewish Worship. I realized then that the Johannine community, which had produced this gospel, was itself a profoundly Jewish community so that when they battled those they called “the Jews,” it was an intra-synagogue conflict between Jews and Jews, one group called “Revisionist Jews” and the other “Orthodox Jews.” Then I searched this gospel for its Jewish base and only when I discovered this could I feel the Jewish pain of their being excommunicated from the synagogue by the Orthodox party, an event that occurred around the year 88 CE. The words expressing this pain were later used in the text of this gospel to castigate all Jews, for these texts were quoted throughout the centuries with no sense of their historical context. The second step came when I realized that only when the members of the Johannine community found themselves outside the synagogue did they begin to place their Christ experience into a more universal language than the one they had known while still a part of the synagogue. This was when they turned to a form of first century Jewish mysticism to find a new vocabulary inside which they could express their faith. Jewish mysticism, like mysticism everywhere, understands the limits that words possess. To talk about their transcendent understanding of Christ, they stretched the words they used to the breaking point to make them big enough to capture the Jesus they had experienced as the mystery and the presence of the Ultimate, which they called God. So they painted Jesus in mystical language, not designed to be literalized. Literal words can never carry mystical meaning without being distorted. They then turned what had once been called “miracles” into what this gospel would call “signs.” “Signs” pointed to a reality they could never capture. Thus I discovered that the language of the Fourth Gospel is not the language of the orthodox understanding of reincarnation. It is the language of Jewish mysticism. It does not lend itself to creedal formulas or doctrinal debates, but to the processing of mystical experiences. Armed with this gospel’s original Jewishness, recognizing the pain of separation that the Johannine community felt when Orthodox Judaism could not stretch to include them and finally recognizing that what they did was to turn to the inclusive, unlimited vocabulary of Jewish mysticism in order to record their experience of Jesus, I then went back to the Fourth Gospel to read it anew. It was not the same book that once repelled me. Indeed, it captured me as no other book has done before and I devoured it until I was transformed by it. Only then could I write the words that appear in this book’s preface: “Part of my task in this book is to pull anti-Semitism out of Christian history and to pull creedal orthodoxy out of Christianity. I now find this gospel not to be about religion or sin and salvation, but to be about life, expanded life and expanded consciousness. I believe that the Fourth Gospel, properly understood, will lead Christianity into an entirely different direction from the one traditional Christian teaching has followed from Nicaea to this day.” It is now for me a blueprint for a new Christianity for a new world. ~JSS Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Steven Holmes via the Internet, writes: Question: I recall your writing that there is a major disconnect between what is being taught in the religious educational academies and the message delivered to the average pew occupier. The point seeming to be that pastors do not want to pass on the more "sensitive" aspects of their training due to the potential upset sensibilities and possible loss of weekly donations from their parishioners - even though these church leaders may very well agree with their formal instruction in these areas. Can you direct me to additional information as to exactly what is taught and believed by these higher learning institutions that is not being conveyed to the normal churchgoer - either somewhere in your writings or possibly those of someone else? Thanks upon thanks for all you have done and continue to do. Answer: Dear Steven, Thanks for your letter. I know of nowhere that someone has written out what is taught in the academies of Christian learning. Of necessity, it is never codified because it is always growing, evolving or changing. I have just completed a five-year study of the Gospel of John, for example, and I can now tell you the differences between 19th century Johannine scholarship, 20th century Johannine scholarship and 21st century Johannine scholarship. It is always being transformed as we learn more about ancient sources. None of these scholars, however, would have related to John’s gospel as if it were a literal report of an eye witness. In my last book Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World I sought to present current biblical scholarship on each book of the Bible. There are many others who work in the field that I am plowing. I list them in the bibliography of my book. Studying one of these books in a church group would help to create the conversation that builds a new community within the church. My guess is that most clergy would welcome that initiative and if they did not, perhaps you should look for another church. Theological seminaries are also not created equal. Some are great centers of academic excellence. I think immediately in this category of Harvard Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Some are denominational schools that have tied themselves into ecumenical consortiums. In this category I think of the theological schools in the Berkeley, California, center and the seminaries that revolve around Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some are denominational schools that are connected to a university. I think of the Drew Theological School on the campus of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Some denominational schools, however, are little more than propaganda institutions in the service of denominational comfort. These institutions engage the world and its thought very little, tolerate their critics very uneasily and tend to bless the status quo. The fact is that most of the biblical scholarship that informs my ministry and my writing has been around for about 200 years and yet I did not learn about it in my denominational training school in the 1950’s. That illustrates the problem. Thank you for your good words. John Shelby Spong Announcements Recapture the Original Message of The Fourth Gospel Pre-Order The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic Today! John Shelby Spong, bestselling author and popular proponent of a modern, scholarly and authentic Christianity, argues that this last gospel to be written was misinterpreted by the framers of the fourth-century creeds to be a literal account of the life of Jesus when in fact it is a literary, interpretive retelling of the events in Jesus’ life through the medium of fictional characters, from Nicodemus and Lazarus to the “Beloved Disciple.” The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic was designed first to place Jesus into the context of the Jewish scriptures, then to place him into the worship patterns of the synagogue and finally to allow him to be viewed through the lens of a popular form of first-century Jewish mysticism. The result of this intriguing study is not only to recapture the original message of this gospel, but also to provide us today with a radical new dimension to the claim that in the humanity of Jesus the reality of God has been met and engaged. Click here to read the: Preface of The Fourth Gospel- by Bishop Spong “We now approach our scriptures with a literalism that is unparalleled in the history of religion. This new and imaginative book by John Shelby Spong will liberate many people from this unnecessary complication of the religious life.” — Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam “No one has done more to articulate a vibrant, post-mythic vision of Christianity than John Shelby Spong. Bishop Spong’s masterful interpretation is destined to become a classic.” — Michael Dowd, Author of Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World “Spong is always readable and informative, but this book reads like a cross between a detective story and an adventure saga that is founded on excellent scholarship. I could not put it down.” — Fred C. Plumer, President of ProgressiveChristianity.Org (read this whole review here) Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 1-503-236-3545. Clicking the unsubscribe link below will remove you from our list but you will still need to contact us at: support(a)johnshelbyspong.com to cancel your account or you can login to the website to do so. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book

1 0

Bill Moyers on May 24
by Janice Ulangca 29 May '13

29 May '13

Colleagues, EI/ICA/O:E have always combined deep, open-minded spirituality with strategic action to make transforming change. That's what impresses me also about Tim DeChristopher's last comment. He's quite a young man. I wonder if Transitions folks would be interested in connecting with his Peaceful Uprising group. If you didn't watch Moyers & Company this past weekend, I'd recommend it. You can watch just the Tim DeChristopher half if you want - the web site allows it. At the end Bill Moyers asks Tim what he's going to do next. "I'm going to Harvard Divinity School and become a Unitarian minister. I think the keys to facing the climate disasters that will come are spiritual." Here's the link: http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-going-to-jail-for-justice/ Janice Ulangca Full Show: Going to Jail for Justice May 24, 2013 Tim DeChristopher tells why he spent nearly two years in prison in the name of environmental justice, and Gretchen Morgenson discusses how banks are still too big to fail and too big to trust. In December 2008, during the closing weeks of the Bush White House, 27-year-old environmental activist Tim DeChristopher went to protest the auction of gas and oil drilling rights to more than 150,000 acres of publicly-owned Utah wilderness. But instead of yelling slogans or waving a sign, DeChristopher disrupted the proceedings by starting to bid. Given an auction paddle designating him "Bidder 70", DeChristopher won a dozen land leases worth nearly two million dollars. He was arrested for criminal fraud, found guilty, and sentenced to two years in federal prison - even though the new Obama Administration had since declared the oil and gas auction null and void. DeChristopher - who was released less than a month ago - joins Bill to talk about the necessity of civil disobedience in the fight for justice, how his jury was ordered to place the strict letter of the law over moral conscience, and the future of the environmental movement. Bidder 70, a new documentary chronicling DeChristopher's legal battle and activism, opened May 17. DeChristopher is co-founder of the grassroots environmental group Peaceful Uprising. Also on the show, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson tells Bill that, five years after the country's economic near-collapse, banks are still too big to fail, too big to manage, and too big to trust. Stockholders' reaffirmation of Jamie Dimon as JP Morgan Chase's chairman and CEO this week - despite a year of accusations and investigations at the bank - is further evidence, she says, of an unchecked system that continues to covet profits and eschew accountability, putting our economy and democracy at risk. Morgenson also discusses how behemoth companies like Apple manipulate the system and avail themselves of the biggest tax loopholes money and influence can buy.

2 1

Early Childhood Ed Notes
by steve har 28 May '13

28 May '13

Try either Rosemary Albright at the ICA archives or Jack Gilles who is curating the start up of the online prototyp imaginal Education collection which will launch soon. -- Steve Harrington

4 5

early childhood
by Lawrence Philbrook 26 May '13

26 May '13

One of our facilitators is working with young children (2-4) and their mothers does anyone have some curriculum they are willing to share. With respect, Larry Lawrence Philbrook, Certified ToP Facilitator Director, Institute of Cultural Affairs Taiwan www.icatw.com Tel: 8862-2871-3150 Fax: 8862-2871-2870 Skype: icalarry

4 3

Early childhood curriculum
by Lawrence Philbrook 25 May '13

25 May '13

One of our facilitators is using our methods with young children (2-5 years old) and mothers does anyone have any curriculum they are willing to share? With respect, Larry Lawrence Philbrook, Certified ToP Facilitator Director, Institute of Cultural Affairs Taiwan www.icatw.com Tel: 8862-2871-3150 Fax: 8862-2871-2870 Skype: icalarry Lawrence Philbrook, Certified ToP Facilitator Director, Institute of Cultural Affairs Taiwan www.icatw.com Tel: 8862-2871-3150 Fax: 8862-2871-2870 Skype: icalarry

1 0

5/23/13, Spong: Lectureship that Challenges What is, in the Name of What Can Be
by Ellie Stock 23 May '13

23 May '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Lectureship that Challenges What is, in the Name of What Can Be The Third Annual John Shelby Spong Lecture was held at St. Peter’s Church, Morristown, New Jersey, near the end of April. A crowd of people, numbering around 400, according to the ushers’ count, came from near and far to participate in the event. We had members of the faculty and student body from nearby Drew University. We had a visitor from Columbia, South America, here on a student’s visa, who was returning home soon. He had been raised in a traditionally Catholic home but, in his later teenage years he had been affiliated with Pentecostalism. Now as a young adult, he felt at home in neither and had become a seeker after a God still unidentified by him. We had one man who drove up from Baltimore to attend the lecture. We had a significant number of St. Peter’s congregation, but more importantly, we had a large number of those for whom organized religion of any sort had become a turnoff. To this assembled audience, Professor Elaine Pagels, author and a faculty member of the Department of Religion at Princeton University, spoke on the book of Revelation. This is the book with which the New Testament now closes and, throughout history, it has also been the favorite biblical resource of those who like to talk about and even to predict the end of the world. The book is not regarded in academic circles to be of high value, so it was not surprising that during the question and answer period, someone in the audience asked Dr. Pagels why this strange book had captured her fascination in the first place and just when that fascination was born. “It was,” she responded “when President George W. Bush quoted this biblical text to support his invasion of Iraq.” “Shock and Awe” was justified with quotations from the Book of Revelation. That answer did much to put this Book into a modern perspective. It was my privilege to introduce Professor Pagels and in that introduction to put the “Spong Lectureship” into perspective. This lectureship was launched three years ago by a group of my friends who were concerned that Christianity was not being properly challenged from within; that is, from those who identify themselves as Christians. This challenge from within had been the focus of both my priestly career and my writing career and these friends did not want this focus to die when I finally decided to fold my tent and enter the quietude of retirement. I actually did retire as the Bishop of Newark in 2000, at age 69, after 24 active and exciting years serving my church in this capacity, but I am still actively engaged in the task of speaking to my church as one of its resident, yet devoted, critics. So in my introduction of Dr. Pagels, I placed this lectureship into the context of the crisis facing contemporary Christianity. “Christianity,” I began, “is a faith system whose scriptures are the product of the first century, which inevitably means that those scriptures reflect the world view of first century men and women. These scriptures assume that epilepsy, mental illness and muteness result from demon possession. They assume that sickness is a manifestation of divine punishment. They assume that God is a supernatural being, who lives somewhere external to the planet earth and that this God invades human history periodically in supernatural, miraculous ways to accomplish the divine purpose. These scriptures also assume that whatever could not be explained within the first century frame of reference must be regarded as a miracle. This of course means that people today, who want to literalize the scriptures as the ‘inerrant’ words of God, inevitably literalize a world view and a series of assumptions that no modern, educated person could possibly believe.” I then noted that the creeds of Christianity are products of the 4th century and refer to a 4th century view of the world. One clear creedal assumption is that the earth is the center of a three-tiered universe, with hell being beneath the earth and heaven being above the sky. They reveal a picture of a divine escalator moving up and down amid the three tiers. The creeds also assume the literal and biological accuracy of what came to be called the Virgin Birth in which Jesus is conceived by the operation of the Holy Spirit. This idea is of special interest because one of the earliest forms of the Christian creed came to be called “The Apostles’ Creed” suggesting that it in fact reflects the beliefs of the apostles themselves. The fact is that neither Paul, the first writer of the New Testament (51-64 CE), nor Mark, the author of the first of the gospels to be written (ca.72 CE) ever mentions the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Paul says simply that Jesus was “born of a woman,” like every other human being and “born under the law,” like every other Jew. Mark portrays Jesus as a perfectly normal adult human being, who comes to be baptized in the River Jordan by John the Baptist at which time the Holy Spirit falls on him and he becomes a “God-infused human life.” The first narrative of a miraculous or Virgin Birth for Jesus does not enter the Christian tradition until the 9th decade of the Common Era in the writings of Matthew, who wrote long after most, if not all, of the apostles had died. A second and very contradictory version of the story of Jesus’ virgin birth is then added to the developing tradition by Luke about a decade after Matthew. The virgin birth story assumes that the woman is not a genetic contributor to any new life, for the idea that a woman had an egg cell was not discovered until the early years of the 18th century! Clearly the belief system of the apostles did not include the concepts found in the “Apostles’ Creed.” So, if the creeds are literalized along with the doctrines and dogmas of the Christian Church, which are based on those creeds, what happens is that the three-tiered universe and long-abandoned biological assumptions are also literalized thus making the creeds nonsensical in the modern world. Most of the liturgical forms still used to some degree in all Christian churches are the product of the 13th century. This means that we are still forced to make 13th century assumptions if we want to continue to worship God in the 21st century. The all-seeing God who plays the role of a judge is certainly apparent when we pray, “Almighty God unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid.” Not surprisingly it seems appropriate to say “Lord, have mercy, Lord, have mercy” to this 13th century view of God. Salvation is assumed to be a gift from this God above the sky, who comes to rescue us from the fall from our original perfection and who pays the price of our sins in the death of Jesus. That is the context in which we say, “Jesus died for my sins!” In our post-Darwinian world, however, there is no original perfection. There is, rather, an ongoing and ever-evolving process carried out over billions of years from single cell life to the complex self-conscious creatures that we are today. If there was no original perfection, there could never have been a fall from perfection, so “original sin” is also non-sensical. If there was no fall into “original sin” then the idea of a divine rescue from a fall that never happened loses all of its meaning. Is there any reason not to understand why 21st century people find the liturgies of our Church to be so meaningless? 21st century Christianity is thus wedded to the world view of its 1st century scriptures, its 4th century creeds and its 13th century liturgies. Consequently Christianity presents itself to potential modern believers encased in a series of doctrinal and liturgical forms, undergirded by a theological point of view that communicates almost nothing to those people who gather in church to worship. Why is there any surprise that the number of worshipers is in steep decline? Modern Christianity offers only two alternatives. The first is to close our minds to the explosion of knowledge in order to build a protective fortress around the religious formulas of antiquity. We then surround these formulas with the claim that they are supported by an infallible or inerrant tradition. Such a stand offers people the security of the delusion that they possess the ultimate truth of God. We call these who think this way “fundamentalists” and they come in both a Catholic and Protestant variety. So from this perspective the church’s invitation is to “believe this or leave.” Those who elect this second option today are legion! People are abandoning “institutional religion” in droves. The Church Alumni Association is now the fastest growing organization in the Christian West. As religious conviction fades secular humanism becomes the only viable alternative. The tension between a religion tied to antiquity and secular values quite divorced from that religious heritage today marks not only church life, but our national political life. We seem to be gridlocked between both a religious and political past that some want to impose on all and a religionless future the nature of which no one finally understands. These sterile alternatives are the reality to which the “Spong Lectureship” at St. Peter’s, Morristown seeks to respond, This congregation, under the brilliant leadership of its rector, Janet Broderick, has installed an adult education hour into the heart of Sunday morning. In this class, the Bible is taught in the same way as it is taught today in the finest academic centers of this land. No one seeks to protect the Bible from the insights of modern knowledge. Also, in this class the historical critics of traditional Christianity are engaged. It looks at the challenge brought to Christianity by Galileo, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, just to name a few. It studies modern prophets who have challenged Christianity from outside, ranging from Baruch Spinoza and Franz Kafka to Malcolm X. The traditions of the Christian faith are thus forced into dialogue with the intellectual breakthroughs of the ages. To supplement this ongoing congregational program, this annual lecture series brings to this church and to its community the best Christian minds of this generation. That makes St. Peter’s unique, but is this not the place to which all Christian churches must come? I believe it is. Death by boredom or attrition is the only alternative. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Mary Linn Crouse from Helena, Montana, writes: Question: Is there a good Bible study book you would recommend for a group of lay people to use that is not agenda riddled? I am looking for one that looks at the Bible within its cultural and historical background in which each individual book was written and leaves room for an open-ended discussion of the universal ideas that are inspired in those texts. Answer: Dear Mary, >From your question I get a picture of the kind of Bible study you might have endured in your lifetime. A “Bible Study book” is almost always the product of an evangelical- fundamentalist mentality. The reason I say that is that the phrase a “Bible Study Book” assumes that one can embrace in a single study guide a minimum of 66 books, not including the Apocrypha, that were written over a period of about one thousand years (ca, 1000 BCE – ca.35 CE), by a variety of authors, and in at least two different languages. A study group wishing to use such a book will tend to do so only for the few weeks that the group will meet. A class organized this way simply does not plan to engage the Bible seriously. One should not expect anything good or significant to come out of such a study. Most Bible studies in churches using that kind of material, amount to little more than the corporate pooling of common ignorance, which is then under-girded by a study guide that would embarrass almost every biblical scholar in the world. Given that format, my conclusion is that there is no such thing as a single volume Bible study book. There are, however, thousands of volumes on the individual books of the Bible written with competent scholarship by competent scholars that will take you through and into the meaning of each of the books of the Bible. The problem with most of these books, however, is that they were not written for the average reader and thus are considered too difficult, too complex and even too involved for most people. Groups using such books get discouraged quickly. Readers of this column might recall that in recent years, through most of 2008-2010. I did a series under the title: “Reclaiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World.” That week-by-week series began with columns outlining just how the first books of the Old Testament were actually formed and it ended with a brief analysis of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. I put each book of the Bible into its cultural and historical perspective and analyzed briefly its message. All of these past columns are available online at www.johnshelbyspong.com to subscribers in the archives thanks to my publisher, ProgressiveChristianity.org. Subscribers may access them at any time online. That material was then gathered, edited and published as a book in the fall of 2011 by Harper/Collins under the same title: Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World. That book, reflecting its own origins, was written, as I hope this column and all of my books are, not for the minds of theologically-trained seminary graduates, but for searching, educated lay men and women who do not have theological training. Indeed, I know of instances in small town America where a particular church subscribes to this column and then reproduces it for use each week in teaching adult Bible classes. I get reports back from them from time to time on great debates that have issued from those gatherings. So I recommend that resource to you for consideration. If your group wants to go into depth about a single book in the Bible then a volume written by a competent scholar on that particular book can be studied with intensity. My coming book (June 11, 2013 from Harper/Collins) on John’s Gospel, entitled The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic is written with exactly that purpose in mind. I hope this helps. My great ambition in life is to leave the Christian world a little more biblically literate than I found it. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements Full Review of Bishop John Shelby Spong's new book: The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic By: Rev. Fred Plumer, President of ProgressiveChristianity.org Over the years I have wondered if Christianity would have been better off today if the Gospel of John had not been made part of the canon. Ever since the fourth century, this Gospel has been used to support some of the most exclusive and divisive religious creeds in history. In my opinion it has had far too much influence on the development of modern Christianity. I must admit, however, that I am truly excited about recommending John Shelby Spong’s newest book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. At times this book feels more like a detective novel than a scholarly work. Spong starts with his desire to figure out how this unusual book came to be, who was its author and why it was written. Like a “who done it” mystery, it is almost impossible not to be drawn into his investigation as he sorts through the clues. Spong wonders why both the issues and focus change as one reads through the chapters of the Book of John. He concludes that this Gospel must have been written in stages, with different layers by different authors over a 30-year period. The question he poses here is why? Spong believes the text follows the stages the Johannine community was going through as it moved from a Jewish community into something new. He carefully tracks the development of what must have been a difficult transition for these Jewish followers of Jesus and concludes that ultimately they “had to learn how to live apart from Judaism.” He is very clear, however, that the Gospel of John is overwhelmingly a Jewish work and it can only be understood through the Jewish context in which it was created. Spong writes “My study has convinced me, first, that the gospel of John is a deeply Jewish book, and second, that by reading it through the lens of Jewish mysticism, our generation is given new doors for understanding this gospel.” Spong carefully tracks the changes the community was forced to deal with as the Jesus followers were confronted with their changing Greek world. In the process, we are not only given the opportunity to learn more about this first century Jewish mystical movement, but as we read we gain a greater understanding of the times in which it struggled. Possibly the most exciting thing for some will be the recognition that at least one important part of the initial Jesus movement was focused on an early form of Jewish mysticism. Spong makes it clear that this community did not think in Greek dualistic ways. Therefore Jesus was not an “outside invader from another realm” but rather was the defining human life, “bringing together into oneness the human and the divine.” It was through a new consciousness that Jesus was able to achieve a mystical oneness with God without the barriers that bind us. I believe this book will not only dramatically change our perspective on the Fourth Gospel, but it may very well alter our understanding of our Christian roots. For some it may even change the way they feel about their own Christian path. Finally this book may provide a model for change for disenchanted Christians or followers of Jesus. I am excited about this book and highly recommend it. ~Fred Plumer, President, ProgressiveChristianity.org Pre-Order The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic Today! Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book

1 0