Bishop Spong Opines on Everything under the Sun
For those interested in what the one-time ECUSA bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong, might be up to these days, have a look at these recent comments reported by the IRD. One highlight:
"The oldest part of the Bible is only 3,000 years old, Spong stated, while the Earth is 4 billion years old and humans may have existed for 2 million years.
'Is it possible that a 3,000-year-old book captures the truth of God for all time?' Spong sarcastically asked. In fact, he said, the Bible 'assumes as truth the limited knowledge that people had in that period of history.'
Dismissing orthodox Christians as credulously simplistic, Spong claimed that beliefs about God descending onto Mount Sinai or Jesus ascending into Heaven were based on archaic assumptions of a 'three-tiered universe' that placed God and Heaven right above the clouds.
Even if Jesus were ascending at the speed of light, he still would not have yet left our galaxy after 2,000 years, Spong chuckled, crediting this clever observation to the late astronomer Carl Sagan."
Read the entire story here. There is also a NewJersey.com story on the event and Spong's present thoughts here.
posted by Texanglican (R.W. Foster+) | 1:23 PM
6 Comments:
You beat me to it...I was going to blog about that article. Oh, well, maybe I can keep my sanity if I don't have to think about him any longer.
Do you have a link to the actual text of Spong's remark? (We good hsitory majors should be seeking the primary source- the IRD hardly seems like an unbiased organization to rely on the tone of Spong's remarks. :) )
On the plus side, I appreciate the notice of the existence of the
Network of Spiritual Progressives.-
Becky Jo
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
BTW, BJL, you might enjoy checking out Spong's own site at beliefnet.com. You can read his ideas in his very own words (a real treat, let me tell you!). The address is http://www.beliefnet.com/author/author_44.html
Take care.
Point well taken, ma'am. I don't have a full transcript (I'll look some more), but there is a news report at NewJersey.com that I assume is a more "objective" commercial news outlet in New Jersey. It doesn't appear to me that the IRD report is far wide of the mark. I have now added a link to the NewJersey.com story at the end of the body of the main post.
Good to hear from you, my friend. Thanks so much for the photos of the kids. They are growing so fast! My mom also liked seeing them.
It might be a little less than charitable to say this, but J.S.S. currently lives near the most infamous mental hospital in Northern New Jersey—Greystone Psychiatric. This was the place my parents always told me that I'd eventually end up, because I am a loon™.
It's good to see Jack Spong already found his accomodations nearby. Anyone who thinks he did a world of good for a diocese that's dying because of his work is not entirely in the all-together. 30 or so parishes closing this year alone? That's not "braggable" by any stretch of the imagination.
As many of us fruit-loving folks who pray for catholic unity often say: "NO FRUIT FOR SPONG!"
-j
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