I
haven’t read much by Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop
Spong. I had assumed (rightly) that he was a
rather ego-centric self-promoting American
“type.” He is aware of these traits, but
strongly believes in the need for a publicist
for the hidden secrets of theological
scholarship. He says his work is following in
the footsteps of English Bishop John Robinson
whose Honest
to God opened a flood of theological
debate when it appeared in 1963. So Spong
disarmed me! I had been moved as a student by
Bishop Robinson and by his book. I heard him
preach in the University church in Cambridge. At
that time, I thought that telling the rest of us
what scholarship was saying about our religious
tradition was indeed “honest.” Incidentally, it
is sad that an honest person like Robinson had
to pay for the honesty by lack of career
promotions. Anyway – I picked up Spong’s 2016
book Biblical
Literalism: A Gentile Heresy and found it
illuminating in the Robinson tradition. For
those in a Christian tradition it is an
important read.
The
thesis behind the work is that Matthew’s gospel
– like the related Mark and Luke – is material
put together for liturgical use by the early
Christians who were in the synagogues around the
Roman world during the first half-century of the
religious tradition. The book comes in ten (X)
“Parts” each with a handful of chapters.
In
Part I Spong begins with background on Christian
history, the gospels and the liturgical year of
the synagogue. There was indeed a historical
person Jesus and he died. Several of the letters
attributed to Paul can be linked to one “Paul”
author and these are the earliest Christian
writings leading back to the first few decades
after Jesus’ death. They provide a baseline to
Christian thinking and liturgy in those early
years of the movement.
The
gospels came later – some 90 years after Jesus’
death. I wonder why gospels were written then.
Spong doesn’t say. However, Spong notes in Part
VIII on the matter of apocalypse that shortly
before these gospels were written, there was a
traumatic war with Rome that ended with the
leveling of Jerusalem and its temple, the end of
the Jewish nation and the scattering of the
Jews. It was the end of a world known to Jews –
including the Christian Jews. Separation of
Christians and Jews began. It seems to me the
writings could be related to this end of an old
world.
Whatever
prompted
it, in around 90 CE written resources emerged
about Jesus’ life and teaching, following the
synagogue’s liturgical cycle; Mark’s gospel was
the first. Matthew and Luke then followed and
drew heavily on Mark but each added new
material. Spong suggests that what they added
was to provide more liturgical material. The
sequence of Jesus stories and teachings in these
gospels flow with the cycle of the synagogue
year alongside the appointed Jewish holy day and
season and the appointed scripture. Well, they
almost follow.
The
double climax of the gospel, Jesus’ crucifixion
and the Easter stories, are a bit of an
exception. In the gospel itself these Christian
accounts are linked to the Jewish Passover
festival. Spong says these accounts are
liturgical material for the celebration of
Passover - the launch of the Jewish nation.
After this new beginning the synagogue
liturgical calendar began its cycle through the
scriptures beginning with Genesis. Here Spong
says the Christian material for the season is
the birth stories and genealogy of Jesus that
come at the beginning of the gospel – and one
then follows the gospel through the liturgical
calendar. Chapter and verse markings came with
editing in the middle ages.
Spong
points out that a liturgical purpose is not a
history. The gospels were not intended to
provide history, but rather edifying
Christ-related material for Christians attending
the synagogue. And the material is written to
fit with the Jewish festival and its scripture.
Spong suggests differences among the gospels
relate to needs of particular synagogue
communities. Matthew’s synagogue appears to have
been more Jewish and Luke’s more filled by
gentile converts. It is known that conversion to
Judaism was a feature of those times. Whether
that route was necessary to become a Christian
became an issue among the early Christians.
The
title of the book claims to address biblical
literalism. Spong does make asides from time to
time about literalism. Yet this theme does not
dominate throughout the book. For example, in
Part I Spong points out that the gospels differ.
When they cover the same Jesus events, the
gospel accounts contradict each other on the
details. They differ as much as they agree. The
nature of the early writings is a collection of
Paul’s letters to which have been bundled
similar letters plus four different Gospels.
This is not the kind of material that lends
itself to being a coherent history or a literal
word of God.
Then
throughout the book Spong is giving his
story-by-story argument that the gospel material
fits into the liturgical cycle in a synagogue.
This steady exercise is itself an indirect
addressing of biblical literalism. More often
than not, the liturgical context suggests that
some material is making a symbolic point rather
than adding a factual story. For example the
transfiguration story is likely a symbolic
addition to a liturgy. Spong proposes that when
Greek gentile minds faced the mixed bag of
Christian written material in the fourth century
when Christianity became the Roman Empire’s
official religion Christians were no longer
familiar with life in a synagogue. They did not
recognize the gospels as liturgical material for
a Jewish synagogue calendar. So for the greater
part of the life of the church the material has
been interpreted and used in unintended ways.
When
he comes to the account in Part VIII and Chapter
27 of the rich young ruler who asks Jesus what
must be done to follow him. Spong can’t resist
pointing out that biblical literalism is
selective. Jesus replies to the rich young
ruler: go sell what you possess and give to the
poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Spong
notes that this is not followed by biblical
literalists – rather the poor are judged and
blamed for being poor. Spong adds that
references to our responsibility towards the
poor occur on nearly every page of the bible. In
contrast, some condemnation of homosexuality
occurs in nine places and in only one does it
mean what homophobic “scripture-quoters” say it
means.
Spong
says nothing about Islam, but I cannot help
wondering whether interactions with the Muslim
faith after 800 CE played a role in developing a
“word of God” attitude to Christian writings.
Islam has a founding book – the Qu’ran – written
by one author – Mohammed. That tradition says
God gave the words to the prophet Mohammed. It
seems plausible that Christians might have felt
moved to see their Christian writings as related
and of equivalent authority. But they are not.
The gospel authors were not prophets claiming to
speak God’s word. They were early Christians
providing insights into the Christian tradition
and the meaning of the person of Jesus of
Nazareth for other early Christians around the
then Roman world. Spong suggests their aim was
linked to synagogue liturgy.
Spong
tells how the synagogue came with a
well-established Jewish cycle of special days
and memorials to which the gospel writers
adjusted their material about Jesus, adding
filling that is less intended to give historical
facts than to connect Jesus’ life and teaching
to related stories and history familiar to a
Jewish audience. For example, in Chapter 7 the
name “Joseph” for Jesus’ father may be
archetypical, bringing connectedness to Jewish
kingly lineage rather than the name of a
historical parent of Jesus. Other narrative may
be connecting the Jesus movement to the
tradition of Moses and that of Isaiah rather
than suggesting that magical events occurred on
mountains. All of this, Spong shows, can relate
some aspect of Jesus’ life and work to the
Jewish liturgical year.
In
Part I the cycle of Jewish holy days is given.
The subsequent parts of the book link successive
gospel narratives to the successive holy days
and scriptures of the synagogue year. Along the
way Spong raises particular insights – such as
whether the character of Joseph and others named
in the narrative of Jesus’ birth and lineage
were intended to be historic or of symbolic
significance. Several symbolic links to Moses
and prophets like Isaiah are insightful. For
example the baptism of Jesus recalls the
deliverance of the people across the Red Sea.
Jesus then goes to the wilderness for forty days
paralleling the forty years of the Israelites in
the wilderness with Moses. In Part III the
sermon on the mount is said to parallel Moses
receipt of the commandments on Mt. Sinai.
Spong’s working through the gospel accounts and
relating them to the synagogue liturgy for each
holy day and its following weeks is
painstakingly done and worth the read. I offer
some fragments to encourage that!
Part
IV deals with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and
Matthew’s account of Jesus’ miracles (not known
to Paul!) and Jesus’ teachings. In this section
there is reflection on the Christian “shackles
of atonement theology” in contrast with the
Jewish original and the Day of Atonement. For
Yom Kippur the unblemished lamb represented the
human yearning for perfection. The scape goat
was sent off taking all our misdoings with it.
This section is worth a read. To see why, I give
a few Spong quotes from the arguments:
“Original
sin is simply wrong…
We
are not fallen sinners, we are incomplete human
beings…
Atonement
theology is not the pathway to life.”
Part
VI sets out Jesus’ teaching on sowing wheat and
tares, harvest themes, as one might expect to
link with the Sukkoth harvest festival season.
And we are led on through walking on water and
loaves and fishes.
Part
VII brings us to Hanukah (Dedication) season
where Spong situates Matthew’s account of the
transfiguration of Jesus on a mountain into the
political moment when Orthodox Jews faced the
end of the temple and ‘followers of the way”
(early Christians) sought to present Jesus as
the new temple to stand in place of the temple
destroyed in the war with Rome.
Part
VIII leads towards Passover, with the journey of
Jesus recalling the wanderings in wilderness and
Deuteronomy. At Passover and the founding of
Israel, Jewish scripture begins the cycle again
and the beginning of the new year brings Genesis
and Cain and Abel and Noah. Noah and the flood
give occasion for liturgical material that Spong
calls Mathhew’s “Little Apocalypse” in which
Matthew combines some of the Noah story with his
knowledge of the actual destruction of the
temple and Jerusalem by Rome that he likely knew
directly. (Great persecution of Jews followed –
including Christian Jews.) At the end is the
familiar parable about the final judgment – in
Spong’s words: “ultimate judgment was how able
one was to see the presence of God in the faces
of the poor, the hungry, the strangers, the sick
and the imprisoned.”
Spong
ends with the Passover season (his Part IX) and
the crucifixion (his Part X), giving insights
into the Easter stories and presenting a soaring
retelling of Matthew’s great commission. He sees
the passion narrative as an extension of the
usual 3 hour Jewish vigil into material for a 24
hour vigil service. He notes the consistent
report across Paul and the gospel writers that
God was in some way specially present in Jesus.
Objectively, followers were transformed by
Easter into a new religious movement. Although
the resurrection appearances become become more
physical with later gospels like Luke, a vision
rather than a physical body best fits and
includes people like Paul who attests to many
“seeing” Jesus, including himself.
Spong
soars into sermon style. The final great promise
of Matthew is God with us:
“Extending the presence of the
holy in every life is finally what being messiah
means … Matthew has painted a portrait of Jesus,
who is so at one with God that he is beyond
every sectarian boundary … He is the revealer of
that eternity for which all finite and mortal
people yearn. That is why the Christian story
must become a universal story. That was and is
Matthew’s goal. My hope is that Christianity
itself, in all its forms, will also walk
courageously in that God, who in the words of
Paul will be all in all. Shalom! ”