Spong: Another View

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Spong: Another View

By Rowland Croucher and others ⋅ November 23, 2004 ⋅ Post a comment

Reformations Old and New Graham Maddox

Category: Religion

THE VISIT TO AUSTRALIA of Bishop John Shelby Spong, a man of high integrity, is a challenge to those churches that announce the proclamation of “the Bible for today’s world”. Scarcely any other contemporary Christian thinker confronts the issues of today’s world with such clarity.

Spong’s offer to found a New Reformation, however, is bold beyond prudence. He actually intends to supersede the magisterial Reformation of the sixteenth century. To do this he sets out to clear the undergrowth by caricaturing the achievements of the Reformation and trivialising its main points of contention, thus preparing the ground for something really important. Above all, he grossly underplays the extent to which the Reformers participated in the mission of Christ.

Equally boldly, Bishop Spong has announced that “Christianity must change or die”. These sound like the words of a prophet, but the charges against the church are far from proved. In challenging Christianity to change in the way he would like, Spong throws down the gauntlet to Martin Luther and pins to his webpage a set of twelve “theses”, much more succinct and pungent than Luther’s, and “far more threatening theologically”.

Spong is impatient with “an increasingly shrill biblical fundamentalism”, yet there is a curious fundamentalism in his own approach. He cannot conceive of God as Creator, and “the biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense” (thesis 3). This moves him to discard any theistic notion of God altogether. So “theism, as a way of defining God, is dead” and “most theological God-talk today is meaningless” (thesis 1). Again, “the virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible” (thesis 4). There is no room here for a more spiritual understanding of the Incarnation, since the bathwater and the whole bathroom are thrown out with the parthenogenetic baby.

The sixteenth-century reformers did not presume to define God. To construct a psychology for God was to them the height of human impertinence. Yet they experienced God. As Luther said over and again, he did not create the Reformation: “I left it to the Word.” He and the host of reformers experienced the Word that creates what it says. The Word, like a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces, is shattering and explosive. It bursts forth from every note of Bach and Handel, from every syllable of Milton and Herbert. If “theological God-talk today” fails to apprehend that experience, then this is a tragedy of our times. Yet for many Christians a personal relationship with God is the mainspring of their lives.

Spong’s preamble to his theses shows a touching faith in the conclusions of popular science which he is unable to rest in popular theology. Sir Isaac Newton is enlisted to debunk magic, miracles and divine intervention, but we are not told why Newton remained a devout Christian to his life’s end. We hear nothing of the pathbreaking scientists – like Mendel, Pascal, Priestley, Locke – who maintained their Christian faith along with all their empirical findings, whereas we are told that Darwin’s theory has punctured the notion of original sin and that under his insights “Christianity clearly wobbled”. It is astonishing that Spong affirms, again with a touching faith, that Sigmund Freud has proved that “the symbols of Christianity” are “the manifestations of a deep-seated infantile neurosis”.

There is a striking contradiction in the Spong theses. While the central stories of the Bible are denied, and while “There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time” (thesis 9). Thesis 12, in its admirable call for inclusiveness, proclaims that “All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is”. Which non-theistic God is this? Which projected “infantile neurosis” is this image?

OF COURSE Spong is not the first modern theologian to compare himself with Luther, and he acknowledges elsewhere his debt to another Anglican stirrer, Bishop John A.T. Robinson, the author of Honest to God, who also proclaimed a New Reformation in the 1960s. While the challenge to fresh thinking on the part of both new reformers is laudable, the comparison with Luther is laughable. At least Gordon Rupp (The Old Reformation and the New, 1967) made merry in his satirical response to Robinson:

The Bishop of Woolwich sees a parallel between himself and Martin Luther, whose 95 Theses were also caught up in a publicity explosion. I wish him well. He has now only to be unfrocked, tried and condemned for high treason, to write four of the world’s classics, to translate the Bible and compose a hymn book, and to write some 100 folio volumes which 400 years hence will concern scholars all over the world, and to become the spiritual father of some thousands of millions of Christians – to qualify as the Martin Luther of a New Reformation.

Spong is scarcely concerned with the personal achievements or failings of Luther, but he does express surprise “at how insignificant were the theological issues dividing the two sides. The Reformation was not an attempt to reformulate the Christian faith for a new era. It was rather a battle over Church order.” This statement neglects to observe that the Reformers’ endeavours to bring humankind into a right relationship with God had incalculable effects on the modern world – indeed, on creating the modern world. As Hegel intoned: “This is the essence of the Reformation. Man is in his very nature destined to be free. “The place of Luther in the history of freedom can hardly be overestimated. In the Lutheran tradition stood (of course) Calvin, Knox and the Huguenot monarchomachs, but also Hobbes, Roger Williams, Locke and Rousseau. The catchcry of the eighteenth century, “man is born free”, owes much to Lutheran liberation, even if Luther would have been more inclined to say that the believer is set free.

It is important to note that for Luther, as for St Paul or Socrates, freedom is a spiritual matter: one can be supremely free even when the body is chained in prison. No external force can rule the conscience under grace, fortified by a direct relationship with God. At the heart of Luther’s theological and social teaching is the two-kingdoms doctrine. God has so arranged life for humans that each lives in two spheres of existence – the spiritual and the temporal realms. It was the fatal mistake of the medieval church to confuse and confound the two kingdoms. Indeed the “tyranny” of the Church of Rome was produced by its claim to coerce consciences (for the subjects’ own good) by physical enforcement. At the level of individual conscience, however, the two realms or “regiments” had nothing to do with each other. The spiritual realm was the domain of inner conviction. Luther called it a H�rreich, where consciences are persuaded by preaching and listening and reading, study, thought and prayer. Coercion and chastisement of the body have nothing to do with this kingdom. It is a realm of perfect liberty, where one is free to be persuaded of a relationship with God, or not. As Roger Williams later observed, forced worship is worse than useless to God.

On the other hand, rule by the sword is appropriate to the temporal realm. In this sphere sinful people are prone to damage the property and persons of others, and a regime of coercion is provided for by God to produce peace among peoples. It is in this light that Romans 13 adjures people to obey the powers that be. They are part of God’s plan to provide peace and order in the world. A paradoxical consequence of Luther’s Zweiregimentlehre, apparently not noticed by Spong, is that the separation of the spiritual and temporal realms opened the path for the very science which Spong sees as dethroning the theology of Luther and the church. At the level of scientific reasoning the two kingdoms do not intersect. The spiritual realm is the realm of faith, whereas the temporal realm is the province of reason. Theology is the business of the spiritual realm; science, both natural and political, is the business of the temporal realm. Just as it became inappropriate for science to deal with questions of the nature of God and his worship, so at the same time theology was withdrawn from the study of the physical world. Creationism is in fact a matter of the spirit and of faith. Darwinian evolution, however blunt-edged an implement it may still be, is a matter for reasonable explanation of the physical realm. It has nothing to tell us about the nature of God, except that his creative power may not be limited to the scope of human imagination. A further level of paradox in Spong’s appeal to Darwin will be noted in a moment.

Even more earth-shattering were the consequences of Luther for the political world. Whereas there is no place in the church for the coercion of people for conscience’s sake, and no right for the church to maintain any instruments of punishment or coercion, neither has the magistrate, who rightly wields the sword to curb the intemperate and to maintain the peace, any part in dealings with the spiritual world. Above all he should have no right to compel worship in any form, nor to interfere with worship or any other legitimate spiritual business of the church, nor of any church. The secular state, and the doctrine of the separation of church and state, were certain products of Luther’s revolution. Hobbes and Locke, Williams and Milton were all participating in the Lutheran project. It is a gross mistake to construe, as some do, the theories of Hobbes and Locke as destructive of the church. Both were working in the temporal realm, delineated by Luther, for the good of God’s people. Scientist, statesman and political theorist, Locke remained a devout Christian to his life’s end. While once elevated as the virtual founder of modern liberalism, he is now discarded by some liberals for his (mistakenly) alleged religious fundamentalism.

Yet the intellectual focus of liberalism, the concept of the individual person, was accorded a newly enhanced status through the Reformation. The French socialist Louis Blanc attributed to Luther the discovery of modern political individualism which would develop an “irresistible force” when “dissociated from the religious factor”. Of course it was unthinkable for Luther to countenance this dissociation, but placing believers face-to-face with God, no less, engendered within them a heightened self-confidence and sense of autonomy which would unavoidably spill over into their dealings in the temporal world.

RADIATING FROM this sharply-focused concept of an integrated individual person were the chief ideals of the French revolutionaries: liberty, equality, fraternity and justice, all implicit in Luther’s work. We have already noted the consequences for human liberty of Luther’s life in the spirit. His words broke forth again in Locke, Williams and Rousseau. Since each person, in direct contact with God, could be a vessel of his truth, then each must be free to speak of her or his insights. Dwelling in Milton’s “mansion-house of liberty”, the Levellers of Cromwell’s army long anticipated von Humboldt’s and J.S. Mill’s demands for freedom of expression: “better many errors of some kind suffered than one useful truth be obstructed or destroyed”. It is under this dispensation of the old Reformation that Bishop Spong himself must be heard.

Bringing believers coram Deo produced an absolute equality among them. Luther’s position was a radical reversal of the medieval descent of power from above. In the face of God “there is neither priest nor layman, canon nor vicar, rich nor poor, Benedictine, Carthusian, Friar Minor nor Augustinian, for it is not a question of this or that status, degree, order”. And Knox echoed him: “Beloved brethren, ye are all God’s creatures . and this is the point wherein I say all men are equal.”

Although it might seem that Luther’s individualism was inimical to “fraternity”, Luther was clear that an individual could scarcely exist in isolation from others. Salvation was a communal achievement. In the last analysis, the individual stands alone before God, alone accountable for his or her life. Yet the fruits of grace are made manifest in that life when shared with others, just as one is exhorted to love one’s neighbour as oneself. Salvation was only conceivable within a congregation, and the congregation was most unified and “fraternal” when joined in prayer and in song. Many have noted the proto-democratic overtones of the Lutheran chorale. As John Wesley, himself “converted” by the words of Luther, was later to say, he could no more envisage holy isolates than holy adulterers.

Equality, liberty, the communion of saints and the demand for free expression were not the end of the proto-democratic implications in Luther’s work. Despite Spong’s trivialising, a new dispensation of grace, a new relationship with God, the separation of the two kingdoms, the breaking of the universal hold of the church, the liberation of the human spirit were all radical innovations in Luther’s time. In fact, his work liberated a spirit of religious and social innovation which ran parallel to the discovery of new worlds, a fresh application of reason to the natural world and the establishment of new associations as exemplified by the business contract.

It is at this point that we encounter the second layer of paradox concerning Spong’s appeal to Darwin as a purveyor of reason to Christianity’s foolish speculations. For it was precisely from Luther’s spirit of innovation that the sustenance of Darwin’s biologism was first drawn. Many have noted, along with Hayek, that Darwin’s first insights derived from social science, from the progressive enhancement of the individual and from experimentation with new human associations leading to the elevation of life implicit in the Reformation project. Among Darwin’s chief mentors in this, the economist Adam Smith and the “dismal parson” demographer, Thomas Malthus, both stood in the Lutheran tradition.

For Luther, each believer’s personal contact with scripture was a dynamic engagement with the living Word, which continued endlessly to create what it said. To read the scriptures was to open a new encounter with the Holy Spirit that was to spread new understandings and stimulate new undertakings. It was not only the Puritan preacher John Robinson who was convinced that the Lord had in store more light and truth to break forth from his holy Word. New understandings of the scriptures led to new experiments with worship and newly written liturgies and hymns. These in turn led to the formation of new denominations – a seething world of innovation and experiment quite the equal of scientific and geographic discovery.

In the shadow of the Holocaust – indeed, in the nearer shadow of September 11 – it is scarcely possible to repose too much faith in human progress. Furthermore, it is still less plausible to trust that Darwin has dethroned original sin as human lives “evolve into higher levels of consciousness”. The biggest mistake of modern democracy, as Reinhold Niebuhr showed, is to assume that human affairs can be conducted in neglect of the presence of human sin. Luther was well aware of it. Obviously it would be impertinent to try to epitomate the libraries of work that have sought to encompass the reverberations of Luther’s achievements. Yet Bishop Spong seems to shrug them off with breathtaking insouciance.

THE MOST DISAPPOINTING aspect of Spong’s call for a New Reformation is its preoccupation with belief and its near-total neglect of the need for Christ in a torn and troubled world. It is true, the ancient creeds tell us little about the work of Jesus, and it is as well to remember that the Nicene Creed emerged as a tool for Constantine to consolidate a unified rule over the Roman empire.

By contrast, the Lutheran Reformation was an explosion of love in action. As Gordon Rupp has shown, the Reformers unleashed a new passion for justice. Luther’s individualism vested an enormously heightened dignity in the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters. Among his first public proclamations was a call for the relief of the poor and the establishment of community chests to provide interest-free loans to the needy. One English Reformer, Robert Barnes, denounced the persecution of those who stole because they could not make ends meet; Hugh Latimer, when offered preferment of the King, pleaded instead for the life of a helpless woman condemned to death in his home town; Martin Bucer practised a charity so warm that his Strasbourg became a refuge for the exiled and the oppressed; Calvin spread throughout Switzerland and far beyond new ordinances for the welfare of the people. His follower, John Winthrop, aboard the Arbella en route to Massachusetts, exhorted the pilgrims to invest their own welfare in each other. The first Methodists, whose activities were eventually to issue in an organised Christian socialist politics, left their prayer meetings to head for the prison and the homes of the indigent.

The poor are still with us, in massively increasing numbers, and the world is awash in a tide of homeless refugees. There are terrorist attacks and rumours of global wars. In the throes of these catastrophes the world urgently needs a new reformation, but one inflamed by love in action, rather than one caught in the toils of humanist fundamentalism.

Graham Maddox teaches in the School of Social Science at the University of New England in Armidale.