Examining the Story of the Cross, Part V: Barabbas – Another Interpretive Figure

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 7 April 2011 9 Comments
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Question

We appreciate that you don’t want to throw out the Bible, but rather to “rescue it” and focus on its message of love. Do you think there will ever be a day when the Bible will include not only the Old Testament and the New Testament, but also the “Newest Testament” that might reflect modern Christian thought?

Answer

Dear Jonnie,

Given what I know about church decision making processes, I think the answer to your question is a simple “no.” I do not see how an ecclesiastical body could be constituted to make this happen in any official way given the state of institutional Christianity today. Some individuals might be able to accomplish this task for themselves, but I do not believe institutional forms of Christianity ever will.

The intention of your question, however, can be met in other ways and I think it not only will, but it must. The Bible, as presently constituted, makes the assumption that God no longer speaks through people in this world and has not done so since II Peter, the last written book that was added to the Canon of Scripture about 135 CE.

Included in our sacred text at this moment are no voices of women, no voices of people of color and no voices from the last 2000 years of Christian history. Surely a book suffering from those limitations cannot be called in any literal sense “The Word of God” unless you assume that the word of the Lord can only be found in males (who are generally thought of as white although they are actually middle eastern), and that they all lived between 1000 BCE and 135 CE! Surely God is not so limited, nor has God been on a sabbatical for the last 2000 years!

So why can we not supplement our scriptures with other voices? We can call these readings in church: “The Contemporary Lesson” or something similar. Among the things I would like to be considered for inclusion in such a practice are:

1. The letter from a Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King, Jr.

2. Some of the writings from recognized female religious leaders through the ages like Hildegard of Bingen in the early 12th century and Julian of Norwich in the late 14th century. More contemporary female voices might include Mary Seton from the 17th century and Dorothy Day from the 20th century. Contemporary female leaders of great and even daring insight might include Karen Armstrong and Elaine Pagels.

3. Some of the voices of the Third World like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Oscar Romero and Leonardo Boff would bring to “scripture” a very different accent.

4. Frontier voices that moved Christianity in new directions might include such shaping theologians as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Erasmus, Teilhard de Chardin, John A. T. Robinson, Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Kung, Paul Tillich and John Elbridge Hines.

I am sure this list could be expanded endlessly and everyone would probably come up with different names. Your letter might free the imaginations of my readers to form the list of those whose work has been “the word of God “ to them, for that is what I have done and that is how scripture is always determined.

We could then keep the Bible as it is as our historic text, but add to its message in a supplementary way from the richness of our religious history.

I would also like to encourage churches to stop ending the Sunday service reading of scripture with some version of the liturgical phrase “This is the Word of the Lord.” There are some passages in the Bible that no one should ever attribute to God (see I Samuel 15:1-2, for example), but we can still hear God speaking through the Bible and surely a living God would also speak through other voices in history. So perhaps we should end the reading of scripture as the Anglican prayer book of New Zealand suggests: “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”

Thank you for your question.

~John Shelby Spong

 

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