Campus CrossWalk Magazine: 2005 Fall Issue -- The Sins of Scripture, Book Review

"Unbelief is not the only way of suppressing the truth about God... It is only the most honest." Merold Westphal, Taking St. Paul Seriousl

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Shelby Spong is a retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, New Jersey. His bestsellers include Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism and Why Christianity Must Change or Die. He often lectures at conferences and on prestigious college campuses.

Spong presents himself as a “Christian.” In, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, he wrote, "I define myself above all things as a believer. I am indeed a passionate believer. I am in a constant and almost mystical awareness of the divine presence."

This is a curious claim, however, in light many contradictory claims in his body of writing which I have summarized below:: 1. He claims not to be a theist and that theism is dead!; 2. He dismisses as barbaric the idea that Jesus saves us from sin on a cross.; 3. He considers the Bible to be “evil” and hold it in deep disdain.; 4. He celebrates homosexuality and other forms of sexual chaos.; 5. He thinks the incarnation of Jesus is a “bankrupt” idea.; 6. He is an unquestioning disciple of Charles Darwin.; 7. He denies that physical resurrections ever have or ever will occur.; 8. He dismisses prayer and all the miracle stories in the Bible.; 9. He's passionate about guilt not being a motivation for human behavior.; 10. He thinks life after death will have nothing to do with judgment or accountability.

In short, he thinks his readers are too dull to detect the disparities. The list above is only a brief introduction to what Spong disbelieves. He has every right to believe or disbelieve as he sees fit, but his passionate claim to be a Christian is an intellectually dishonest insult to his readers.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In the preface of his recent book, The Sins of Scripture, Spong claims ” a lifetime love affair with the Bible.” In chapter one, he again professes to be a “deeply committed, believing Christian.” Nearly every other word in his book belies those claims.

Early on, his autobiographical musings reveal a few true colors. He said, “I had come to the place where I recognized that the Bible itself was often the enemy. Time after time, the Bible, I discovered, condemned itself with its own words.” With dogmatic conviction, Spong added; “Sometimes the Bible is quite overtly evil.”

His original title was, “The Terrible Texts of the Bible.” Any regard Spong may have for the Bible is highly selective at best.

Spong tells of a church that once filled him with a deep-seated bible-based religious bigotry. But he redeems himself with heroic claims on his eventual calling in life as a champion for civil rights and an opponent of racism.

For Spong, the sins of Scripture extend far beyond its pages. He blames the Bible for the Crusades (how original), the Inquisition (which killed many Bible reading believers, a fact Spong omits), slavery (he offers no mention of the Koran’s zealous support for slavery), apartheid, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and segregation. He casts a blistering blanket over all Christian history and blames the Bible and its believers for his selective list of ghoulish atrocities. For a look at the good that Christians have done in history, read another book.

The table of contents is a litany of Leftist agenda priorities (the environment, women’s rights, homosexuality, children’s rights and race matters). In one chapter, Spong uses dogmatic negative claims to trash the very ideas of truth and certainty. He is quite a moralist when attacking the moralism of others. The biggest Christian boogie-man of all, for Spong, is homophobia.

He rounds up the usual grievances: Did God really order the deaths of first born sons in Egypt? Did Joshua really stop the sun to allow Joshua more time for slaughtering? Did God inspire Deuteronomy 21:18-21, where a stoning is proscribed? Did God inspire Psalm 137:8-9, telling of babies dashed against rocks? His deepest outrage was over any biblical hint that homosexuality is sin.

He lists texts out of context to ridicule them. He blames the Bible for the very thing that makes it great, namely, that it pulls no punches telling a real story that involves great sin and evil (and it tells of what God did about it!).

Spong cannot appreciate this because he has no sense of the reality of evil, or of God’s serious stance toward it. After all, he thinks the very cross of Christ is pure barbarism. He disbelieves that we even need to be rescued from sin. He does believe, however, that we need to be rescued from people who actually believe that we need to be saved from sin (“evangelicals“).

Spong even looked down on Jesus for presuming that Moses wrote the Torah and that David composed some Psalms. He forgets that many Psalms themselves claim authorship by David. Spong ridicules miracle claims and presumes that his ridicule is sufficient evidence against their veracity.

If you feel tempted to take his biblical interpretations seriously, consider his take on the apostle Paul:

: “Yes, I am convinced that Paul of Tarsus was a gay man, deeply repressed, self-loathing, rigid in denial, bound by the law that he hoped could keep this thing that he judged to be so unacceptable, totally under control, a control so profound that even Paul did not have to face this fact about himself.” (page 140).

Across the distant gulfs of time and culture, Spong directs his Freudian X-ray vision into the very heart of Paul, presuming to know Paul better than Paul knew himself. He ignores every scrap of literary and historical evidence that would obliterate his theory and relies on nothing but his own twisted hunch to interpret Paul in a way that contradicts everything Paul said and did.

Where did he get his penetrating X-ray vision?

More seriously, why can’t some unbelievers just be honest about their unbelief?

Joel Mark Solliday, M.Div., is the editor of Campus CrossWalk and the pulpit minister of the Brooklyn Center Church of Christ in Minnesota. A Pepperdine graduate, he later worked in their Campus Life Office and at ACU as a Missionary in Residence. He earned his M.Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary. He met and married his lovely wife Katie in Minnesota.