Inauguration Day 2013

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 24 January 2013 1 Comments
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Question

I understand and support that “you do not think of God theistically,” i.e. what could be called the God of the Old Testament. But, as I have read, the study of theology is based on accepting the fact that a transcendent reality called God truly exists, i.e. there is a God existing outside the material universe, but having an influence or some sort of presence on earth. Do you believe in this concept of a transcendent God and, if so, do the experiences of the disciples and apostles that you attribute to them being transformed into their world-conquering evangelism represent an example of God’s actions here on earth through the mind invasions that produced their seeing an image of Jesus? These concepts seem to me to be a necessary part of including in any “New Christianity.” What do you think?

Answer

Dear Charles,

Thank you for your letter. It reveals, however, the constant problem we have in trying to develop a working concept of God. Does God exist? Existence is a human category, describing a human perspective. Can God be bound with that kind of vocabulary?

Transcendent is another human word that I use, but it is not a word that applies to God. It applies to our experience, to a human awareness that there is something real beyond our ability to know or even to perceive.

What we must do is to recognize that we human beings can in the last analysis say nothing about God; all we can describe is our human experience and in that experience, we assert that we believe that we touch “otherness,” transcendence, and the word we have used to identify that experience is “GOD.” Are we simply being deluded? I do not think so. Is there something real that calls us beyond the limits of the human? I believe there is. That is as far as I can go in discussing God. It is not satisfactory to those for whom God is part of their personal security system. It is, however, enough for me because whatever I experience God to be drives me deeper into the commitment to live fully, love wastefully and to be all that I can be.

The disciples clearly had an experience of Jesus following his death that convinced them that death could not contain his life and that they could see a God presence in him that was beyond any human boundary. That was resurrection. When they tried to explain it, we got stories of graves that were empty and visions that inspired.

The New Christianity will have to see language and theology, creeds and doctrines as pointers to truth not vessels in which truth is somehow captured.

~John Shelby Spong

 

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