Column by Fred C. Plumer
October 18, 2018
 

I recently received a couple of emails from Progressing Spirit subscribers who reminded me of a song Bob Dylan wrote in the early sixties. It was the title track song of the album, “These Times, They Are A’Changing”. Most people who have commented on this particular recording believe the title track was designed to support and maybe even influence the social change movement that clearly was happening in the 1960’s. Bob Dylan took a lot of criticism in those days, but fifty years later he was honored with the Noble Prize in literature.  And I would argue, these times are truly “a’changing.”

I want to be clear. Both of the writers are sincerely interested readers who have made well- received comments in the past. The first person who wrote suggested maybe our authors were getting “too far” away from the “Spong theology.” I know that several of our writers have quoted Spong and have tried to specifically meet the challenges Spong left us with his final book. This may have been too confining for them, but it really has not been our intent to necessarily follow the “Spong theology” for at least three reasons.

First, none of us claim to be Bishop Spong. He is a unique man, at a unique time in history and creative and thoughtful. Secondly, our goal is to try and respond to his challenges not to rehash them. Most of our writers are attempting to do that but they are coming at that goal differently.  And finally, Bishop Spong, especially in his last book, took us metaphorically speaking to the edge of some unknown. Our writers are trying to find the sweet spot in that unknown.

I have read most of Bishop Spong’s books that go back almost thirty years. One of the things I have always appreciated about Bishop Spong is his willingness to change. He was, and still is, a voracious reader. As the times changed, some of Spong’s views have changed. Now I am not suggesting that he was all over the board in his beliefs, but as he saw things in the church or the theology he no longer believed, he studied, he read and if he saw things differently he would speak out calling for a change. He was never unnecessarily a radical but rather someone who was not afraid to evolve.

What we are attempting to do with this publication is twofold.  One, to introduce you to a wide range of modern thinkers who have studied, have written and have published about a new way of approaching Christianity. And two, we have tried to find writers who may have found another related path and have given them an opportunity to share their findings. We are not trying to institute a new theology. We are trying to give you, the reader, samples of other thoughts, other viewpoints so you can decide. Yes, we are trying to use some of the Spong challenges as a guiding perspective but we are not trying to create a “Spong theology.”

Bishop Spong writes: “The Christianity of the future must also be willing and able to dialogue with the other great religious systems of the world without defining any of them as lacking or deficient. Our task is not to judge, but to accept them as they are, to call them to live fully, love wastefully, and to be all they can be in the infinite variety of our humanity….The reformation we chart is scary, but it is noble, compelling and freeing. Even more, however, it gives the Christian story a chance to live in a new time in history. I pray it will. I pray it can. I believe it must.” (Unbelievable, pg. 279)

These are truly changing times and we are doing our best to respond to Bishop Spong’s challenge.

The other writer has made helpful suggestions for several years. In his last email to me, he had one critique that struck me, however. He made the suggestion that we might want to follow the Deist movement.

He writes in part; “It seems to me that the challenge of any new religious movement is the development of a source reference (e.g. Bible) deemed the belief system for spiritual guidance for mankind. The target audience for Progressive Spiritual stewardship is what Bishop Spong refers to as Christian alumna…I really believe a team of Deist oriented scholars found in Universities could develop a source document for spiritual guidance which blends science into the belief in a creator God.”

I immediately went to my computer and looked up Deism. I learned again, that Deism was first developed in the early Eighteenth Century. It was heavily influenced by the writings of John Locke and Isaac Newton, although neither claimed to be Deist believers. The followers of Deism did not believe in an intervening God. In other words, they rejected the Trinity and claimed clergy were not needed. Deists believe human beings have free will and have a responsibility for choosing how they live in relation to natural laws that govern the world. However, deists believe that “free will” is a paradox. One that cannot be reconciled with a God’s omniscience. They did not believe true religious and ethical teachings came from Scriptures or from the church but instead are acquired through “God-given human reason.”

As I plowed through the beliefs of Deism, I must admit it seemed to me the writer had an excellent point. I was impressed. I was also surprised. I was surprised in part because I realized sixty years ago, I was a political philosophy student at the University of California, Riverside and actually studied Deism along with several other disciplines during that very exciting time of history. I was really glad to reacquaint myself with some of these teachings.

I was also taken by the fact that although I claim to be a so-called progressive Christian, there were so many things I agreed with as I read through the Deists’ comments. I do not believe in an intervening God nor do I believe in the Trinity. I was a little uncomfortable with the idea that ministers were not needed, as a retired UCC clergy person, but I do believe that ministers frequently cause more problems than they solve. I also believe if we take scriptures at face value, they teach us little about religion or ethical teachings. I wondered if I was a Deist.

My first thought was why I didn’t I think about this back then. But of course, who was having those thoughts in the early sixties about religion?

I am wondering, however, if we could actually find and use Deist oriented scholars found in Universities who could or would develop a “source document for spiritual guidance which blends science into the belief in a creator God.” It is an interesting thought, although I have no idea how we would go about it.

Then it hit me, do I believe in an intervening God? How do they “know” this with such authority? How did they come to that conclusion? I seriously doubt if any of them have a book that definitely “proves” there is such a thing, no matter what other things they have to say. I noted their official website, deism.com, has several hundred articles on their site dismissing the whole idea of an intervening god (or God), and almost as many articles stating that Jesus was either never born or he was not special. I realized I was uncomfortable not so much what they were positing but with the way they writers did it.

While I was struggling with some of these issues: am I a deist? Am I a Christian? Do I believe in an intervening God? Another subscriber and also a friend, sent me an email with a website attachment. He wrote, “You have to see this.” I opened it and sat there for the next six and a half minutes, basically in awe.

The speaker was a young man, Jason Silva. He is recorded speaking in a huge auditorium filled with what appears to be mostly young people. I believe he was a philosopher with a scientific background. Frankly it does not matter. He knew what he was talking about. The title of his talk was, “We Are the Gods Now.” He was on a website called, “The Co-Evolution of Humans and Technology.”  I will not try and explain his talk but the title tells the part of the story I was most concerned about. He posits for centuries human learning was linear, but today we are learning exponentially. He argues, quit effectively I believe, that science has brought us to the edge of a whole new world. When we can move atoms around at will, change our DNA, when we can create how we want to live without scarcity, we have become our own gods. And apparently it has happened. (If you are interested in hearing Jason Silva, click here.

I suppose I should not be too surprised. I have recently read several books by new theologians who claim we all have God in us. This of course is not quite the same thing that young Silva is positing but it is very close.

Bishop Spong himself wrote: “another turn in consciousness was about to be discovered and entertained. That is the door on which we are knocking today. Maybe human and divine are the same.” (Unbelievable pg. 74)

So I ask myself. Why am I worried about whether I am a Deist or a Progressive Christian or something else? Why am I debating, with myself, whether there is an intervening god or not? Why would I fall in love with a tradition that has been around since the seventeenth century? And finally, why do I feel a little like I live in a world I no longer am part of?

That is when it really hit me. These times are truly a’changing, and I am not certain I am comfortable with the changes.

So today I will pet my beloved 17 year old, failing cat, as long as he wants me to. And then I will go play with my horses until I am too tired to ride. And maybe tonight I will get a good night sleep.  And for now I will let my precious animals teach me about God.

~ Fred C. Plumer

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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. 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 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.

Q: By John

I’m puzzled about prayer in the context of Progressive Christianity which has replaced the interventionist God “up-there” or “out-there” with the God-within. The typical (conventional) church service liturgy invariably includes an “Intercessions” segment. What meaning does this (segment) have in the context of “progressive” thinking? Should it be abandoned?

Dear John,

I can't even begin to imagine how many books have been written about prayer. Undoubtedly, it's a tremendous amount. I suspect that even if someone could read them all, they'd still be left a bit mystified about prayer. That is to say, I do not know the answer to your question. As far as I'm concerned, no one really does. But I do have my own thoughts and opinions about the subject.

I definitely don't see prayer as coins for the “great vending machine in the sky.” Theologically, that kind of belief leaves us with either a God whose will and actions can be influenced or even controlled, or it leaves us with a God who is unconcerned and flippant about responding to prayer. Pragmatically, it's demonstrably untrue and believing that it's true can lead to a lifetime of wounds and anger with God.

Ultimately, it's a question of the providence of God. How does God interact with Creation? Personally, I see God interacting through us – reflections of God. So, even if prayer somehow influenced the will of God, I don't see God reaching down from the sky and mucking about with the world all haphazardly. Instead, I see God impacting the world through relationship with each of us and the actions we take in the world. That's both an internal and external God.

For me, prayer is one of the ways we connect with that internal/external God. It is a chance to grow in that relationship – including speaking about the difficult places in life and in the world. It's an opportunity to commune with God and to be oriented toward God. Intersessions are still important in that perspective, but we must understand that it is not us asking God for a result from the great vending machine, but rather us being reminded that we are how God intercedes.

~ Rev. Mark Sandlin

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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. His blog, 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 and Twitter @marksandlin

A letter from one of my Internet readers, Max Rippeto, asked how New Testament scholars went about the task of dating the books of the New Testament. It was such a good question and touched so many issues that others among my readers raise, that I decided to base my entire column this week on Max’s letter. The Bible did not drop from heaven fully written. It was created over a period of about a thousand years. It was not originally divided into chapters and verses. Those were imposed on it relatively late in Christian history. It was not written in King James English. The Hebrew Scriptures were written in Hebrew; the Christian Scriptures in Greek. Yet in public discourse today, one hears a literal, dropped from heaven view of the Bible from a number of people, including television evangelists and other fundamentalists, all of whom seem blissfully unaware of the critical biblical scholarship that is now almost 200 years old 

We need to recognize that the repetition of ignorance does not turn it into truth.

I recall, years ago while on a book tour, I made a guest appearance on a late night talk show hosted by Tom Snyder in Burbank, California. In this interview the dating of the books of the New Testament came up. In response to Tom’s question I stated that all of Paul’s works were written between 50 and 64 C.E. and that the gospels were written between 70 and 100 C. E. Tom had no problem with the dating of Paul, but about the dating of the gospels he was incredulous and said: “Wait a minute, Bishop. I just got out my short pencil and began to figure. The disciples of Jesus would have been too old to write these gospels at those dates.” I responded, “That’s right Tom, not a single one of the gospels was written by eyewitnesses.” Astonished, he went on to explain that in parochial school, the nuns had taught him that the disciples followed Jesus around, writing down everything he said. That was how, they said, we got the gospels.

It had never occurred to him before to question this “authoritative” conclusion. “Tom,” I said, “did the nuns also tell you that the disciples used ball point pens and spiral notebooks!” He had never thought of that either. It is hard for modern people to realize that in the first century very few could either read or write. Parchment was very expensive and ink was a dye into which a quill pen had to be dipped. Individual people studied long to become scribes, available for hire, whenever a writing need came up. We meet these ‘scribes’ in the gospels.

For Tom Snyder and many others, the first step in breaking out of a literal biblical mindset is to understand the dating of the New Testament. Here is substantially what Max Rippeto wrote. “I was in the conservative, evangelical “Bible Church” movement for 25 years. When I came out of it about seven years ago, needless to say, my spiritual security and my black and white answers to life’s questions left with me. I’ve been piecing my spirituality back together since. Your writing has been a major positive force on this journey.

“It makes so much sense that the Gospel of Mark was written first, then Matthew and Luke copied and edited it for their versions of the gospels, and that all of Paul’s Epistles were written before the gospels. Many of your assertions, however, hinge on the order in which the letters were written. A Scofield Reference Bible states dates different from the dates I’ve seen in your writings. Can you comment on why your dates and their dates are not the same?”

To his letter Max appended the list of dates that the Scofield Bible had assigned to the books of the New Testament. They were way off target especially on the gospels and the book of Acts. Beside the Scofield list I have placed the consensus advocated by most creditable New Testament scholars for your immediate comparison. The range represents the continuing debate.
 

Scholarship is a never-ending process. Medical knowledge today is quite different from what it was in 1910 when the Scofield Bible was first published. So is the knowledge of such things as the Internet, computers, telecommunications and a host of other things. Similarly biblical knowledge is mushrooming. I read the Scofield Bible when I was a child. It was popular in my evangelical church. Its commentaries are oriented toward a fundamentalist and literal interpretation of the scriptures. In the service of that agenda there is always a predisposition to prove that those scriptures you think are literal, had to be written by eyewitnesses. So the tendency was to date them as early as possible. The Scofield dates for the gospels assume the primacy of Matthew. In the days before critical biblical scholarship came of age, that theory was assumed solely on the fact that it was first in the New Testament. Mark was thought of as a kind of “Readers Digest” version of Matthew.

No reputable scholar today thinks that Matthew was written prior to Mark. Matthew used Mark extensively in the composition of his gospel, sometimes copying it verbatim. Luke also copied Mark, but much more loosely. Some scholars also believe that Luke knew of Matthew’s work, but that is a still debated minority opinion. The dating of Luke well after Matthew, however, is generally agreed. Occasionally, you will get a person who tries to assert an early date for John. My great mentor, John A. T. Robinson, did that in a book entitled: The Primacy of John, published just prior to his death in 1983. No one in the academic world of New Testament scholars, however, saluted Robinson’s thesis and it won few disciples. I am amused when evangelicals and fundamentalists, who disagreed with everything John Robinson ever wrote other than this, cite him as their authority for the early dating of John.

There are some datable events that scholars can and do use to locate the books of the New Testament in history.

First, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. For the Jews, this was a searing moment that changed Jewish consciousness in a way that 9/11 changed the consciousness of Americans. Wherever, therefore, we find a reference that seems to assume that event, we have to date that book after 70. There are references in all four gospels that appear to give evidence of that catastrophe, and most scholars today put Mark after 70. Since Matthew and Luke are both dependent on Mark, the dates for the second and third gospels must be even later, Matthew in the mid-eighties and Luke in the late eighties or early nineties.

Second, scholars know a great deal about the debates that raged in the early years of Christian history and the time at which they were solved. They also know how and when complex ecclesiastical structures were formed. So when a book of the Bible reveals a calmness where once there was a raging debate or when scholars see structures that were not present in early church history, these things become factors in the dating process.

The death of Paul is another datable event that we can set with confidence around the year 64 C.E, since he appears to have been executed by Nero in that year. The fact that Paul’s death is not mentioned in Acts, is the primary reason that fundamentalists cling to an early date for this book, an idea dismissed today in scholarly circles as profoundly wrong.

Everything about the book of Acts, including its assumption that the early debates are settled and its highly organized church life, points to a date near the end of the first century. It also parallels the careers of Stephen, Peter and Paul with the gospel portrait of Jesus, again revealing that Acts was written well after at least the synoptic gospels. Professor Burton Mack of the Claremont Theological Seminary faculty actually proposed a date for Acts in the mid-second century.

Paul’s death is also a factor in defining which of the letters attributed to Paul, were actually written by him. The genuine letters have to have been composed between the years 50-64. I Thessalonians and Galatians are thought to be first and second in the Pauline corpus, along with I and II Corinthians which seem to be a compilation of at least four letters to the Corinthian church. Romans, dated in the late 50’s, is Paul’s most systematic letter, but even here there is a debate about the authenticity of Chapter 16. II Thessalonians, Philemon and Philippians also appear to be Pauline.

Scholars debate whether Paul wrote Colossians, but the majority now says no. Almost all scholars dismiss Ephesians as well as I and II Timothy and Titus as Pauline. It would probably be easier to prove that you or I wrote Hebrews than to prove that Paul wrote it. The Epistles attributed to Peter, John, James and Jude were not written by disciples. II Peter is dated as late as 135 C.E. The same person, or at least the same community, that wrote John’s gospel wrote the three Epistles of John and Revelation, which was written during a persecution in the mid 90’s.

Dating the New Testament is an exciting process. The Christian story grew dramatically from Paul in the fifties to the end of the century when the New Testament was substantially complete. I hope this sweeping survey helps Max and others to read the Bible more intelligently.

~  John Shelby Spong

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