Godshew.org's Uncensored Discussion Forum
It amazes me just how "many" followers (fans, groupies) these leaders to destruction have.
Here's Spong's latest I don't know, but I'll write a book on it anyway, since many would probably buy it:
A Spong Reader (paid up sub-scribe-r) from Dallas, Texas writes: I find it impossible to believe in the existence of life after death. I would be greatly interested in your comments on immortality, a topic intimately associated with all religious belief.
Spong replies (in the free newsletter, to tickle the fancy of some wondering if they should buy it):
A Reader from Dallas, Texas writes:
"I was introduced to your Internet essays only a few months ago and was so impressed with your ideas that I purchased and read your book A New Christianity for a New World. I heartily agree with your arguments against the existence of a theistic God and with your discussion of the implications to which such arguments lead. However, there is one fundamental implication that was not discussed in this book: the issue of immortality. As a scientist trained in physiology and biochemistry, I find it impossible to believe in the existence of life after death. I would be greatly interested in your comments on immortality, a topic intimately associated with all religious belief."
Dear Reader,
Thanks for your letter. I wrestle with that question constantly. If I write another book it will be on that subject. I have worked on it for years. I find myself torn between my understanding of God that involves an unending relationship and the various religious concepts of life after death, which have little meaning for me. The very use of the word 'after' involves a dimension of time that is simply not appropriate to what we are seeking to describe, since time itself is a category that makes sense only inside the time/space universe that we human beings inhabit. I think the use of the idea of life after death as a method of behavior control is not worthy of further consideration. It is obvious that the deep survival instinct born of our evolutionary past drives most of our life after death concepts. Despite these concerns I am still not able to dismiss the possibility that we are and will be invited into the eternity which God inhabits.
It is still hard to know even where to begin to address this subject. I have become convinced that one essential first step is to learn to embrace death as a friend not an enemy, because that introduces us to a new dimension of what it means to be human. Whatever heaven means it is my conviction that it was not designed to define a quantity but a quality of life.
I have a profound sense of what it means to be a self-conscious human being. The gift of self-consciousness makes us capable of communing with the source of life itself, however that source is defined. Whatever conclusions I finally work out on this subject will be speculative at best for they are little more than a human attempt to describe that which is beyond every human capability to describe. I will, however, work from the human to the divine since there is no other way that any human being can work. The acceptance of death as a fact of life is a doorway into a new, rich understanding of what life is all about. Heaven, if it is real, and I think it is, can only be another dimension of life itself.
I have written twice about this subject. One was the last chapter of my book, "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?" The other was in the next to the last chapter of "Why Christianity Must Change or Die." Those two places represent all I can now say with integrity on this subject. I will write this next book, only if I can find a way to say more.
My best.
-- John Shelby Spong
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My comment on such Q & A:
Spong's "best" is the biblical "worst", a word which notably doesn't occur in the New Testament. So we're talkin bwd <-BC, not fwd AD->.
It's preposterous order to teach first, learn after.
The reader from Texas pretty much flat out said he/she didn't believe in life after death, since life + death(added) is obviously a dead end.
Spong missed it. Being highmindead, it obviously went over his head: Law: the ministration of death; Which had an expiry date, and expired, way back in BC.
Immortality, "eternal life" thereof, is not life + death = life after, but rather (life + death) - death = life only. It's "elementary" dear watson, not even high school nor university. Grace + Law is allegorically Life + Death; So the equation of eternal salvation and eternal life thereof becomes
Grace + Law) - Law = Grace only = Life only.
POINT: Grace is neither of two laws in Mt 22:36-40.
More Excellent is neither broadmindead nor narrowmindead. His Grace neither tempts(laws) nor can be tempted(lawed); And thereby His Grace cannot lie(law) nor die(law), which makes His Grace immortal.
Grace can't lie nor die. Law Law does both.
The GRACE of our Lord Jesus Christ with you all. Amen.
