Charting a New Reformation, Part XXIV – The Seventh Thesis, The Resurrection (continued)

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 2 June 2016 10 Comments
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Question

Having read the question and your spot-on answer of December 31, 2015, I find the questioner evoked a question for me.

Homo sapiens may not be the highest form of physical life in the universe, therefore, could the divine be as intimately a part of a space alien as a human?

In my own thinking, I would have to say “yes,” it is possible and even likely. Perhaps the question is unanswerable at this point in time, but humans most often consider themselves to be the highest form of evolution in the universe, yet we do not know if there might be higher forms of physical and divine life possible.

Answer

Dear Diane,

You raise a possibility beyond the scope of present human knowledge to answer, yet I think you are moving in the right direction and I would walk the path you are walking for the only way to move into a living future is to be open to new truth, which always challenges the way things are or seem to us to be. The motto of the seminary I attended was: “Seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will.” There is also a possibility that a discovery of tomorrow will illumine a possibility unheard of today.

The problem with historic Christianity is that in the 4th century, the church decided to adopt creeds. Creeds assume that the truth has been and can be captured in words. Once that decision is made, the world is divided into true believers and heretics. The fight between the two is never edifying. It is the heretics who always counter the orthodoxy of the past and open believers to new possibilities in the future. The church needs more heretics and we need to listen to them with openness rather than with fear and negativity. The fact is that yesterday’s heresy has a way of becoming tomorrow’s orthodoxy, and the pattern has been repeated time and again. Reformation never comes from the institutional center; it always rises from the fringes. Heresy is like the hammer, orthodoxy is like the anvil. Without the pounding of the hammer, the anvil will become dead, set and unchanging. Without the anvil of tradition on which to pound, the hammer would ultimately become destructive.

No one can be both hammer and anvil, but every hammer needs an anvil and every anvil needs a hammer. It is the relationship between the two that is essential to the truth, and the search for truth is, I believe, the essence of Christianity. It is too bad that rarely in the life of the church do hammers and anvils appreciate each other.

John Shelby Spong

 

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