Can a Bishop be Wrong? Ten Scholars Challenge John Shelby Spong

Anglican Theological Review, Spring 1999 by Zahl, Paul F M

Can a Bishop be Wrong? Ten Scholars Challenge John Shelby Spong. Edited by Peter C. Moore. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1998. xviii + 188 pp. $17.95 (paper).

I think we can all admire the spirit of this book, which is, with one or two exceptions, neither mean-spirited, nor harsh, nor marked by animus. Can a Bishop be Wrong? is a hard-working attempt to respond to the conscious "attack upon Christendom" first launched in 1972 by the Bishop of Newark. We can date the project from 1972 because that is the year when Spong's first book, Honest Prayer, appeared.

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Peter Moore, dean and president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, has assembled a team of scholars, bishops, and parish clergy to respond critically to Spong's quarter-century of writings. Right from the start Peter Moore opens up a vulnerability within Spong's work: "The certainty with which he writes, the scorn with which he treats his detractors. . . raise questions about how self-reflective he is able to be. Or, to put it another way, how genuinely open, flexible, and liberal he really is" (p. xvii).

A critic who is meek will probably make better headway against Bishop Spong than the most well-informed controversialist. The opponents of the bishop have a living trump card if, deo gratia, they are given to use it: a "willing and a contrite heart."

James Stanton's opening salvo, however, "The Essential Spong," does not quite fit the bill. Stanton falls prey to a common weakness among Spong critics. He caricatures the man and his arguments. Bishop Spong wants the issues to be discussed, or at least I think he does. "The Essential Spong" is strictly ad hominem.

William Witt's piece on "Flight from Transcendence" makes the very interesting point that Spong has shifted ground in his doctrine of God. In This Hebrew Lord (1974), for example, Spong stresses the physicality of Hebrew religion as over against Greek ideas. In Resurrection (1994), Living in Sin? (1988) and Born of a Woman (1992), Spong rejects the "Old Testament God" as being crudely physical, sadistic, and patriarchal. Witt points out that "the earlier Spong was still under the spell of the liberal wing of the biblical theology movement. Now his authorities tend to be more postmodern or radical feminist" (p. 27). Witt also opens up the question of Spong's monist doctrine of God, an increasingly important theme in his work. Stephen Smith engages Spong's monism in his later, thorough essay entitled "Inside the Whirlwind."

The importance of William Witt's essay to this collection is that he has verified and documented a weakness in Spong's theology: continental drift. In other words, Spong appears to be an unsteady pilot in navigating the waters of the Zeitgeist.

Bishop Allison speaks as one who was trained in the same theological environment as Bishop Spong. Allison sees in Spong the results of an uncritical embrace of the critical method in the seminaries. Allison also understands Spong as eliminating the quality of wrath, even righteous wrath and justice, from the attributes of God. A penetrating quotation from William Ralston finishes this third essay.

Ephraim Radner sometimes tars Spong with a bon mot. One is memorable: "Spong's vision of God . . . is one of historically undifferentiated silence and lovelessness. Let those who have lost the capacity to console, to hope, and to act embrace such a pallid vision" (p. 68).

Russell Reno did a great service by "taking the heat" for many thousands of Episcopalians when he appeared with Bishop Spong on CNN's "Crossfire" program Memorial Day 1998. Who can say who "won" that particular debate? Reno was clear and unflappable, although Spong was extremely quick. In his essay entitled "The Sin of Faith," Dr. Reno tags the "Hegelian" theme in Spong: history as a movement towards freedom in ever-widening concentric circles. The problem is that Spong seems to associate the expanded self of God-in-process with the expanded self of the human being. I think the ending of Reno's essay, which quotes John Milton on Satan and thereby links Spong to Lucifer, is a little intense.

The Canadian theologian Edith Humphrey notes that Spong remains captivated by Jesus of Nazareth (p. 94). She also dismantles Spong's use of the concept midrash in New Testament interpretation. Humphrey sees just a tinge of revenge in Spong's "too-personal tone of argument" (p. 108). The attack-animal side of Spong is a real blemish. Surely he must understand that.

George Sumner's piece on the resurrection of Jesus in Spong's theology is anti-Enlightenment. Sumner, like other critics of Spong, sees him as an "Enlightenment thinker," a "modernist" with a "modernist" view of miracle and irrationality. Sumner's closing paragraph is worth quoting:

To diagnose the trouble, to represent a bygone era, to punish a theologically forgetful church, to call us to historical-critical work without fear, to lay bare the central issue, to illustrate a tempting false path, to suggest, even in spite of himself, a real solution, and in doing so to highlight the nature of Christian theology as a whole: for all these services, in all these respects, we should thank John Spong. (p. 131)

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Can a Bishop be Wrong? Ten Scholars Challenge John Shelby Spong

Anglican Theological Review, Spring 1999 by Zahl, Paul F M

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