There is an odd tendency in today's Episcopal churches -- particularly in urbane settings -- to focus on the writings of four people:
- Marcus Borg
- John Dominic Crossan
- John Shelby Spong
- Elaine Pagels
Here’s why they’re of dubious value to the transformation of disciples of Jesus Christ in the Episcopal Church.
Marcus Borg (HarperSanFrancisco) is certainly the best of this bunch. I have read his fairly recent book, ‘The Heart of Christianity,’ and I do like much of what he says – but I don’t trust his witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And here's why, he was an active member of the Jesus Seminar whose ultra-minimalist view of the Gospels' authenticity grabbed many a sensationalist headline in their day. Moreover, Marcus Borg has said, “The truth of Easter really has nothing to do with whether the tomb was empty on a particular morning 2,000 years ago or whether anything happened to the corpse of Jesus. I see the truth of Easter as grounded in the Christian experience of Jesus as a living spiritual reality of the present.”
The problem with this statement is that goes against everything the disciples of Jesus Christ have said since that particular morning 2,000 years ago. What they said then – and the earliest accounts in the New Testament witness to it – “he rose.” The letters of Paul and the Gospel of Mark (written between 49-62) attest very coherently to this core proclamation -- Jesus' dead body was placed in the tomb – then the tomb was empty – then many of us experienced him as a living spiritual and physical reality subsequently." It may be that these early disciples and witness of the resurrection were wrong – but what they said was, “We saw the Lord – as a living, spiritual and physical reality.” Anybody so willing to deny this key witness should not be a major influence in our church.
John Dominic Crossan (also on HarperSanFrancisco) is a founding member of the Jesus Seminar. According to Crossan, Jesus’ body was dumped and eaten by wild animals. He allows that 'something happened' which the first witnesses experienced -- and this is 'resurrection.' But his sense of it is extremely reductionist and vague.
John Shelby Spong (HarperSanFrancisco) has written a lot of books. He got off to a pretty good start several decades ago as the smart young rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia. His book This Hebrew Lord wasn’t really too bad. But as the Bishop of Newark he continued to put out books which got increasingly worse. His niche was “the skeptical bishop willing to question the basics of the Christian faith for intelligent readers of today.” It is notable that as his book sales got bigger his diocese got vastly smaller in membership - shrinking by more than a third in his tenure as a bishop.
He is fond of describing the biblical and traditional Christian worldview as ‘pre-Copernican.’ Like many modernists, Spong rejects things mysterious, miraculous, ethereal, or beyond human scientific comprehension.
Elaine Pagels (Random House) has, like Jack Spong, had a long and productive publishing career. Pagels is a college professor – at Princeton. Yet, apart from publishing a lot of popular books – she appears to have left many of her colleagues in the academy unimpressed as regards her own scholarship.
10 comments:
Wow - I probably would not still be a Christian if it weren't for these authors. I don't read much Spong these days as he tends to say the same thing in each book but Borg and Crossan have challenged my thinking and shown me that it is okay to have questions and seek answers and still follow Christ. Of course my true conversion after leaving the church for a while was reading Bultmann!
This is a very helpful description of these authors, and I think it is generally fair as well. I also have read many of their books, and they were helpful (to a point) as I began to re-engage with the church (luckily, I then turned to Williams, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Augustine, Calvin, Luther and Gutierrez...).
My own wish is that if churches use these authors, they don't stop there, but introduce people to the deeper, richer and "thicker" biblical scholars and theologians...
Peter+
http://santospopsicles.blogspot.com
I think that these authors illustrate the truth of H. Richard Niebuhr's critique of liberal Protestantism as a religion that propagates "A God without wrath [who] brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross" [The Kingdom of God in America].
BTW, I hope you don't mind Greg, but I still have posted over at my blog an earlier, fuller version of this piece in all of its glory.
It is telling that in a footnote in The Meaning of Jesus, Borg admits that his rejection of the historical factuality of the empty tomb has as much to do with his theological commitment to a noninterventionist god and religious pluralism as it does to historical evidence (p. 268).
It is at least refreshing to have him lay his presuppositions on the table. But, it does not seem any more intellectually satisfying than those who say, "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it"
As Albert Einstein once said,
“What one calls a fact depends on the theory one brings to it.”
More than anything I find Borg et al boring in their predictability. Their M.O. is to make God, Jesus, and Christianity safe for the intellectual, social, and political prejudices of contemporary American "liberals".
The result is a reduction of the Christian witness to something tame and uninspiring to anyone but those whose prejudices are thus affirmed.
I just got finished reading Luke Timothy Johnson's _The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels_ and found what he had to say about Spong and Crossan very helpful.
Well, you'll be glad to know that Spong bores me to tears and I've never read any of the others. (Oh, except the "Gnostic Gospels," which I found interesting for its history; I didn't know anything about the topic before that.)
And I'm a once-very-hostile-to-Christianity returner-to-the-Church after 35+ years. So apparently these folks are not required re-entry reading for people even in my situation....
One major problem with the Jesus Seminar and folks in a similar vein is that they are attempting to answer a question that people of faith, or people seeking faith in God, are not asking. They are trying to answer the question "Can it be factually verified?" Most seekers are asking the question "Is it true?" Two very different questions for two very different audiences.
When you say "they’re of dubious value to the transformation of disciples of Jesus Christ in the Episcopal Church" it sounds like you mean they are of no value whatsoever in forming Christians.
But then you probably know that's not true; some outside the church are helped by these guys to take a second look or even to come in and worship. It is not as if they are completely worthless.
It is up to the diocese and the parish to be prepared to find those brought in by Borg and Crossan, say, and lead them onto solid ground. Now that would be a task worthy of your typing skills. Borg and Crossan, et al cannot do it all--obviously--but they can easily be turned to strong positive--even evangelical--use.
It's hard to do--very, very hard I know personally--but we should try mightily to hold back on needless assaults on other Christians, and even the material heretics.
How about a focus on several other authors. They are not as adept at self-promotion but I think they speak directly to important and contemporary theological questions: Luke T. Johnson, N.T. Wright, John Koenig, Leander Keck, John Polkinghorne, and good old H. Richard who is making a comeback,
I second the motion by Country Parson!
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