One netfriend wrote:

I have been following the Williams v Spong discussion, but can't pretend to follow all the science stuff. From a theological point of view, I think Spong asks some good questions, but has some shallow answers, seemingly unaware that the issues have been under discussion in theological circles for some decades, with more satisfactory results than the ones Spong offers. For much better (and eminently readable) accounts making sense of the biblical documents in the light of contemporary world-views, I find Marcus Borg's books much more satisfactory. See "Jesus, a New Vision," "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time," "The God we Never Knew," "Reading the Bible Again for the First Time" etc.

Another responded:

I have read most of Spong's work and Marcos Borg's. I fail to see a great lot of difference in the theology of the two of them but they do use different terminolgy to describe the same thing. For example, what Spong calls "Theism", Marcos Borg refers to "Supernatural Theism." I like Borg's terminolgy better but when you examine what Spong refers to as theism you realise he is talking about that same thing as Borg. Both are 'panentheists'. Borg does not go out of his way to describe the absurdities of so much of the Christian Doctrine when interpreted literally as Spong does so he certainly comes across with a somewhat softer approach.

You have said that Spong is somewhat shallow in his answers to difficult theological questions. Would you like to give us a few examples of these? I suppose I ask this because I have heard these same comments come from other sources but when pressed those people admitted that they had not read any of Spong or at the most only snippets of his work. They were relying on comments made by others and that is hardly a fair way of passing judgement on a scholar.

Whilst I don't necessarily agree with all of Spong's conclusions, I do think his biblical scholarship is of a very high order. I am currently reading his book "Liberating the Gospels" and although I agree (as does Spong) that there has to be a lot more work done on his theories regarding the origin and compilation of the gospels, what he has said about the Jewishness of their origins and his suggestion that they were formed in a midrashic style to be used in conjunction with the Jewish lectionary at the time makes a lot of sense to me. I'm open to someone explaining to me why they think he is wrong, but they will need to have read the book first and back up their comments with reasoned argument.