Charting a New Reformation, Part XX - The Fifth Thesis, Miracles (concluded)

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 5 May 2016 39 Comments
Please login with your account to read this essay.
 

Question

I am a 79-year-old retired minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Your books have been crucial to my spiritual odyssey and have positively shaped my faith. I would like your help with a question that seems to me to be fundamental to progressive Christianity.

Like you, I, too, have been influenced by the writings of Bishop John A. T. Robinson of the Church of England. I can no longer remember the particular volume in which he made this point, but I have never forgotten what he said; he declared that the difference between humanism and Christian faith is this; Humanism says that Love ought to be the ruling principle of the universe, while the Christian faith affirms that, in Christ, we see that Love is the ruling principle of the universe. Or, in other words, in Christ God revealed that Love really is (not simply ought to be) the ruling principle of the universe. At that time, that statement was very reassuring to me. The older I get, however, the less I can believe that “love is the ruling principle of the universe.” It appears to me that there are three ways to view the universe’s attitude toward us human beings: (1) the universe is for us; (2) the universe is against us; or (3) the universe is indifferent to us. From my observation, I can only conclude that the universe is indifferent to us.

As I see it, it is up to us humans to shape the world so that it is for us; it is up to us to make Love the guiding principle of life, and that is something that humanists and other people of good will can do, just as well as Christians can.

I guess that leaves me wondering: Am I simply a non-theist or am I in fact an atheist? That is, am I simply a denier of the existence of a Supreme Being separate from the universe, or am I, in fact, a disbeliever in any “God” or “Higher Power” apart from us human beings? Am I a Christian or am I (just) a humanist?

Answer

Dear James,

First, thank you for your letter and for your ministry. I have been impressed with the leadership of the clergy I have met, who are part of the Disciples of Christ Church. I am grateful for that witness. Thank you also for bringing my friend and mentor, John A. T. Robinson, back into my awareness. My new book, just published in February of 2016 (Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy), was dedicated to my three greatest mentors. John A. T. Robinson was one of the three.

If one defines God as an external being, as you appear to do, one must ascribe the power to change this world to this deity. The suggestion that “The universe is indifferent to us” results from the death of this theistic definition.

If, however, God is experienced not as a supernatural, intervening deity, but as the “Ground of Being,” as well as the Source of Life and the Source of Love, an understanding of God developed in the 20th century by the German Reformed theologian Paul Tillich, then you need to ask whether being, living and loving themselves, are expressions of the nature of reality and thus of God. It is a very different approach. There is no evidence, of which I am aware, that God can or will calm the winds and rains of a hurricane to spare the people of New Orleans or stop the collision of tectonic plates beneath the seas to prevent an earthquake in Haiti. Since earthquakes are deemed to be the cause of tsunamis in other parts of the world, the same thing applies to them. In that sense both nature and the universe do indeed seem to be “indifferent” to life.

If, however, we look into the heart of the universe, we find a bias toward life that is overwhelming. Without this bias, how could life have ever emerged out of lifeless matter? Next we look at every form of life from plants to trees to insects to reptiles and to mammals and we find every segment of life to be possessed by a drive to survive. To be alive is, by definition, to be survival-oriented. This reality has made it possible for life to have moved from a single cell at its birth some 3.8 billion years ago, to the self-conscious manifestation of complexity that human beings have become. An examination of the history of life will reveal the various stages through which life has traveled. We started as single cells and developed next into a composite of multi-cellular living things. Then this thing called life, divided into two major strains. One was called animate life and the other inanimate life. Then out of the animate side of life primitive forms of what we now recognize as consciousness appeared and began to grow. After hundreds of millions of years that thing called consciousness evolved into self-consciousness. In that journey through life, it is the presence of what we today call love that seems to have been the enhancer of life at every stage of our development, though that was not understood until self-consciousness appeared. Love, you see, is not always conscious. Sometimes it is instinctual behavior. Is it not love, however, that drives the bird from its nest in search of food for its young? Is it not love that moves a cat to lick the fur of a newborn kitten or a cow to lick the skin of a new born calf? Is it not love that enhances our humanity? Can anyone become human without love?

So if God is the name of the power in the universe, guiding us to life, love and being and if God is manifested in us when we escape our limits and love beyond our fears, is God not present in who we are? Is God separate from our life, our love and our being? Is this not the God we see in the life of Jesus – the one who lived fully, loved wastefully and who had the courage to be all that he was meant to be? If God is “a being” separate from us, we have to develop words like “incarnation” to enable this divine “being” to enter human history. If, however, God is the Ground of Being, then God is part of all that is, this means that the divine comes to our awareness in the acts that enhance life, expand love and increase our capacity to be.

So you, James, are quite correct to say it is up to us human beings to shape the world and to make love the guiding principle of life. In this process, you have moved experientially from God as “a being” to God as “Being itself.” Now all you need to do is to bring your theology into dialogue with your experience. An atheist is one who dismisses the theistic definition of God as inadequate; an atheist is not one who says that there is no God. That is a distinction that our language itself makes it difficult for us to see. The questions you need to ask, and indeed are asking, are these: “Can I be a non-theist and still be a believer in God? Can I be a non-theist and still be a Christian?” To both of those questions, I would respond with a vigorous Yes. It is too bad that the Christian Church in most of its institutional forms has never been able to talk about these things with any level of understanding.

You have, and for this I am grateful! Live well!!

John Shelby Spong

 

Comments

 

39 thoughts on “Charting a New Reformation, Part XX – The Fifth Thesis, Miracles (concluded)

  1. WordPress › Error

    There has been a critical error on this website.

    Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.