A New Christianity

Wayne's Notes

Jock's Notes

Jim's Opening Notes

Jim's Closing Notes

Jim Gaisford opened the session well with his reflection - Atonement: One Dimensional Christianity? to set the first summary lecture by Wayne. Jim also closed the evening with a consideration of central question of the second summary lecture by Jock. - Is Jesus God? Then on a positive and personal note he shares with us his "ever ongoing" creed. Thanks Jim for sharing your path a while. We each hold candles.

Atonement: One Dimensional Christianity? Opening Reflection by Jim Gaisford

In his book: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (Harper San Francisco; 1994), Marcus Borg claims that the Bible encompasses three "macro stories". These three core or overarching themes are encountered over and over again. In other words, Borg sees a three dimensional Bible. (Perhaps there are even more than three dimensions if we look more closely…)

According to Borg, the first macro story is the exodus story. It is a liberation story. The liberation theme, of course, is first encountered with the escape from slavery in Egypt described in Exodus, but it recurs frequently. In this macro story, a symptom of the human condition is bondage and enslavement. The healing element from God is liberation. Liberation, however, involves a time in the wilderness (an exile element) reconnecting with God. The movement from bondage to liberation is re-enacted in Jewish Passover rituals.

Borg’s second macro story is the exile story. It is a story about what I like to call "spiritual filling". The exile story is originally rooted in the historic exile of the Jewish people in Babylon. The overarching symptoms of the human condition include alienation, emptiness, separation, loneliness and meaninglessness. The healing embrace from God involves revelation, disclosure, spiritual filling, re-connection and wholeness. People are invited to a return journey. Some comforting parts of the atonement doctrine are reflected in the exile story since the solution involves being "at one" with God.

Borg calls the third macro story the priestly story. While Borg does not tie this story to any single initial Bible passage, I think it might be initially linked to the Genisis story of original sin. Ultimately, the priestly story is a story about cleansing. In this story people are seen primarily as sinners and God is seen as a law-giver and judge. Here the human predicaments consist of sin, guilt, impurity and stain. We are defiled and unclean. God’s antidote is forgiveness and cleansing. In the Christian tradition, this is accomplished through the sacrificial death of Jesus our Saviour, which uniquely atones for our original sin. Clearly the preistly theme provides the bedrock for the atonement doctrine.

In most streams of modern Christianity the priestly story, either in harder or softer forms, has held ascendancy. I call this one-dimensional Christianity. Borg suggests that there is value in the priestly story. For example, he notes that an implication of the priestly story is that God loves us just as we are. Nevertheless, Borg claims that there are a number of very serious problems arising from the near exclusive focus on this story.

First, Christianity tends to become cyclic and thus static in the priestly story. One is forgiven on Sunday, sins on Monday, etc., only to be forgiven again the next Sunday.

Second, Christianity tends to become passive; spiritual transformation is neglected. Forgiveness is a "done deal".

Third, the focus is transferred from this world to the afterlife.

Fourth, God stands as a lawgiver, no matter how merciful. Only those who accept Jesus as the sacrifice are forgiven.

Borg then continues as follows with two final problems with the priestly story:

Moreover the story is very hard to believe. The notion that God’s only son came to this planet to offer his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, and that God could not forgive us without that having happened, and that we are saved by believing this story, is simply incredible. Taken metaphorically this story can be very powerful. But, taken literally, it is a profound obstacle to accepting the Christian message. To many people it simply makes no sense, and I think that we have to be straightforward about that.

Finally there is one more problem with the priestly story: some people do not feel much guilt. It is difficult to know what to make of this. Perhaps some people should feel guilt who do not; guilt is not the central issue in their lives. Yet they may have strong feelings of bondage, or feelings of alienation and estrangement. For these people the priestly story has nothing to say.

To maintain that it should speak to them would be like saying that Moses should have gone to Egypt and said to the Hebrew slaves: "My children, your sins are forgiven." They would properly have responded, "What? What does that have to do with us? Our problem isn’t that we are sinners, you idiot. Our problem is that we are slaves, oppressed by Pharaoh!"

So it is in our own time. For some people, the central issue is not sin and guilt, but bondage to or victimization by some Pharaoh or another. For them, what does the message of sin and forgiveness mean? Unfortunately, it often comes to mean "You should forgive the person who is victimizing you," when what the victim needs to hear is "It is not God’s will that you be in bondage to that (or any) Pharaoh." Or if the central problem is alienation and meaninglessness, the message that the person needs to hear is "It is not God’s will that you remain in Babylon, not God’s will that you mourn in lonely exile there."

Borg advocates the need for promoting the exodus and exile stories such that the are on the same footing as the priestly story. In short, we need a three dimensional view of the Bible and Christianity. Borg notes that all three stories share common elements such as: human suffering and the centrality of God to human life. All three are also stories of hope that lead to journeys of search and discovery.

Perhaps this pluralism where all three stories are on an equal footing is a bit too comfortable. Borg notes that in large measure, Jesus himself subverted the priestly story. Even within the context of the atonement doctrine espoused in a Letter to Hebrews, Jesus’ death is the final sacrifice. The old-testament maxim that sacrifice is the price of forgiveness is invalidated. More broadly, the historic evidence overwhelmingly points to Jesus directly subverting the priestly story. Jesus operated outside of the Jewish religious hierarchy and he is often portrayed as a critical of the religious authorities. His followers were welcomed into the realm of God, which is near at hand, unmediated by the professional priesthood. For all — including those who are in bondage or in exile feel as well as those who feel guilt — this is good news!

Wayne. Ch 7 - Changing the Basic Christian Myth
Getting There From Here

Spong begins his chapter on changing the basic Christian myth with the story of the country fellow who, upon being asked directions by a city fellow Mister, you just can't get there from here."

His point is that if we want to locate essential faith for today, we need to stop 'adding on' to the doctrinal buildup of the past 2,000 years, and, in a true spirit of faith reform, return to the basics.

The irony, of course, is that those who claim to be orthodox and traditional have, in fact, a large body of accretions which they hold to be true, while the radical people like Spong (who claim the true meaning of the term radical, namely 'radix') seek to overturn the tradition and locate the etiology or basis of the original myth.

Spong states: "The way to accomplish the task of freeing the essential Christian truth from the distortions of yesterday, so that it might live in tomorrow's world, is to return to the original starting place and to begin anew. There is no way I see that will enable us to 'get there from here' without a return to our roots." (114).

The reformation that Spong envisages will eradicate the way that Jesus has been understood for most of Christian history. It will help people come to terms with the kind of Jesus that they can believe in as they live into the modern world and it's future.

The two key Christian doctrines Spong believes need to be dislodged from their traditional understandings and either replaced or infused with new meaning are the incarnation, and the atonement.

The Incarnation

Traditionally, that great doctrine we call the incarnation meant that an external God became enfleshed in Jesus of Nazareth. The narrative that was developed to communicate that truth, is, of course, very familiar to almost every human on earth. We celebrate this story at Christmas, and if there is any single myth that links people the world over, it is the myth of the god who becomes human through some kind of miraculous fertilization, incubation and birth transformation into our world. This is the myth, now turned essential doctrine for many, of the Virgin Birth.

The Virgin Birth, Spong claims, has been rendered literally meaningless by new knowledge - scriptural, historical and scientific.

Spong details why the gospels should not be taken literally, as history or science (pp. 117-118). Bethlehem and Nazareth are both named as the birth location by Luke and Matthew, respectively. It would appear that the gospel writers were inclined to skew the facts in order to back up their particular biases, for and against these two towns.

The second problem we face is even greater than town of origin. "The deepest problem that the virgin-birth story faces," Spong writes, "is that it reflects a premodern understanding of the human birth process." Basically, Spong says that the only reason earlier Christians accepted the virgin birth story is because they did not understand the woman's role in reproduction. The life of any newborn baby was believed to dwell in the sperm of the male. The woman provided the nurturing womb but did not add anything to the substance of life. As we have discussed in previous classes, the male was considered the sole progenitor of human life. The female was only the conduit through which that life passed.

This belief was common in the ancient world, and was not confined to Hebrew, Greek or Roman thought. Many of the great religious traditions in East and West possess birth narratives with essentially this message. Male life was real life. Female life was at best secondary or a substitute. 'riginally, we know that was not believed to be so. Mother Earth, the Source of all life, was rightly understood as primary. But male thinking could not accept the ascendancy of the female, so the story was turned around and men came out on top - literally, as well as figuratively!

How else can we read the Garden of Eden story (i.e. the demotion of Eve to the role of assistant to her husband) if not to understand that it was because Eve led Adam to sin that she must now serve as his back-up agent in the birthing process? Eve was no longer to be considered the Source, but only the conduit, of life in the service of her betters.

It was only in the eighteenth century that science informed us that woman contributes 50% to the life process in the form of the ova; and man the other 50% in terms of the sperm.

According to Spong, Mary the Virgin, essentially sexually pure and untainted by human sexuality, was placed on a pedestal - a wiley trick, and power move on the part of the now reigning patriarchy. Encourage women and men to honour the supernatural Mary for her "sinlessness" and sexual purity while at the same time render women of this world as inferior to men.

I personally have a great love for Mary. I honour her role as an advocate through her Son Jesus, on our human behalf before God. I see in this understanding of Mary a way by which we come to understand a balancing of the divine nature of both male and female. But I find the traditional catholic way (both RC and Protestant) of interpreting the myth of Mary to be demeaning of woman and of human sexuality in general.

Because we are the inheritors of the science of Copernicus and Galileo, Spong says, we can no longer believe is a three-tiered universe (heaven/earth/subterranean place) and so there is no such place as heaven existing above the earth. Jesus could not possibly have ascended literally into heaven as we have described to us in the gospels.

The Atonement

Spong claims that we can no longer accept the traditional teaching of the Fall as it has traditionally been interpreted from the Garden of Eden myth. Fallen sinners, hopelessly lost, has been the way we have traditionally interpreted that story. Some interpreters have viewed humans as only partially flawed, while others have considered humans to be hopelessly depraved. In any case, we can have hope only because Jesus takes our place as the sacrifice God requires to make restitution for our sinfulness.

Essentially, what Spong is saying is that use of the term "sacrifice" as a means of appeasing God (just as primitive people sacrificed humans, progressing then to animals to appease their gods) is no longer a workable, understandable, even civilized motif.

Protestants have emphasised sacrifice to describe what Jesus did when he shed his blood and gave his life for us on the cross. Catholics have been a bit more refined about this in their focusing of this act in the liturgical repetition of the mass. Both ways of describing sacrifice, says Spong, are not acceptable.

Science Helps to Write a New Myth for Humanity

Darwin, Spong says, now serves to better describe how the world works than the traditional myth of Eden. The Darwinian view says that there never was a perfect and completed creation as we read of it described in Genesis One. Indeed, the universe is not finished. It is still evolving and still expanding. Humans are emerging, not completed creatures. We are neither perfect, nor fallen. Just incomplete. We cannot be restored to a position we never claimed in the first place.

Our humanity, Spong claims, was never shaped by a mythical fall, but by a very real battle for survival - the Darwinian teaching of survival of the fittest. We have survived our biological history by our wits and self-centredness.

The diagnosis (sinful human nature) and the prescribed cure (atonement) are both wrong Once we come to understand and appreciate that, the entire sacramental system and ecclesiastical superstructure supporting it begins to collapse. No wonder Spong provokes the resistance of many for whom the survival of those systems is essential to their vocation and their livelihood!

The creedal teachings of the church were devised to address a human condition that is simply not true. Good creation. Fall. Divine Rescue through the priestly and pastoral ministrations of the church. There has got to be something more, and better, says Spong.

Spong would say that the mainline Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church are both founded upon a sacrificial myth that no longer speaks to people today. We are, in essence, a people of God in the majority churches of our land who are coasting on collateral invested in the past but no longer earning interest. Our principal has essentially evaporated.

We must face the reality of our dilemma, says Spong, if there is any hope for recovery. Time will demonstrate that these concerns are only the beginning. We are once again driven to ask such basic questions as - Who is God? Who is Jesus? and What is the purpose of the Christian church?

Questions:

1. Do you believe that Spong has a firm understanding of and has adequately demolished the doctrine traditionally understood as the incarnation?

2. Do you consider the work of atonement as essential to your understanding of Jesus?

3. Do you believe that church and the sacramental system we practice are premised on the two primary assumptions of incarnation and atonement? Discuss.

Jock's. Ch 8 - Jesus Beyond Incarnation: A Nontheistic Divinity

Is Jesus God? At this point Bishop Spong returns to the centre of the main issue - Is Jesus God? This question is the question. Whatever the fine points of distinction might be, mainstream Christian tradition and the starting point of Christian faith for most people, is exactly that - Jesus is the Son of God. And there is little complexity in this belief. A child can comfortably understand the theologian. And both pray to Jesus as if to God. There is virtually no distinguishment. And if we require sophistication, the Trinity is the theological construction that rolls all our god concepts into One again. And now let's not think any further about it, we say.

When Bill Phipps became moderator of our United Church of Canada, he came to the attention of the media on exactly this point. His statement that Jesus was not God stirred quite some controversy. To clear the air he made a clear declaration of faith Nov 1997 and helped distinguish this issue of Jesus' divinity:

*"I believe passionately that the God we know in Christ Jesus is as compelling for us as he was 2000 years ago in inviting people into deep spiritual experience and active critique of the principalities and powers which engulf and enslave the world. I believe that in Jesus we know as much of God as is possible in a human being. The God of the Bible is never completely known or understood, yet is as intimate and compassionate as the most loving parent. There is no question that the followers of Jesus experienced God's transforming power in the resurrection. Jesus was so alive for them that they were driven to risking their lives in proclaiming the Gospel. There is no doubt that Jesus becomes a living, transforming power in the lives of his followers, and continues to do so to this day."

But if Jesus was not God, why do we consider him divine? For Spong, the examination that leads to dismissing the theistic aspects of understanding God, left us with a newer stronger understanding. In the same manner as in the first of the book, a "new portrait of Jesus" emerges from this reconsideration. As always, we must each answer the New Testament question "Who do you say that I am?"

Marcus Borg uses an interesting pair of descriptions. He says that there is a Pre-Easter Jesus and a Post-Easter Jesus. That brings to awareness the Historical Jesus and the Jesus of Faith and how each understanding influences the other.

"But home is also about growing up, about maturation, about learning and living a way of life that one takes into the larger world. Christianity is a way of life; that is its heart. To be Christian means living "the path" within this tradition. At the heart of Christianity is the way of the heart - a path that transforms us at the deepest level of our being. At the heart of Christianity is the heart of God - a passion for our transformation and the transformation of the world. At the heart of Christianity is participating in the passion of God." end words of The Heart of Christianity.

John Dominic Crossan says that

"... there will always be divergent historical Jesuses, that there will always be divergent Christs built upon them, but, above all, ... the structure of a Christianity will always be: this is how we see Jesus-then as Christ-now ... a dielectic between Jesuses and Christs... Because there is only reconstruction. For a believing Christian both the life of the Word of God and the text of the Word of God are alike a graded process of historical reconstruction ... If you cannot believe in something produced by reconstruction, you may have nothing left to believe in." Epilogue, The Historical Jesus."

Boundary Breaker. Spong sees Jesus as a Boundary Breaker. We are aware of the New Testament Jesus whose society was promoting exclusion - by a severe and unremitting law. He was active in putting people's needs above the law and advocating inclusion. In God's Domain there was "neither Jew nor Greek". This was a most radical message then, and continues to be so today. Tribal identities are too often identities of exclusion and the source of conflict and of inequality.

Study of ancient history shines more light on this boundary breaking Jesus. We are now aware that the political system of Jesus day was a time of great economic change, dispossessing the peasants of their land, and increasing the wealth of the cities, the temple priesthood and the puppet kings. The Hebrew society that had been exemplary in its sense of justice and sharing the wealth of the land, was being changed and exploited. Jesus preached a Kingdom of justice and love. His travelling practice was centered on healing and communal eating. Illness was considered then to be the result of sin and so another reason for exclusion and separation. Jesus showed compassion. When eating was the way of demonstrating the heirarchy in the community, Jesus was radical in his egalitarian behaviour and instruction. It is of interest that these 2000 years past, our most holy symbol of divinity is food - not truth or light or fire as other religions may hold. A church may well be most understanding of Jesus when they are together at a church supper.

The Samaritan was the example then of their correctly directed exclusion (their justified prejudice). Jesus turned it over and made the Samaritan the "Good Example". It must have greatly offended his audience. Click HERE for my poem on the irony of this point. Spong points out that prejudice diminishes our humanity. It was another of Jesus insights - another of his gifts. We note that John Spong was among the first to address the prejudice of his community in the 60's and since, against blacks, against women and against gay people. This boundary breaking aspect of Jesus is obviously very personal for him. Jesus embraced the leper, accepted the women, the tax-collector and in all that is written of him, he challenged us to a new and inclusive idea of the human family. Spong describes this as love.

"... we observe that there is something expansive and creative about the presence of the boundary-breaking love that we meet in the life of Jesus. When we human beings know love, we seem to grow. ... Love calles us into being; it expands our lives as it flows through us. ... Love has no chosen people, for that implies that some are unchosen. Love bears no malice, seeks no revenge, guards no doorway. ... If life is holy and if love creates and enhances life, then love is also holy. So I am led to suggest that love and God canot be separated and that to share love is nothing less than sharing God. ... " (139-140)

This great example and understanding of love that Jesus gave us causes us conclude that Jesus was showing us God. In the same way, Paul the Apostle and Paul Tillich both considered God to be that presence, that ground of being in which "we live and move, and have our being". This certainly was another insight of Jesus, another gift of Jesus. And he taught us to see God so. Not remote and far away, but near and at hand. Even to the end of his life. In his crucifixion the same divine power threads the story. Jesus is not afraid, does not cower, does not weep, or whine or curse or fight - as most would. Rather he "submits to outrageous fortune" and forgives everyone for their parts. And in his dying as his living he called people to new and deeper living.

Religious words Spong says are often misunderstood. Jesus is not God. He does not mean to identify Jesus with the ground of being, nor with the source of life. "Jesus is the Word of God, not God" he says. And from our new perspective we can reclaim the ancient words. We can again assert that "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God". It is possible now to use the words of orthodoxy while understanding the great depth of meaning contained in the words. The old mythology is made stronger not weaker. The old understanding of the myth didn't work any more. The myth is put in current terms and it's power returns.

In the old myth we saw Jesus merely as God come to earth, as a man with special powers. We have come a long way. We begin to see for ourselves that Jesus showed us God most clearly. That this challenges every part of our philosophy and every part of our living as it has over the ages. In concluding the chapter Spong suggests this means expanding the symbols of our understanding, not reducing them.

Is Jesus God? - Closing Reflection by Jim Gaisford

Is Jesus God? This is one of the big questions posed in our study last week. Sadly for me, I had to leave before the group discussion. Nevertheless, I could not leave the question. It seems to me that Spong would answer that: "Yes. Jesus is God…" (with further explanation of course). Spong appears to be a post-exile Trinitarian. With only minor intellectual contortions (and further explanation of course), I could probably make the same claim. Nevertheless, both for clarity and honesty I choose to describe myself as a non-Trinitarian. I proclaim Jesus as my Messiah; anointed by God but not God.

In the few moments of this closing, I would like to explore this ground. I would prefer to be "constructionist" than "de-constructionist". I would like to share what I DO believe, rather than what I DON’T believe. The core of what I believe can be summarized neatly as follows:

Vision Statement:

God is near. (Mark 1, 15)

Mission Statement:

Be compassionate as God is compassionate. (Luke 6, 36)

To go further and explore the Jesus-God relation, I will share a personal creed, but a few preliminary remarks are probably in order.

How one lives one’s life in the world and in touch with God is ultimately much more important than one’s intellectual reflection on the experience of God. Still, it is important to try to fathom and make sense of the experience of God. Who or what is God? Who was/is Jesus? (What do I believe, anyway?)

I prefer to define a creed as an attempt to fathom the meaning of reality rather than a "statement of belief"? The reality and mystery of God, however, is necessarily greater than any one person’s experience of God and greater still than one’s reflection on that experience. This suggests a need for considerable modesty and humility. For me, a creed should then be a personal statement and a work always in progress rather than merely collective statement, or worse, a dogma. But, even so, I borrow with respect from my traditions. Ideally my creed should also sing with the poetry that I feel, but this beyond what I can offer.

With all of that said, I offer the following:

		A Personal "Creed" (Always In Progress)
		I am Jim Gaisford I am not alone. I live in God's universe. God is the ever-present well spring of the universe, The fountain of goodness, And a fortress against evil. God is powerful. God is compassionate. God is love. Jesus was anointed by God; Jesus is my Messiah and Christ Jesus brought good news to the poor. Jesus proclaimed that "God is near", And accessible to all unmediated and always. Jesus was repressed and persecuted by the establishment. But, Jesus would not recant and for that he was crucified. Jesus could not be stilled by death. Jesus was resurrected in Mary and Peter and Paul. Jesus is resurrected in many around me. I am a person of the way, a follower of Jesus. I often walk in the valley of dry bones. I am called to breathe the fire of the spirit of God into those bones, To inspire and empower. I am called to receive the Spirit from others. I am called to be compassionate as God is compassionate. I am not alone. Thanks be to God.

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