On the Passing of John Shelby Spong

1 view

September 22, 2021

On this episode of the podcast, Pastor Keith welcomes back friend of the show Matthew Hinson to discuss the passing of John Shelby Spong. Spong was a liberal bishop in the episcopal church who was well known for abandoning the foundational doctrines of Christian theism. Keith and Matthew read and respond to Spong's 12 "Points of Reform" for Christianity which he published in The Voice, the newsletter of the Diocese of Newark, in 1998.

00:01: Welcome to Conversations with a Calvinist.
00:04: This podcast is dedicated to helping believers better understand scripture, defend truth, and engage culture.
00:11: Get your Bible ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
00:16: Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
00:19: Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
00:21: My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.
00:25: And I'm joined today again, thankfully, by my good friend and not yet Calvinist, Matthew Henson.
00:33: Matthew, how are you doing today? I am great.
00:35: And I'll have you know, I took one of those Are You an Arminian or a Calvinist quizzes this week, and the numbers have not shifted.
00:42: Unfortunately, I still tested negative for Calvinism.
00:45: I'm sorry.
00:45: You know, I took, I just, I was taking a sip of coffee in hopes that you would say that you were and then I could spit it out and be like, Oh, yes, but I didn't.
00:57: So I didn't.
00:58: I was prepared.
01:00: Oh, no, I'm sorry to disappoint you, Keith.
01:02: Maybe someday I'll get it straightened out.
01:04: Well, I am.
01:05: I will say this.
01:06: I enjoy our fellowship.
01:07: I enjoy our conversations as always.
01:09: And today we're going to be talking about a subject that is, I think, near and dear to both of our hearts.
01:14: And that is the subject of the passing of a man named John Shelby Spong.
01:21: Now, the reason why I say it's near and dear to our hearts is because Spong has been a longtime rival of the theology that we would espouse, the theology that he would have probably identified as fundamentalism, but we would simply call biblical Christianity.
01:40: But Spong was a man who certainly made his mark on the Christian world, albeit we would consider it probably to be a very negative mark, but Spong made a lot of influence.
01:54: And I had the opportunity to meet him several years ago, and he passed 10 days ago.
01:59: Today we're doing this recording on September 22nd.
02:01: He passed on September the 12th, 2021.
02:05: And I thought it would be good for you and I to talk about him, to talk about the influence that he had, especially in the Episcopal Church.
02:11: As many people know, the Episcopal Church has for a long time been moving in a very liberal direction or has moved in a very liberal direction.
02:18: And to give you an idea of what type of people the church is endorsing and the type of teaching that the church is endorsing, John Shelby Spong provides sort of a snapshot of that.
02:30: So, as we begin, I just want to read from the Washington Post.
02:35: This is their obituary for John Shelby Spong, and I'm not going to read the whole thing because it is rather lengthy, but I want to read the first couple paragraphs and key in on a few specific points.
02:47: So, it begins by saying, and this is written by Harrison Smith on September 14th, 2021.
02:53: The Right Reverend John Shelby Spong, a liberal theologian and retired bishop who shook up the modern Episcopal Church, championing the inclusion of women and LGBTQ people in the clergy while promoting a non-literal interpretation of Scripture, died September 12th at his home in Richmond.
03:16: He was 90.
03:18: The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, where Bishop Spong had preached early in his ministry, confirmed his death but did not give a specific cause.
03:27: Friends said his health had declined after he was hospitalized for a stroke in 2016.
03:34: And this might be why we haven't really heard much of him in the last few years.
03:38: The last I remember of John Shelby Spong was when I got to see him in the debate with Dr.
03:44: White, and that's been, I think, 2008, somewhere around in there.
03:50: I'll get back to that in a minute, but that's the last I had heard.
03:56: It goes on to say, Bishop Spong was an outspoken leader of the church's liberal wing known for his efforts to open the faith to marginalized groups and preach a message of love and justice that would resonate in an increasingly secular age.
04:12: Interesting use of language there, justice and love, and key words in modern liberal theology that that's the focus.
04:22: And we know that it's not what we would call biblical justice, but again, we'll get to that in a little while.
04:27: It goes on to say he acquired an international profile while writing more than two dozen books, appearing on TV shows such as Oprah and Larry King Live, and serving as Bishop of Newark, where he was the spiritual leader of some 40,000 Northern New Jersey Episcopalians from 1979 to the year 2000.
04:51: I mean, just to think of the massive and broad reaching scope of his thoughts and ideas, 12 books and a ministry that spanned 31 years and reached over 40,000 people.
05:10: And later on, when we begin to really look at what he taught, it's amazing that people who identify themselves as Christians would look to this man as a leader in their community.
05:23: This is really what we're going to talk about today.
05:28: And like I said, I wanted to mention the fact that I have met Dr.
05:31: Spong.
05:31: It was only one time, but I wanted to share a little bit about that.
05:36: When I was early in my ministry, I was very influenced by the teachings of Dr.
05:45: James White.
05:45: Many people know that I've talked about that on my program.
05:47: He's still a friend today, and I appreciate all that he does with Alpha and Omega Ministries.
05:51: Well, Dr.
05:52: White had a debate with John Shelby Spong here in Florida, and I had an opportunity to go to that debate.
05:59: It was actually a wonderful time.
06:01: I got an opportunity to sit and talk to Dr.
06:03: White for a little while.
06:04: It was like getting to sit with one of my heroes, my first time meeting him.
06:07: So that was really the focus of my trip was my time with Dr.
06:10: White.
06:11: So I didn't know anything about John Shelby Spong.
06:13: All I knew was that in the debate, he was supporting the LGBTQ plus position, which at that time, I don't even know what the letters were, but they were probably just LGBT or whatever.
06:26: But he was supporting the idea that the Bible supports homosexuality, and I was looking forward to a robust debate.
06:34: In fact, Matthew, you had a debate at your church on the same subject where you guys invited Dr.
06:39: White.
06:40: We did.
06:42: Off the subject for a second, but what did you think of the debate you guys had at your church? Did you feel like it was a good debate? Because I went, I was there that night.
06:50: What were your thoughts? I know I didn't prepare you for that question.
06:54: That's okay.
06:55: That's all right.
06:55: So I was moderating that debate, so I'm not allowed to have thoughts on it.
06:58: Oh, yes.
06:59: No, I'm kidding.
07:01: Yeah, so I can have thoughts about it afterwards, and I had some during it, but my job was to be neutral, and I hope I did so well.
07:09: But anyway, it was between Dr.
07:12: White and Dr.
07:12: Brown, actually.
07:13: It was a two-on-two debate.
07:15: And those two, not that Dr.
07:18: Brown cannot handle Greek and not that Dr.
07:20: White cannot handle Hebrew, but they had their counterpart, Dr.
07:24: Brown being a Messianic Jew and Dr.
07:25: White being a Greek professor, sort of working both the Old and New Testament, the one voice of scripture.
07:32: And the important thing is the thesis of that debate, excuse me one second, the thesis of that debate was, is homosexuality consistent with New Testament obedience? And so that puts squarely the burden of proof onto a handling of the New Testament.
07:54: And that was only really done by, I'll say, two and a half of the debaters.
08:01: Dr.
08:02: White, Dr.
08:03: Brown certainly did.
08:05: The gentleman whose name escapes me right now, I'm sorry.
08:10: There was a lady and a gentleman on the other side, it was Reverend Ruth was her name, I don't remember his name, I'm sorry.
08:16: Anyway, he did attempt to engage with some of the scriptural passages.
08:20: He went to Romans 1, he went to 1 Corinthians 6 and tried to play around a little bit, pulled out a concordance, pulled out a lexicon and tried to play a little bit with that.
08:31: Was, in my opinion, soundly defeated, but attempted to.
08:35: Um, but the majority and for Reverend Ruth's part and the rest of his part, it was just love.
08:40: It was just saying the word love over and over and over again, and not specifically nailing down anything.
08:45: So do I think the debate went well? Honestly, not really.
08:48: But to be honest with you on the liberal Christianity, the LGBT supporting side of Christianity, that's about what you get nowadays.
08:57: That was a very good picture of a little dabbling, maybe with the New Testament to try and assuage some of your more, I'll say, rigid thinkers.
09:07: And then the rest is just emotionalism.
09:10: Yeah, absolutely.
09:11: And I was just looking up while you were talking, Dr.
09:15: White's debate with John Shelby Spong was in 2006.
09:21: So that gives you an idea, November 8th, 2006.
09:24: At least it's what's coming up here on Alpha and Omega website.
09:27: And it's the title of it was, is homosexuality compatible with Christianity? And then a sub question, is it unloving and judgmental to believe that God has spoken on homosexuality? That's sort of the sub question of the debate.
09:42: And go ahead.
09:43: Well, that thesis is important because it says, is it compatible with Christianity? Yeah.
09:49: The thesis that we picked or was negotiated for the debate at our church was very specifically worded to ground the authority source in the New Testament.
09:58: I've watched that debate to what you're referring to, and I don't want to steal too much of your thunder, but I don't know that Spong even touched the New Testament, other than to say it's a useless old book.
10:08: And that's the point I was getting around to is.
10:11: Sorry.
10:12: No, you and I are, we're the two sides of a coin.
10:17: I'm the Calvinist side and you're the wrong side of the coin.
10:20: Oh, come on now.
10:22: Come on, there it is.
10:24: Okay.
10:25: Someday I'll get it right, Keith.
10:27: Well, we'll see.
10:29: Well, the Lord is always gracious.
10:31: Yes, there we go.
10:32: All day, every day.
10:33: Yeah, but looking at it from the perspective of the two debates, at least, as you said, in the debate that I went to at your church, there was sort of an attempt to deal with the text.
10:46: Spong just seems to throw the text out of hand a priori.
10:50: We don't need to worry about this.
10:51: This is not who cares what 2000 years ago, you know, Jewish Christians or Jewish thinkers who were writing the New Testament.
11:00: Who cares? You know, and that's sort of the attitude.
11:03: And again, it's been a while since I actually listened to the debate again.
11:07: I was there, but going back and listening to it, maybe somebody could correct me and go and say, well, they did talk about this, or they talk about that.
11:14: And I'm sure he cited some passages that would use the word love.
11:18: As you said, that's the one that they would always want to cite.
11:21: Or as recently, I posted something on YouTube.
11:26: It was something that I had preached and taught, and somebody posted a comment, let him who is without sin cast a first stone.
11:35: You know, John eight.
11:36: So it's always you can't say anything.
11:40: You can't make a judgment because Jesus said, judge not lest he be judged.
11:44: And that's the only verse that's the verse that people know more than John three.
11:48: 16 is just about Matthew chapter seven.
11:50: So this is who Spong was.
11:54: He was a person who took great issue with the Bible, took great issue with what we would say is biblical Christianity, very foundational things, the personality of God, the deity of Christ, all of these things that are central to what we believe as Christians.
12:18: And in a moment, we're going to be looking at 12 points of teaching that Dr.
12:23: Spong or Reverend Spong.
12:26: I don't even know what I could call him.
12:28: Whatever.
12:29: John Shelby got an honorary at some point somewhere.
12:32: So 12 points of doctrine that he presented, which were called actually 12 points of reform.
12:39: And he published in The Voice, which was a newsletter of the diocese of Newark in 1998.
12:44: So this has been around for over 20 years.
12:48: But before we do that, you and I before the program, we talked about another thing that is important, and this did come up, as you mentioned, back during the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
12:58: There was a lot of questions as to whether or not we should be celebrating the death of someone who is in opposition to the Bible, celebrating the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of course, a person who supported abortion, a person who was an advocate for the murder of babies.
13:23: And I did a program on that when she died.
13:25: I did a short.
13:27: That was back when I was doing the daily program.
13:30: So I did talk about this, but you had some thoughts on that that you wanted to share.
13:33: And I wanted to let you do that before we get into the theology of John Spong.
13:37: Sure, sure.
13:39: So this is a very pastoral concern for me.
13:41: And I mean that just sort of as an adverb, not as an office, because I'm not a pastor at our church.
13:46: But in our weekly Connect group, we talk about current events sometimes and how the Christian respond.
13:57: And there comes a question sometimes when a very famous person and Justice Ginsburg was one such person.
14:05: There is this knee jerk outpouring almost from even portions of what we would consider conservative Christianity to go out of our way to say nice things.
14:16: Well, she was amazing.
14:17: Well, she was great.
14:18: She was an advocate for this and that and the other.
14:21: And we need to mourn her passing and all that.
14:23: And that never sat right.
14:25: Nor did the grave dancers and mockers and scoffers and laughers and all that kind of thing.
14:30: And so I had some thoughts on this.
14:34: How ought the Christian to respond when someone like this dies? So if you have a saint in your church who loves the Lord, who is proclaiming the gospel, who is biblically sound, and the Lord calls him or her home, then there is mourning.
14:51: But there is also a celebration that the work is completed for this person.
14:56: And there's a complicated set of emotions.
14:58: But how do we respond if someone who is, I will say, opposed to the gospel? And Romans lays out that there's really only two categories.
15:08: You're either opposed or you're of Christ.
15:11: So here's laying all that out.
15:12: Here's kind of what I was thinking.
15:14: If someone in my connect group said, okay, knowing who Spong was and what he was about, should we be happy about him dying? If that's the question, here's how I would answer.
15:23: So our, starting at the very top, starting with God, our greatest desire should be for the demonstration of God's glory in all things.
15:34: The foremost way he has done so is in the incarnation and crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
15:42: That was the greatest demonstration of God's glory was him revealing himself in that way.
15:48: One of the effects of that is the salvation of humanity, not all of humanity, but the salvation of humanity and the reconciliation of creation.
15:58: Colossians tells us about this.
16:01: That is step three in this.
16:03: Now, a lot of people start with the greatest demonstration of God's glory is the salvation of humanity.
16:09: I want to be clear that that is definitely a thing that demonstrates God's glory, but we need to sort of back up a little bit and make this very God centered.
16:18: So with that being said, if something is preventing the salvation of humanity, if something is preventing or restraining the spread of the gospel and God in his grace and in his sovereignty chooses to remove that thing, then Christians should celebrate that removal.
16:40: If the government says it is illegal for you to pass out Bibles and proclaim the gospel, and then the government decides, actually, no, that is legal, Christians should celebrate.
16:52: The gospel now has avenues to move forward.
16:54: Or that government is overthrown by a better government that does a lot of that, then we can celebrate that.
17:01: Then we should celebrate that.
17:02: Absolutely.
17:03: The gospel moves forward and the gospel won't be stopped no matter the schemes of man.
17:07: But anyway, if God chooses in his grace and in his goodness to remove an obstacle to the gospel, we should celebrate.
17:15: And so from that perspective, if someone or something is leading people astray, if there is a wolf among the sheep and the shepherd in his goodness decides to strike that wolf and remove it from the flock, then we should celebrate and be glad that he has done so.
17:32: Now, balancing that thought out.
17:37: The loss of any human apart from Christ, we believe, results in the perishing of that sinner and a separation from God, a casting out, and an eternity of punishment.
17:53: Sure.
17:54: I would say it's—the term separation from God, I was— I understood.
18:00: I almost bit my tongue as I said it.
18:02: Separation from his grace.
18:06: Yes, that's the better way to say it.
18:07: But in the presence of his wrath.
18:09: But go ahead.
18:09: Yes.
18:10: No, thank you for the correction, because that's how I was raised, actually, is okay, well, sinners are separated from God.
18:16: And it wasn't only until about a year ago, but I think it's Revelation 13, where it says that the wrath of the Lamb is there and they are in the presence of the Lamb.
18:24: And I'm like, well, that just rewired a whole bunch of theology.
18:28: So I'm a recent arrival to knowing that that's what the Bible says.
18:33: So you're absolutely correct.
18:35: So if a person dies in a state of sin, if, as Jesus said in John 8, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.
18:46: And if someone does die in their sins, the Christian should grieve.
18:52: I think Spurgeon said, we don't know who is elect and who is not.
18:57: But we ought be clinging to their feet and I'm paraphrasing, clinging to their ankles with tears in our eyes, begging them to turn until their very last moment.
19:07: And if in the end, they choose my way instead of God's way, then that is a source of tremendous sadness for the Christian.
19:16: And so I guess wrapping all that up, that's a complicated way of saying Christians should rejoice that a deceiver and an enemy of the gospel, and we'll get into why that is in just a minute in case the listener thinks that's too strong of a claim, has been, we should rejoice that that has been removed.
19:33: But we need grieve the fact that this man, as far as we can tell, died without knowing Christ truly.
19:42: And perhaps God worked in his heart.
19:44: We don't know until the very last moment.
19:47: That's up for him to decide.
19:48: But as far as we can tell, we grieve that.
19:54: Yes, and I absolutely, and very well spoken, you mentioned we don't know the condition of his heart.
20:04: Certainly, he heard the gospel, had to have heard the gospel.
20:08: I know he heard the gospel the night of that debate.
20:10: I know that he's heard the gospel, probably from people trying to reach out to him on many occasions throughout his life as they heard him essentially putting the gospel under his feet and burying it into the ground as he stomped upon it.
20:26: So it's certainly he heard it, and we don't know what happened in the last moments of his life.
20:31: But one thing that we could say, at least I know, I see no evidence of a recanting.
20:38: I see no evidence of any change of heart.
20:41: And what we're about to read with his points of reform for Christianity is evidence of an unregenerate heart.
20:50: So at least in the majority of his adult life and teaching, he demonstrated an unregenerate heart.
20:59: And so, as you said, we don't know what happened in the last days or moments of his life, and we can only hope that there was some grace there that perhaps led him to repentance.
21:11: And I tell you, and one day I may do a show on this.
21:15: There's a list floating around the Internet of the last words of many unbelievers who died, atheists who died.
21:24: I'd give anything for another day.
21:27: There's just a lot of things that are said in the throes of the death pains.
21:33: And it's famous atheists, people who are known.
21:38: And I've thought about talking through that because thinking about what goes through someone's mind when they know their last breath is coming very soon.
21:47: And we certainly don't know the mind of John Shelby Spong in the last days of his life.
21:53: But if he held to a consistent position up to his death, then this is the position that he took.
22:01: And that's what's going to transition to the 12 points of reform.
22:04: Now, I do want to mention to our listener, if you're interested in reading these, because we're going to go through these kind of quickly.
22:08: If we spent five minutes on each of these would be another hour.
22:13: So there's 12 points here.
22:15: So some of them we're just going to read, make a few quick comments and move to the next one.
22:19: But if you want to look at these, feel free to just Google John Shelby Spong spelled just like it sounds, S-H-E-L-B-Y, Spong, S-P-O-N-G, and pull up his Wikipedia page.
22:33: It tells about where he served as the Bishop of Newark.
22:42: It talks about his time there, talks about his early life and career, his writings and his death.
22:47: But these are the points of reform, and these are also listed on the Wikipedia page.
22:51: So this is from him.
22:52: This is not something weird.
22:53: We're not attributing anything to him that he would not have affirmed himself.
22:57: We're not putting words in his mouth.
23:00: These are his words.
23:01: And interestingly enough, this was written, as I said earlier, in The Voice, which is the newsletter of the Diocese of Newark.
23:10: So this was not something that was in a personal correspondence to a friend or something that he published in the New York Times.
23:16: No, this was in a document that went out to the leaders of the Episcopal Church in Newark, and these are the 12 points of reform, and he elaborates on them in his book, A New Christianity for a New World.
23:36: Number one, theism as a way of defining God is dead.
23:41: So most theological God talk is today meaningless.
23:44: A new way to speak of God must be found.
23:48: As you said earlier, Matthew, I don't remember if it was before the show that he really didn't believe in a personal God, and we see that here.
23:57: The idea of theism.
23:58: What is the difference between theism and deism? Can you explain that real quickly? Because people go ahead.
24:04: Sure, sure.
24:05: So even before we get into this, if the listener has heard the discussion we had on modernism versus postmodernism, one of the things we talked about with postmodernism is that it is so amorphous and so difficult to understand a realm of thinking that does not have any absolutes or anything like that.
24:27: And actually, you asked me on the show, can you give us a good example of postmodernism, and I struggled to do that.
24:32: It's like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
24:34: Well, to the listener, I am pleased to report that John Shelby Spong has managed to nail Jell-O to the wall.
24:40: We're all about to marvel at the Jell-O that has been nailed to the wall.
24:45: And by the way, if you hear me speak in disdaining terms about this, I am disdainful of this, of the ideas and the text that we are reading.
24:55: The prior bits about Spong's, the fate of his soul and all that, and the grief that I feel is real.
25:01: But I will absolutely be merciless to his work because it is truly rough.
25:11: So, theism as a way of defining God is dead.
25:14: Well, theism versus deism, deism is simply the, I'll say the acknowledgement of some sort of higher power.
25:25: It's an idea that sort of came about very much in the Enlightenment, though it was very popular back in ancient Greek philosophy.
25:35: It acknowledged that there, it acknowledges that there is some higher power, but what that power is and what that power is up to, we really don't know.
25:43: Theism, T-H-E-I-S-M, is that this higher power, there may be, in theism, there can be, just in that word, there can be more than one, but the higher powers, if you will, are definable, describable, and in some way understandable.
26:04: Not entirely, but in some way understandable.
26:08: Spong just threw theism completely away.
26:12: There it is, it's dead.
26:14: And I think too, I would only add one thought, and that's theism tends to be personal, where deism tends to be impersonal.
26:21: Whatever the power is in theism, it's something that is able to be connected with and discussed with and even negotiated with, where the deism, it's simply a power or an energy or a force, almost like something that we see in Star Wars.
26:37: You know, the idea that use the force, trust in the force, that kind of idea.
26:42: Yeah, for sure.
26:43: So basically, as you said, he is denying a personal God, and the very first thing.
26:50: So you said, well, how does such a man become the Bishop of Newark? Well, don't we know just recently there was an atheist who became the chaplain at Harvard, or was it Princeton? Was it Harvard or Princeton? No, it was Harvard.
27:04: And I regret to inform you, and I'm 80% sure of this, I regret to inform you that whoever is running Tim Keller's Twitter account said, congratulations, can't wait to see what you do in this position.
27:16: Yeah.
27:17: Oh, no, I saw it.
27:18: I saw it.
27:18: I've already did one show on Tim Keller's.
27:22: I don't want it to seem like I got an axe to grind with him.
27:26: But yeah, I almost did a show on that as well, because it is.
27:29: Here we have an atheist who is a chaplain.
27:31: We have a man here who doesn't believe in a God, a personal God.
27:35: He's the Bishop of Newark.
27:36: And we wonder why Christianity is the way it is today.
27:39: Right.
27:39: Because we've abandoned the foundations of the faith in many places.
27:43: All right.
27:44: Number two, since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms.
27:48: And again, he's assuming one to make the second assertion.
27:52: Yeah.
27:52: Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity.
28:01: So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
28:05: Okay.
28:05: There's no personal God.
28:06: Therefore, Jesus is not the incarnation of that personal God.
28:10: So there you go.
28:11: We don't believe in personal God.
28:13: We don't believe in the deity of Christ.
28:15: He's two for two.
28:16: I think the apostles, and you could say this at any point, but the apostles would be quite surprised to learn about any of this for sure.
28:23: Absolutely.
28:24: Absolutely.
28:24: And he would say they were all products of ignorant 2000 year old worldview.
28:31: And certainly they would have an issue with him, but he doesn't care.
28:33: Yeah, wouldn't care.
28:35: Probably.
28:36: Number three, the biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
28:49: Oh boy.
28:51: So yeah, we both are thinking of the sermon that we would give in response to that question.
29:00: I professing to be wise, they became fools.
29:02: That's about it.
29:05: Absolutely.
29:05: If there was a case study in, they have worshiped the creation rather than the creator.
29:12: You might find it right here.
29:16: And I'll just, I'll go ahead and maybe be a bit forward and rope in four and five, because these three all tie together.
29:23: Four is the virgin birth understood as literal biology makes Christ divinity as traditionally understood impossible.
29:29: And number five, the miracle stories in the new Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
29:39: What has happened here is that, and if you're not tracking, well, I'll say this, it's extremely obvious what he's done here, and it's also a bit shrouded what he's done here.
29:49: And here's what I mean.
29:52: Spong has replaced God on the throne with himself specifically and humanity writ large.
30:00: Now that is obvious from the very first sentence, which is theism as a way of defining God as dead and that Jesus is not the incarnate nature of God, but three, four, and five are natural outflows of that.
30:16: Spong has a God, it's just not the God of the Bible.
30:19: That's right.
30:20: And this atheistic nonsense, well, I'll just say it this way.
30:26: The miracle stories of the new Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events.
30:33: Stop.
30:34: We have made Newton the ruler of God.
30:37: That is what has just happened here.
30:38: We just flipped it just like that.
30:40: It simply asserted Newton and in the previous one, Darwin are superior to God.
30:49: No, absolutely.
30:51: That is essentially what you see here.
30:53: Yep.
30:54: And it almost falls into the category of scientism, which is different than science, the worship of science as a deity in and of itself.
31:06: And I'm going to do this quick, but I want to tell a quick story because it's not about Spong.
31:12: It's about Crossom, who was a contemporary of Spong.
31:14: They both held very similar views about Jesus, about God.
31:17: And if you don't know who John Dominic Crossom is, he was part of the Jesus Seminar, liberal theologian, held many of the same positions and views as Spong.
31:25: And I don't know what they did together, so I can't speak to that.
31:28: But I know that they were contemporaries in time and of positions.
31:32: And I remember one time hearing Crossom say that the feeding of the 5000 was not a miracle in the sense of Jesus did not create bread out of bread and fish out of fish.
31:47: But what he did was he encouraged those who had bread and fish to share with those who didn't.
31:52: And what it was was it was a great socialist miracle.
31:55: It was the idea of the haves sharing with the have nots.
32:00: Jesus convinced those who had brought food to share it with those who did not have food.
32:04: And that's how 5000 people were fed.
32:08: And you can hear people saying, oh, wow, what a miraculous.
32:13: It's a true miracle of benevolence.
32:16: Jesus getting the haves to share with the have nots.
32:19: And that's the miracle of the feeding of the 5000, according to John Dominic Crossom.
32:23: Now, again, I never heard Spong affirm that.
32:25: But based upon what he said about the miracles of the New Testament have to be reinterpreted.
32:32: That's how it happens.
32:33: That's an example of how the miracles get reinterpreted.
32:36: It's not a miracle in the sense of Jesus never created anything out of anything.
32:41: He simply encouraged people to share.
32:45: And that's which is an astounding statement.
32:48: If you take the whole counsel of God, let's let's step out of just out of just that.
32:55: Okay, well, let me say this.
32:56: Let's grant that premise for just a moment.
32:58: As absurd as it is, if we just go to Colossians 1, where you have the majesty of Christ as the one who created all things, you can say and I don't hold this, by the way, you can say that the feeding of the 5000 was simply an allegory.
33:16: But if you take Colossians 1 and all of those high lofty terms of Christ as being the one who created all things, any bread that's getting passed around was still created by Christ.
33:29: So, you know, I mean, I take the feeding of the 5000 quite literally.
33:34: But anyway, yeah, no, absolutely.
33:35: And I think a biblical, just a cursory biblical reading gives us that it's not it doesn't have the and the thing that cross him would say in his teaching, because I've heard him teach on this.
33:47: He would say, it's a parable, dummy.
33:49: The whole thing is a parable.
33:50: Jesus's whole life is a parable.
33:52: And that was his favorite phrase.
33:54: It's a parable, dummy, you know, as if like a Carvel, it's the economy stupid or something.
34:00: Yeah, exactly.
34:01: Exactly.
34:03: So number five just stuck out in my mind as connecting to other teachers in the same vein.
34:10: Number six, the view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
34:20: I remember R.C.
34:23: Sproul was preaching and a guy yelled at him as he was preaching on the atonement.
34:27: And the guy yelled, that's primitive and obscene.
34:30: And R.C.
34:31: Sproul stopped.
34:32: And he said, you're right.
34:33: The message of the cross is primitive.
34:35: It is obscene.
34:37: It is a scandal.
34:38: It is.
34:40: But it's true.
34:44: You know, this point, this one and there's, so not everything that is false is entirely false.
34:55: Sure.
34:56: And I completely affirm substitutionary atonement, penal substitutionary atonement, if we want to be ultra specific about it.
35:02: But this is an idea, number six is an idea that I think a larger number of people much closer to what I would call legitimate Christianity believe.
35:14: If you saw Brian Zahn and Michael Brown debate this point, Michael Brown went right into IHOP and did a really good job defending a traditional view of the atonement.
35:26: But I would say, just if we're going to talk about things in categories, Brian Zahn is more of a Christian than John Shelby Spong was.
35:32: That does not mean that Brian Zahn is a full Orthodox, lowercase O believer, and that he has all of his doctrines right.
35:41: But he had a better idea than Spong did.
35:44: Brian Zahn at least believed that there was a God who would never do something so horrible as to sacrifice his son.
35:50: He was at least that far along.
35:53: Zahn would probably affirm, I don't know this because I don't know his theology, but he would certainly affirm personal God, probably the deity of Christ, all those things, the truthfulness of scripture, all those things.
36:05: Yeah, I think he would.
36:06: He made proofs from scripture.
36:07: He preached from Acts.
36:10: And by the way, listener, if you're hearing this and you're interested, that is called the monster God debate.
36:16: It's probably, even though I don't agree with Michael Brown on much when it comes to theology, because he and I would disagree on a lot.
36:24: His stand for the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ in that debate was probably one of the best ones out there, especially when it's having to go toe to toe with somebody who's challenging them.
36:38: He really, as Matthew mentioned earlier, has a masterful grasp on Hebrew, and he's able to go back into Isaiah 53 and other passages and draw out the idea of penal substitution in the old covenant.
36:50: So I would definitely encourage you to listen to that.
36:54: If you haven't, the monster God debate between Michael Brown and Brian Zahn.
36:58: And if you're concerned about having to spend a whole afternoon, it's a relatively short debate.
37:03: I believe when they cut it and produced it, it's only like an hour, hour 10, something like that.
37:09: It is not an extremely long debate, so you can actually listen through it on a couple of car rides.
37:15: And like you said, Zahn would probably affirm portions of number six, but he certainly would not affirm the idea that the sacrifice of Christ must be dismissed.
37:29: Yes, I would completely agree.
37:31: He would just reinterpret what the sacrifice did.
37:34: But the thing that really makes spawns over and beyond is he's saying the whole idea of sacrifice needs to be dismissed, and that would be dangerous.
37:45: Number seven, resurrection.
37:47: This is interesting language.
37:49: Resurrection is an action of God.
37:51: Jesus was raised into the meaning of God.
37:55: Yeah, both of us.
37:58: Therefore, cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
38:05: Let me translate that into very simple terms.
38:09: Jesus did not rise from the dead.
38:12: That's his assertion right there.
38:15: And the Apostle Paul says, if Christ did not raise, we are still in our sins.
38:19: And basically, he affirmed right there that he disagrees with Pauline theology, that he disagrees with the necessity of the resurrection.
38:30: I don't know what he did at Easter, but he certainly didn't celebrate a resurrection as we understand it.
38:38: So the first five or six words, resurrection is an action of God.
38:43: Actually true.
38:44: Yeah, sure.
38:45: That is the case, specifically in Christ's physical body.
38:50: And eventually for all those who are in Christ on the last day.
38:54: Yep, that's true.
38:55: But then now spawn would affirm neither of those.
38:57: But no, but the next eight words, yeah, kill it with fire.
39:02: Jesus was raised into the meaning of God.
39:05: And dear listener, if you want to know what postmodernism is, it is staring you in the face with flashing warning lights.
39:13: That's it.
39:14: Not even the modernist.
39:17: A person who tells you Jesus was executed by the Romans.
39:21: He was literally actually physically dead.
39:24: And then three days later, he was no longer dead.
39:27: His body was raised from the dead.
39:31: That as a summary of the resurrection is fairly, I think, logically consistent.
39:39: Jesus was raised into the meaning of God.
39:42: If your first thought is, what does that even mean? Then you have stepped on the postmodernist landmine.
39:47: Welcome home.
39:48: That is what it is.
39:50: Yeah.
39:50: It cannot therefore be a physical resuscitation, whatever.
39:54: Yeah, can't be.
39:55: Yeah.
39:55: All right.
39:56: We got a few more.
39:57: The next one is actually interesting because now what do we always say? It's a death, burial and resurrection.
40:03: And often we mentioned the ascension that Christ ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the father.
40:08: The next one attacks the ascension number eight.
40:11: It says the story of the ascension assumed a three tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post Capernaum.
40:20: There we go.
40:20: We've seen Darwin.
40:22: We have seen Newton.
40:24: Now we see Copernicus being brought in.
40:27: And the idea of post Copernican space age, the idea is we know we live on a round ball that's surrounded by an atmosphere that's surrounded by empty space that's filled with other celestial bodies.
40:39: And he would say, so Jesus didn't ascend because where would you have ascended to space? That doesn't make sense.
40:43: We know better than the Bible writers.
40:45: They believed in a three tiered universe, and we know that that's not the case.
40:50: Again, he's assuming a lot about what they understood, and he's assuming that Jesus's ascension was determined by the limitations of our space and globe.
41:06: And the Bible says Christ ascended into heaven.
41:10: I'm sure at some point he simply went out of sight or went out of view.
41:14: And at that point with the father, it's not as if, and this is where I'm going to get a little weird.
41:20: And you stop me if you think I'm being too weird.
41:23: I tend to think of heaven sort of dimensionally versus in the sense of when we think of, like, up and down, people think you rise up into heaven or you and then you think the world's round.
41:39: Okay, well, now you're going out to get to heaven.
41:41: And there have been some astronauts who've gone out into space and say, well, I went to space and God wasn't there.
41:47: Well, of course, but you're not in the realm of God.
41:50: You've simply gone into the realm of space.
41:52: And that's not where God is in the sense of God is in a dimension that we cannot see or understand.
41:57: And right now we've seen pictures in scripture where people had their eyes open to see into the spiritual dimension where they were able to see the angels and see things.
42:12: Isaiah chapter six, for instance.
42:14: Yeah, and so when Christ ascended into heaven, it wasn't as if he's going higher, higher, higher, higher, like ascending a ladder to the top.
42:25: He's going to a different.
42:27: And when I say dimension, I don't want to seem like multiverse dimensional type.
42:31: You could say a realm that would be a different realm.
42:34: Thank you.
42:34: That's a better term.
42:35: He's moving to a different realm of being at that point, a realm of where he is and he's ascending into heaven.
42:43: I do think was the purpose for that.
42:46: The purpose.
42:47: The reason why he didn't just disappear was because there's a picture of God being above God being the idea of below she all and that which is below is apart from God and that which is above is close to God in the sense of the way we think we look up to heaven.
43:06: We look down to the earth.
43:07: And so Christ didn't simply disappear.
43:09: He ascended and in a way gave us a visualization of where he was going, what he was doing.
43:17: So the idea.
43:19: Well, go ahead.
43:21: So spatial references are used all over scripture to help us understand that point in Ephesians, I believe in Ephesians chapter two, it says that God has seated us in the heavenly places.
43:35: We are still here on this earth.
43:37: We are still walking around.
43:39: However, that has an eternal truth to it, that those who are in Christ, God being outside of time has already seated us in the heavenly places in Ephesians chapter six.
43:49: You have the spiritual warfare verse in verse 12, where it says that we wrestle, we're wrestling against rulers and powers and authorities, and he names all these in the heavenly realms or in the spiritual realms and all the way back to the very first sentence in the Bible in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
44:07: There is a separation made.
44:10: Understanding ancient cosmology, I just had this weird idea that maybe the biblical writers had it right.
44:14: And we don't always all we have done.
44:19: Copernicus and Newton and John Shelby Spong is we have further explored what is meant by the earth and the earth as a concept is our realm of existence.
44:30: And so say someday we stick a base on Pluto.
44:35: We are still in what the biblical writers would refer to as the earth.
44:39: We have not ascended to God's realm and we have not descended into the realm below.
44:43: So that's I have no problem talking in ancient cosmology.
44:48: I think those categories are still very relevant today.
44:51: And but Spong just throws it out because that's just what he did.
44:56: Sure.
44:57: There's a funny picture the economist had speaking of this, how a lot of Christians see the ascension or what it was about the nation of Brazil and the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer there in Rio taking off like a rocket ship over the is about Brazil's economy takes off.
45:16: But I've used it and I'll send it to you now in chat.
45:18: You can look at it and laugh, but and maybe put it up on the screen.
45:22: Maybe not.
45:23: I don't know.
45:24: But it's just funny because it's how a lot of Christians, I think, visualize the ascension happening.
45:29: Jesus with rocket motors in his feet, just flying off into space.
45:33: You know, that's funny.
45:34: Yep.
45:34: Yeah.
45:34: Yeah.
45:35: I'll have to try to try to squeeze that in there and post.
45:40: Well, the last few and just because of time, and I know we've kind of we've been opining a lot on these different ones.
45:48: I'm going to read through them.
45:50: And if you want to stop me and say a few things, but just listener, as you hear these here, what is being attacked and I'll give it away.
45:58: Number nine, he's attacking scripture.
46:00: Number ten, he's attacking the personal relationship that we can have with God through prayer.
46:05: Number ten, he's intentionally attacking life after death.
46:09: And but then in number twelve, he's sort of attacking what he would consider the injustices of the church, which is not necessarily wrong, but his answer to it is certainly not right.
46:21: So the number nine is there's no external objective revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
46:29: So no Bible, the scriptures, we can't trust the Bible.
46:33: Number two, from an epistemological standpoint, that should really be point one.
46:37: Yeah, absolutely.
46:38: Because that explains all the other ones.
46:41: Yeah, absolutely.
46:41: It doesn't believe the Bible.
46:43: Number ten, prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in any in a particular way.
46:51: So he's saying God, you can't really ask God to intervene.
46:54: He's not going to.
46:55: And that's that the hope.
46:58: Number eleven, the hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment.
47:04: The church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
47:11: Boy, we could spend a whole hour on that.
47:15: What do we understand as far as how does guilt operate? And certainly there are those who impose mistreatment on people through the use of guilt and a misunderstanding of grace and works.
47:36: So as you said earlier, there may be a little truth in some of these, but it's so shrouded in the lie that it's hard to say, well, there's some truth to this because it's all coming from a wrong worldview.
47:49: And then number twelve, all human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is.
47:57: And this one, and you may want to say something about this, but I'll say it.
48:01: To even say all human beings bear God's image, but you've already said you don't believe in a personal God.
48:07: So what does that even mean? Meaningless.
48:09: And you and I, if we're defending the doctrine of the Imago Dei, if we're defending the idea of the value of human life, which is central to our views on abortion or things like that, we would go to scripture.
48:23: We would say, this is what God has said.
48:25: And in what Jesus said when he was encountering the Pharisees, and he says, have you not read what God spoke to you saying? And then he points out, I think Isaiah.
48:35: So we would do the same thing that Jesus did.
48:37: And we would define human beings as being extremely valuable in God's sight because they're made in the image of God.
48:44: But Spong does not have a scripture to do that from.
48:48: And at this point, he does not have a God to do that with.
48:51: And he does not have a formed view of life after death as point 11 said.
48:58: So who cares if you mistreat an image bearer of God? That's right.
49:01: So what? The atonement wasn't real either.
49:04: So what? Yeah.
49:07: And he goes on to say, therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.
49:18: Now, we would both likely affirm a very similar understanding of that.
49:25: It is wrong to discriminate in the sense of mistreating people.
49:30: Yes.
49:30: At the same time, we do understand that we make distinctions because the discrimination in one sense is just the making of distinctions.
49:40: And that does happen.
49:42: But notice what this happens always when you talk to liberals.
49:47: And I hate to put liberals like in a homogenous clump because they're not sure when you speak to liberal people in general, they tend to connect race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation as if all of those are immutable facts about someone.
50:07: Somebody's race is certainly an immutable fact, even though people now are trying to be transracial people who are trying to change their race.
50:15: But the idea of race is an immutable.
50:20: I'm a white guy, you're a white guy, and that's something that's not going to change.
50:26: It's an unchangeable part of who we are.
50:28: Our ethnicity.
50:30: Also, we can't go back and change who our parents or grandparents were, where we grew up.
50:34: Our gender, even though, again, the whole idea of transgenderism is up for discussion right now, but we would say it's an immutable part of who we are.
50:44: But sexual orientation is put into that same category as this is just the way they were made.
50:51: They were made in God's image and they were made this way.
50:54: They were made to be homosexuals.
50:57: And that what's interesting is, and this again could take us into a longer conversation.
51:05: There are some in the homosexual advocacy.
51:10: I hate to call it a community, but those who advocate for homosexuals.
51:14: Who don't like the idea of saying that homosexuality is an immutable part of someone, because they say at that point they lose some of their human freedom and will.
51:25: They say, no, this is who I am because this is who I choose to be and I should be celebrated for who I choose to be.
51:32: And so there's almost a disagreement within the community of those who would say, no, my sexuality is an immutable part of who I am versus someone who would say, no, I chose this and this is right because I get to choose whoever I want to be.
51:43: I can choose to be again.
51:45: I could choose to be a seven foot tall black man, because that's who I choose to be.
51:51: So that again could take us to a wild subject.
51:54: But the idea here is he's saying none of these things can be used for any discrimination.
51:58: And you know why? Because he would say that the church has been wrong for 2000 years and saying that homosexuality is a sin and something that people need to repent of.
52:09: What's very interesting to me on this is that the abolitionist movement against slavery was primarily zealous Christians.
52:19: The people who were asserting that we should not have legalized discrimination in the United States were primarily Christians.
52:27: Now, that's not to say there weren't Christians on the other side, twisting the Bible to do what they, you know, but that's the case.
52:35: Everyone was appealing to a standard, but again, Spong has thrown out the standard.
52:42: So why shouldn't I discriminate based on race? Who cares? Jeff Durbin said in a debate he did with some atheists.
52:49: If all you are is, and I love this phrase, a bag of fizzing atoms in a universe that doesn't care, then why does it matter at all? And so what I would say here is first off, yes, if we're going to use scripture as our standard, which Spong will not do, but I will, Colossians 3 does tell us there is no Jew nor Greek, there is no slave nor free, there is no this nor this, and he lays out all these diametrically opposed categories to say that we are all in Christ.
53:18: That's not to say those distinctions don't exist, but he's saying before the throne of God and at the altar and at the table, none of those are hindrances.
53:29: But for sexual orientation, like you said, the category confusion is very interesting because the Bible does speak specifically against that very clearly against aberrant sexual orientations.
53:42: The two that God has created, of course, live those out, they're good and wonderful things, and stay with the one you were created to be.
53:50: But in that case, you have a conflation of those things.
53:57: And to the person who says, even maybe to the listener of this, I don't know, who says, well, I was just born this way.
54:02: I'm actually not going to argue with you on that.
54:05: The thing is, Jesus says we have to be born again.
54:08: Amen.
54:08: And so it is very possible that, yes, you were born with that particular sin afflicting you.
54:15: I, listen, whether it's greed or gluttony or pornography or any of these sins, yes, absolutely, sin has cursed all of creation.
54:23: And maybe the sin that you have is an aberrant sexual desire orientation, something like that.
54:30: Christ offers the ability to be born again and to be drawn out of that.
54:35: And that is the good news of the gospel.
54:37: And in fact, what is referred to by the LGBT advocates as a clobber passage, First Corinthians 6, 9 and 10, the very next verse says, but you were washed, but you were sanctified and you were redeemed by this God who can do that.
54:52: And so we do not have a negative view of those who would espouse an LGBT identity in the sense that we think they're forever cut off and irredeemable and all that.
55:03: No, the grace of the cross is there, but you need the grace of the cross.
55:08: That's right.
55:08: And that's the difference.
55:10: And I think that's a good place to draw to a close.
55:12: The difference between our position and Spong's position on this issue is he would say, as a homosexual, you're good the way you are.
55:20: Stay the way you are.
55:20: This is the way you are.
55:22: And there's no need to repent.
55:25: We would say God has offered through the cross a way of redemption and salvation, which comes through repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ.
55:34: And Spong would disagree with everything I just said.
55:38: And therefore, as we draw this to a close, that's the key to all of this.
55:43: This man for 31 years, according to the Wikipedia page, 79 to the year 2000.
55:49: He stood among 40,000 Episcopalians as a voice of teaching, as a voice of wisdom, according to their authority.
55:58: And he was a man who was denying scripture.
56:01: He was denying God.
56:02: He was denying Christ.
56:04: And let me tell you something.
56:05: He's not alone.
56:06: There are many men and women who take the same positions as Spong who continue to stand behind pulpits and churches in the world.
56:19: And we need to be mindful of men and women like this and be willing to refuse to listen and refuse to take what they are handing out and be willing to challenge it when the opportunities arise.
56:35: As I was telling Matthew earlier, I'm about to begin teaching in 2 John, which is a one page book of the Bible.
56:44: But the focus in it, at least a portion of the focus of that small book is how we are to receive those who are false teachers.
56:53: And John says we don't even give them a greeting.
56:57: It doesn't mean that we're not kind, but we do not welcome them as brothers and sisters in Christ, but we mark them out as ones who are dangerous.
57:08: And that is really what we have intended to do here today for you.
57:13: The listener is to say, here's a man he's passed on.
57:16: So this gave us certainly a reason to reference him because he has passed on.
57:21: But his books, tapes, videos, and YouTube videos, they're not going away anytime soon.
57:27: In fact, with his death, those things may see a spike in popularity, and you may see something come across your Facebook news feed, and you need to know who this man is so you know how to mark out and look out for somebody who teaches like this.
57:42: I'm going to give you one last word.
57:43: If you have anything, Matthew, I'm going to draw to a close.
57:45: Absolutely.
57:46: To the listener, I would say carrying that balance of being grateful that a person who would deceive many is now no longer deceiving the brethren, but also mourning the loss of a sinner who, as far as we can tell, died apart from God's grace.
58:04: Just sort of keep that in mind as you go about thinking about how to interact with this.
58:11: And something, and I will assert this is truth, something a friend of mine told me when we were discussing this a couple of days ago.
58:18: John Shelby Spong, when he was alive on this earth, did not believe in a personal God.
58:23: But John Shelby Spong now does.
58:27: And a God who is just, and righteous, and holy, and merciful, but also who judges.
58:34: And all of us, one day, stand before that very same God, and He will be just.
58:39: And so if that causes you concern, then get in touch with Keith or get in touch with me, I guess.
58:47: Cling to the cross of Jesus, and He will be your Savior, and a perfect one for all who cry out to Him.
58:55: Amen.
58:55: I was one time doing a funeral for a man, and while I was doing a funeral, one of his friends got up and went and shouted at the funeral director.
59:02: He said, this man did not believe the things that that preacher is saying.
59:06: He needs to be quiet.
59:07: Well, by God's grace, the funeral director didn't stop me.
59:11: I got to finish my sermon.
59:12: But as I finished, I walked out, and I came face to face with the funeral director.
59:16: And he says, you know, there was a man who said that you should stop preaching because the guy in the casket did not believe what you were saying.
59:23: And I looked at the funeral director, and I said, well, he does now.
59:27: Yeah, that's the fact.
59:29: He does now.
59:31: Friends, listeners, thank you for being with us today on Conversations with a Calvinist.
59:36: Matthew, thank you for being with us again.
59:38: As always, I appreciate you being here, and I hope that this has been enlightening and encouraging for you.
59:44: And again, if you have any questions, you can reach us at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
59:50: Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
59:52: My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.
59:55: May God bless you.
01:00:30: May God be with you.