Charting a New Reformation, Part XIII – The Third Thesis: “Original Sin” Pre-Darwinian Mythology: Post Darwinian Nonsense (Continued)

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 17 March 2016 20 Comments
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Question

I love your recent columns introducing your new series on “Charting a New Reformation.” So much of it resonates with me. I am reading Paulo Coelho’s book, The Witch of Portobello and finding so much in it that speaks to me. Especially loved the idea in your column that one can be a non-theist and, at the same time, a committed Christian. That very much describes me. As a young adult, I went on a silent church retreat in which we were urged to listen for God’s voice. The only voice I could hear was the sound of the wind, the rustling of the leaves, the call of the doves and the quietness of the South African countryside. I felt terribly inadequate and ended up helping the cook with the food in the kitchen! It was only years later when I started to read the writings of Richard Rohr that I realized that God had been there all the time, in those sounds and also in the music that I love so much! What a wonderful discovery to make. God bless you in your ministry.

Answer

Dear Ruth,

Thank you for your letter. I too appreciate the writing of Richard Rohr and I think your insight into where the presence of God is experienced is, as the English would say, “spot on.” It was in the 4th century that Christianity, under pressure from the Emperor Constantine and in its new position of legitimacy in the Roman Empire, that the church decided that the time had come to force this faith tradition into the format of creeds. The people who framed the Nicene Creed, produced by the Council of Nicaea that met in 325 CE, were not aware that they were part of a culture that looked at life dualistically. This was their heritage derived from the thinking of Plato and the Neo-Platonists. That generation in the Mediterranean world breathed dualism without being conscious of it. So the Nicene Creed is deeply dualistic. God and the world are separated into two different realms. The categories of heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, body and soul, God and human, reflected this dualism. The result was that that God was defined theistically as a “being, external to this world, separated in power,” who had to enter this world by invading it. To talk of Jesus as the “incarnation” of God into human form expressed one aspect of that dualism. This is also why you and I were taught in the church not to look for or to listen to God in the sounds of the wind, the rustle of the leaves, the cooing of the doves or in the quietness of the South African countryside.

The political revolution led by Nelson Mandela in South Africa was in many ways a revolution against defining God as separate from this world. Removing the yoke of oppression and creating a new sense of what it means to be human is surly nothing other than the activity of God at work in history. I regard Mandela as one of the great figures of Western history. I am pleased that the man who served as the “chaplain to that revolution” was Desmond Tutu, a bishop in my church.

I have been to South Africa twice. On the first visit, I joined with eight other bishops to lay our hands on the head of the Dean of the Anglican Cathedral of St. Mary in Johannesburg to consecrate him as a bishop in the Church of God. His name was Desmond Tutu. On the second visit, I lectured and led a seminar at the University of South Africa in Johannesburg and met some extraordinary professors and clergy who were transforming Christianity there. I think of Zakkie and Dina Spangenberg and Hansie and Hestor Wolmarans in particular. I also think of a distant relative of mine, named Bernard Spong and his wife Rykie. Bernard was the executive secretary of the Congregational Churches of South Africa prior to his retirement. All of these people bore witness to a God, who was discovered not beyond the sky but in the battle to end apartheid.

I mention these things, Ruth, to tell you that you are not alone in that great country. There are others like you who understand what it means to be “non-theistic” and a committed Christian simultaneously. They constitute what Jesus called the yeast in the loaf, the salt in the soup and the light in the darkness.

Live well!
John Shelby Spong

 

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