Truth Magazine

By Tim Mize

I see that “the Jesus Seminar” has made the news again. As you may know, this seminar is actually a group of 78 biblical scholars (read: “professors of religion at various liberal seminaries and secular universities”) who have set out to uncover the true Jesus, especially the things that the true Jesus said. This they thought to do by first pulling up every saying of Jesus that they could find, and throwing them all into a big mix. Then they could meet to pull out each piece one at a time and argue about whether it is something that Jesus actually said.

According to the news, they have finally finished. As it turns out, the purpose of all this labor was the publication of a book, now available for your purchase, called The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? Now all we modern, progressive people out here in the public have something to buy that will give us the very trendiest education on the subject.

Lucky for us, we are now let in on the truth about Jesus. They alone were able to attain to these things, up there in their ivory towers, but they have looked down on us with compassion. As they tell it, things had gotten so bad, with all those “fundamentalists” and “literalists” and “televangelists” about to take control of our religious life, as to require them to sell us this volume. We all know what a genuine threat that is, especially among the sort of people who would be buying it.

A Fifth Gospel

They call it The Five Gospels. They speak of five Gospels because, falling in with the latest scholarly fad, they have put a work called “The Gospel of Thomas” alongside (actually, above) the four Gospels of the Bible. It would be better, though, to entitle it The Fifth Gospel, for a fifth Gospel is exactly what they are trying to create. They have found fault with our four biblical Gospels and have taken upon themselves, at this late date, to construct a better one. This fifth, supplanting Gospel they like to refer to as “the historical Jesus.”

This sort of thing is nothing new. An element of religious intellectuals has been trying to do this on and off for two centuries now, with widely varying results. Just lately, we’ve been subjected to a spate of these “historical Jesus” books (I saw a cartoon the other day of a preacher getting an offer to join “the Historical Jesus of the Month Club”).

A prominent member of the Jesus Seminar named John Dominic Crossan has written the most recent thorough-going one. It is called The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. The cover bills it as “the first comprehensive determination of who Jesus was, what he did, what he said.” They could have billed it better as “the latest of a 200-year long string of books that try to rescue the real Jesus from the Bible.”

Now don’t mistake me. There is much to be gained by viewing Jesus or the Bible through the historian’s eye. The truth has nothing to fear from any honest investigation.

In fact, I have read Prof. Crossan’s book. He has some very helpful information about the socio-economic, political and religious setting in which the story of Christ was played out. But I find myself unimpressed when somebody sets out to explain Jesus entirely from this “background” information  laboriously dug out, as it happens, in some professor’s office at such-and-such university  while casting aside the Lord’s disciples’ own testimony to him. And I find myself a bit suspicious when after it’s all sweated out and written down Jesus comes out looking a little too much like a twentieth century egalitarian activist liberal.

Unreasonable Skepticism

Whenever you hear about the Jesus Seminar or see books like Crossan’s, understand where these people are coming from and what they are up to. Their work is ruled by several tired old assumptions that have circulated for years within the liberal academic community.

The main one is this: “The Gospels are not `historical reports’ about Jesus; they are the professions of early Christians of what they believed about Jesus.” Now, there is some truth to that statement, but it goes on from there to this: “Therefore, nothing they reported about Jesus can be trusted just as it stands.” If it is found in the Bible, it is just “faith” and not “history.” Such skepticism is excessive and uncalled for.

Their notion is that the early church could have invented and probably did invent a great part of what is written about Jesus. Never mind the short time between the life of Christ and the composition of the Gospels; never mind the scandalous offensiveness of what they believed and pro-claimed; never mind that the people who preached and believed these things gave their all and even their lives for them  most any bit of it could have been and probably was the product of somebody’s pious creative imagination. The bottom line is, that if you are going to say that anything told in the Gospels actually happened, then you’re going to have to prove it.

This “proving” was what the Jesus Seminar and Crossan in his book were up to. It was demanded of each story or saying of Jesus that it be proved that it actually happened. We’ll not go into what they thought of as “proof,” but this was the approach: If a lot of proof could be found, then it most likely happened. If only some proof could be found, then maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t. If there is no proof available, then it never happened.

At the roots of all this lie an outright rejection of the apostolic testimony to Jesus  that he was the Christ, the incarnate Son, who arose from the dead and truly lives on. If you are open to that, then there is nothing implausible in the Gospels. If you rule that out from the start, though, then every other thing in the Gospels will be baffling or incredible to you.

Surely it is unreasonable to rule out what the Gospels are trying to show you before you even go through them. But this is what they’ve done. Nothing else explains their excessive skepticism.

Finding Jesus or Dodging Jesus?

In all fairness, these scholars do believe that they are helping the faith. They see themselves as offering a purified Christianity to a modern, secular culture that can no longer accept Christ as the Bible gives him. The enlightened, less credulous intellect of today cannot believe what those premodern evangelists wrote about Jesus, nor should they be expected to. Fortunately, we can see now that those early Christians presented Jesus creatively, in order to make a case for him that would be persuasive within their particular cultural setting. That case, as it turns out, is no longer persuasive in our cultural setting, but not to fear  we can do as they did, and once again present a Jesus that is persuasive and relevant to our times.

What they actually do, however, is provide our ever more secularized, humanistic world just what it is looking for  an educated alternative to the scandalous Christ of orthodox, biblical faith (with a clever put down of those embarrassing “literalists” and “fundamentalists” who faith-fully expose its sins thrown in besides). Jesus cannot be ignored, but he can be reduced to something more manage-able to the mind, more edifying to the self-esteem, less disruptive to the lifestyle. This reduced Jesus is just what they’ve been handed, and by the “liberal Christian community” at that. It is no surprise that those who have drunk most deeply of the spirit of our age so quickly welcome and recommend books such as these.

It is wrong to assume that the Christ of the Gospels was any less offensive to his premodern, original audience than he is to our contemporary, modern one. Christ has always been offensive just as he stands. The fact of his crucifixion demonstrates that beyond words. The original Christians were at peace with this offensiveness. After all, they went all over the world preaching an accursed Messiah and a crucified God-incarnate. In the face of that, there was little that they could do to “doctor up” Jesus to make him easier to swallow, and we can be sure that they were not inclined to do so. We cannot say the same, however, of our modern enlightened “Jesus scholars.”

Truly, it is arrogant and perverse to stand ourselves and our culture over the Bible and think that we must bring it up to our level. It is for us to stand ourselves and our world under the Bible so as to be challenged by it, and to be all of us brought up to it. We will never truly understand the Bible, and that includes the Jesus whom it preaches, unless we are willing to stand under it.

It all comes down to an elaborate dodging of the offensiveness of Christ, and getting around confronting him just as the apostles and the early church preached him. The Bible doesn’t ask you to “check your brains in at the door” and hear it like a gullible fool, but it does ask you to face its message squarely as it stands. One way that people deflect the challenge that is put to them by the text  especially the challenge as to who Christ is  is to turn the tables and make the text be challenged instead. It’s as if one would say to it, “I will challenge you first; I will make you prove yourself.” I like what Thomas Oden said in his book The Word of Life:

One can sit comfortably in an easy chair and ask historical questions without any commitment or moral response. With the historian’s hat on, one can play at the puzzle of trying to understand the sequence of events by which Jesus came to be called Christ, the Son of God. It is possible to raise fine and intriguing historical questions without ever being required to make any personal decision about them.

The irony is that when we meet the Jesus of the text, he is constantly calling us to a decision about him (p. 206).

Mr. Oden, by the way, is a former liberal who knows just what it means to play at the arm chair historicism of which he speaks.

Back to the Bible

We don’t need somebody in some ivory tower to mediate Jesus, the Bible, or Christianity to us. We are able to understand the Bible without them, if we are willing to stand under it and hear it openly, letting its challenge be continually met and humbly answered. Nor do we need to mediate the Lord to the world by passing him through the filter of cultural standards and beliefs. Let them meet him just as he stands.

The Five Gospels now takes its place alongside all the other “historical Jesus” books that have come down the pike. Like the others, it will wind up a museum piece, exemplifying the secular age it tried to impress. But the word of God, “quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword,” will endure forever (Heb. 4:12; 1 Pet. 1:24-25).

Guardian of Truth XXXVIII: 15, p. 6-7
August 4, 1994

By Lewis Willis

Did you hear about the new way we are now to speak of certain things? For instance, the new way to refer to a “doorman,” is to call him “an access controller.” Because a cow does not “give” milk  it is taken from her  a “milkman” is “a stolen, non-human product distributor.” A man is no longer “bald.” He is now “hair disadvantaged.” Stop telling people they are “old.” They are now referred to as “chronologically gifted.”

I suspect, like me, you think the above to be a bit funny. However, when people start fooling around with religion, in the same way that they have done with these words, the humor quickly abandons the effort.

Sometime ago, the Akron Beacon Journal (5-14-92), carried a front-page article announcing that the United Methodist Church “has a new Book of Worship, with new ways of referring to God.” The new book was approved by an overwhelming majority of the delegates to the denomination’s General Conference. It contains prayers for all kinds of things which confront people today: adoption, homecoming, various holidays, engagement, getting a new job, unemployment, a new home, or divorce. I wonder if they have a special prayer for abortion? If we are to believe the press, most religious organizations condone the practice.

“Many optional prayers offer fresh, novel names” in the new Worship Book. The names for “God” are especially interesting. They will now offer prayers to “God, our Father and Mother.” Or, they might say “our Parent .. . both Father and Mother.” One prayer says God is “like a Baker woman” who brings “the leaven that causes our hopes to rise.” God is also called, “Grandfather, Great Spirit.” Is this not wonderful? These smart folks have really helped us learn to address God, haven’t they?

Would you be interested in knowing how Jesus referred to God? He told his disciples to pray, “Our Father which art in heaven” (Matt. 6:9; Lk. 11:2). Note Luke 10:21: “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, 0 Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.” When he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, he said, ” Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” From the Cross, at the time of his death, Luke records: “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.” Matthew states that he said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46)

You know, I did not notice a single time when the Savior referred to God in feminine terms. Nothing he said suggests that he perceived God to be his Mother! According to the Scriptures, He did not even think that God was anything like a “Baker woman” or a “Grandfather.” As a matter of fact, there is not a single reference to God in all of the Scriptures that refer to him as a woman! Now, with some people, that means absolutely nothing. They could care less what the Scriptures say. But, since we “speak where the Bible speaks, and are silent where it is silent,” we do not go beyond what it says and devise for ourselves such books of Worship that speak of God unscripturally (1 Pet. 4:11; Matt. 15:9; 2 Jn. 9; Rev. 22:18-19).

When Paul spoke of the sins of the Gentiles, among other things, he said that they “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man” (Rom. 1:23). Moses had warned Israel not to corrupt themselves “and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female” (Deut. 4:16). That which is precisely forbidden by the Scriptures has been practiced by the United Methodists! They are not content with the way God presents himself, so they re-make him in their own image. The Feminists among them definitely insist that some references be made to him as “a woman.” There is an obvious lack of courage and conviction in the leadership of this 9-million member denomination because they simply “caved in” to this Feminist demand. Are these leaders serving God, or the Feminist Movement? Paul said, “If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10). The evidence is in and the United Methodists are pleasing the women instead of Christ.

Not only is there evidence of Feminism in this new Book of Worship, there is also a strong pagan influence. In the days when the Scriptures were being written, the Greeks had given to the world a plurality of “gods” to worship. Many of them were female gods. At Ephesus there was a temple to the goddess Diana (Acts 19). Ashtoreth was a Canaanite goddess with a temple at Sidon (1 Kgs. 11:5). At Corinth there was a Shrine to Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. These were all false “deities” which were fashioned according to the imaginations of men. The “god” which the United Methodists have invented is no different than these pagan gods.

One thing which has been overlooked is that “God is a Spirit” (Jn. 4:24). Jesus said, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones” (Lk. 24:39). To attempt to envision God as we would a man or woman will cause us totally to lose sight of the magnificence of his being. Let us never do or say anything which would turn God into that which is common. c.

Guardian of Truth XXXVIII: 14, p. 13
July 21, 1994

By Harry R. Osborne

Have you heard all of the talk about “change” and “new ideas” lately? About the only thing old-fashioned our society seems to hold in high esteem is a hamburger! Is a change or “new idea” always for the better? Many folks seem enthralled with “change” and “new ideas” just for the sake of something different.

Is it any wonder that some want “change” and “new ideas” in religion? If a person wants to hear a certain thing taught, somewhere he will find it taught the way he wants (cf. 1 Tim. 4:1-5). There are churches which teach that homosexual practices, premarital sex, and polygamy are permissible. One church even espouses atheism!

The modem assortment of denominations proves one thing many churches change God’s message to meet the new ideas of people. It may be justified as a “different interpretation” or a “translation of the same message into modem concepts,” but honesty demands we admit the bottom line  the message of God has been changed.

How does God view this altering of his will to fit human desires? The Bible is very plain on the subject, so let’s listen to God speak in clear terms regarding his view of man changing his message.

“You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take anything from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you” (Deut. 4:2). That is not hard to understand, is it?

“Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it” (Deut. 12:32). Those are the words of God recorded for man by God’s prophet, Moses.

“Do not add to his words, lest he reprove you, and you be found a liar” (Prov. 30:6). When we change God’s message, it has serious consequences on us. God’s Word remains true, but we become liars  misrepresenting his truth.

“But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8-9). If neither angels nor apostles have the right to change God’s will, we surely do not.

“Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him; for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds” (2 Jn. 9-11).

The “doctrine” or teaching which has Christ as its source was given to and preached by the apostles (Jn. 14:24-26; 16:12-15; 17:8,14,18). John, an apostle, says that the one who fails to limit his teaching to that message does not have God or Christ and is guilty of “evil deeds.” He also warns others not to follow the evil teaching.

“For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book” (Rev. 22:18-19).

God’s statements are plain. His message is not to be changed either by adding to or subtracting from its content! One thing added is one thing too many. One thing subtracted is one thing too few. Any idea newer than the word of God is too new.

Our problem of division in the religious world is not God’s fault. It is the fault of men who have added and subtracted from the Bible to suit their desires rather than God’s. We must set aside the creeds and doctrines of men for the unadulterated message of God if true unity is ever to exist. That unity is our desire in this and every other message of truth.

Guardian of Truth XXXVIII: 14, p. 12
July 21, 1994

By Ron Halbrook

The Bible warns of “deceitful workers” who transform themselves “as the ministers of righteousness.” “And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:13-15). The Bible warns against “false teachers” who will deny “the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Pet. 2:1). Paul named Hymenaeus and Philetus as examples of men who erred from the truth, taught destructive heresies, and thus overthrew the faith of some (2 Tim. 2:17-18). A modern minister of Satan who transforms himself as an angel of light is John Shelby Spong, the Episcopal “bishop” of Newark, New Jersey. Spong wrote a book entitled Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture. It first appeared in 1991, was published in a paperback edition in 1992, and has been acclaimed as a national best seller.

Spong decries the biblical illiteracy characteristic of mainstream denominations with their modernistic teaching, but he regards as the greater danger biblical literalism, i.e. taking the Bible to be literally true. Modern man simply cannot believe the Bible as it is written, according to Spong. Therefore, he professes to map out middle ground between modernistic biblical illiteracy and traditional biblical literalism in order to rescue the Bible. The abuses and extremes of some Bible believers are used as a pretext for Spong’s rescue effort. He proposes to look beneath the literal teaching of Scripture in an effort to find some sort of truth relevant to the present moment of time, and yet he freely confesses that his efforts will be cast aside by the next generation. Some rescue! He only reasserts modern-ism.

The Gospel of Unbelief and Uncertainty

In the name of rescuing the gospel message, Spong simply creates “another gospel: which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.” Paul continued a warning against such teachers in the following words,

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed (Gal. 1:6-9).

Spong’s gospel is an utter and arrogant denial of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In the name of rescuing the Bible, Spong does not hesitate to repeatedly bash the gospel account of Jesus Christ. For instance, to make the recorded teaching of Jesus appear hypocritical, Spong charges that Jesus contradicted his own prohibition against calling men fools when he addressed certain men in his preaching as hypocrites, blind guides, and fools (Rescuing, p. 21). This fails to distinguish between the careless words of anger and hatred forbidden in Matthew 5:22, on the one hand, and the accurate and documented description of ungodly attitudes given in the preaching of chapter 23, on the other hand. The carnal-minded Spong puts the value of pigs and trees above the value of human souls when he condemns Jesus for performing miracles which destroyed pigs and trees in an effort to teach the truth and save the souls of men (p. 21).

Since Spong cannot bring himself to accept the teaching of Jesus on the doctrine of hell, we are left with the possibility that either Jesus was “mistaken” or that “the interpretation of Jesus given in these passages” is “untrustworthy” (p. 21). The fact is that the contemporaries and eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ repeatedly affirmed that he taught the doctrine of hell, and “Bishop” Spong simply does not believe what Jesus taught! Spong charges Jesus with “anti-semitism” for condemning “those who do not accept Jesus’ Messiah ship” (p. 22). Thus, Spong does not believe that faith in Christ is essential for salvation, if he even believes in any such thing as eternal salvation. Of course, Jesus addressed the case of unbelievers such as Spong, when he said, “For if you believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). Spong is not rescuing the Bible, but is attempting to rescue himself from the condemnation which Jesus pronounced upon unbelief.

Spong asks, “Is there a truth beyond biblical literalism to which my life can be dedicated?” (p. 24) The answer is “not yet clear” but we must pursue the question “until either there is nothing left or a wondrous new meaning begins to dawn.” In other words, the errant “bishop” destroys faith in Christ and the Bible but has no positive, certain, or enduring truth to affirm as the basis of a new faith. Satan also questioned God’s Word in the beginning and promised “a wondrous new beginning” to life (Gen. 3:5). Such promises have always led people further and further away from God, with disastrous rather than wondrous results.

Spong debunks the Bible accounts of creation and the flood, and says the Bible must be reinterpreted. By what rule or standard? “We must think about God in the light of our perceptions of divinity.” We will “find meaning and divinity” not “in an external God” but “in the very depths of our humanity. . . . We discover transcending spirit within ourselves” (p. 33). We must realize “that God might not be separate from us but rather deep within us. The sense of God as the sum of all that is, plus something more, grows in acceptability. When theologians are pressed, however, to define that something more, the inadequacy of language becomes gallingly apparent” (p. 33). We must separate “the truth” from “the myths” of Scripture, but, “it is not easy” (p.34).

This makes man his own god while admitting that such a god has no certain or enduring message to offer to himself or to others. Rather than rescuing the Bible, Spong is reverting to idolatry like all before him “who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever” (Rom. 1:25). He is repeating the failed experiment of the ancients, in which “the world by wisdom knew not God” (1 Cor. 1:21).

New Testament Truth a Straight Jacket

According to Spong, we face “the task of reformulating the Christ story for our day, if, indeed, it can be reformulated.” The first step is to dismiss “the corpse of traditional religion” with its “biblical narrative” (p36). As to the New Testament writers, “We do not make their understanding of truth a straight jacket into which our minds must be placed” (p. 231). Regarding the New Testament message as a straight jacket, Spong explicitly says that he is offended by such passages as Galatians 1:8-9. This so-called bishop is telling us to reject the biblical narrative while admitting he has nothing to put in its place and does not know whether the Bible story ever can be properly “reformulated.” His work is the destruction of faith in the Bible and the God of Scripture. Therefore, at best, he says the Bible is not right and he does not know what is right, but he merely offers a few possible tidbits of reformulation of something which it may be impossible to reformulate.

As the book continues to unfold, it continues its attack on the Bible, the Bible writers, the Bible narrative, and Bible teaching. Spong’ s earlier claim to give the Bible and life “a wondrous new meaning” is betrayed by repeated admissions that his reformulations are sketchy and uncertain:

There is at least the possibility (p. 87).

This is speculative, however, and we can get no closer than this (p. 87).

It remains for us to determine how this ancient book with its antiquated assumptions can feed and sustain us today (p. 90).

The sacred scriptures . . . can never finally capture eternal truth (p. 169).

We mortals live with our subjective truth in the constant anxiety of relativity (p. 169).

I live in the midst of religious uncertainty and insecurity (p. 170).

Christ has been and still is many things to many people. All of them are Christ and none of them is Christ (p. 230).

Spong earlier argued that when we leave biblical literal-ism, “either there is nothing left or a wondrous new meaning begins to dawn,” and it is obvious from Spong’s best efforts that the real result is “there is nothing left!” (p. 24)

Spong quotes the writings of Paul on a wide range of subjects, then concludes, “But these words make no claim to be the words of God” (pp. 91-92). As an example of Paul’s teaching which does not claim to be the Word of God, Spong cited 1 Corinthians 14:35 which forbids a woman to lead the public, mixed assembly of the church. In making this assertion, Spong conveniently forgot that Paul immediately reminded the Corinthians that his teaching was “the word of God” and “that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14:36-37).

This deceitful worker also conveniently forgot to mention the following passages:

Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual (1 Cor. 2:13).

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

But Spong is sure that Paul is wrong and that “he did not write the word of God. He wrote the words of Paul, a particular, limited, frail human being” (p. 105). Spong could not make it any clearer that he simply does not believe the Bible even though he claims to be rescuing it.

Reformulate the Gospel to Escape Bible Morality

Spong wants to rescue (read: reject and reformulate) the Bible specifically because the Bible condemns sin, immorality, and unbelief of God’s Word, while Spong wants the gospel message and the church to embrace such things. He begins page 1 of his recent book by referring to his earlier book entitled Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality (1988) in the following words,

In that book I was led to question traditional religious attitudes and traditional religious definitions on a wide variety of sexual issues, from homosexuality to premarital living arrangements. There was an immediate outcry from conservative religious circles in defense of some-thing they called biblical morality (Rescuing, p. 1).

This, he said, led to the writing of Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism.

To rescue himself from the condemnation of Scripture, Spong reformulates Paul as a homosexual. Spong charges that Paul seemed to be “consumed with a [sexual] passion he could not control” and Spong attempts to prove “the hypothesis,” the “theory,” and “the possibility that Paul was a homosexual person” (pp. 115-117). Whether Paul practiced homosexuality or not, he found acceptance with Jesus and this is the real meaning of the gospel Paul preached which must be discovered beneath the literal preaching of Paul, says Spong.

Spong denies that Paul affirmed historical facts and events as the foundation of all gospel preaching. Paul never preached the literal resurrection or deity of Christ but preached that God in some sense took Jesus to heaven “as a way of saying God is like what Jesus did” in accepting all men. Paul never preached that Jesus literally appeared as the resurrected Lord, but Jesus “appeared” in the sense that God accepted Paul. Jesus has been appearing ever since to a wider and wider audience, building an “inclusive community” in which all men are accepted regardless of their condition (pp. 123-125).

Contrary to Spong, Paul forcefully affirmed the literal resurrection of Christ as the basis for the future resurrection of all mankind in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul argued that faithful brethren of Christ must exclude rather than include those who reject such teaching:

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? (1 Cor. 15:12)

Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame (1 Cor. 15:33, 34).

Paul warned against such teachers as Spong as evil companions who corrupt godly living, and he taught that those who follow such teachers sin in doing so. Spong’s defense of homosexuality and premarital living arrangements is a perfect illustration of why Paul warned us against men who deny the literal truth of gospel preaching.

Spong’s Eternal Truth: Man Is God!

Spong says the real underlying message of the New Testament writers (when separated from their errors, blunders, exaggerations, myths, etc.) is that “religious traditions must be made inclusive. A universal community in Christ must be built” (p. 165). This community is not limited to those who believe in Jesus as the only Savior, those who accept Bible teaching, or those who practice one lifestyle or another, but includes “Protestant and Catholic,” “gay and straight,” “Moslem, Buddhist, and Hindu” (p. 165; cf. p. 184). Spong argues that all truth is relative and that man cannot know final, eternal, exclusive truth (p. 169). Yet he then treats his postulate of an inclusive, universal community as the final truth of Scripture. Notice how absolute, eternal, and exclusive he makes that “truth.” Rather than trying to convert people to any one belief, Spong says, “The time has come, in my opinion, to look at the truth that lies beneath the words of every great world religion, to respect that truth, to learn from that truth” (p. 171). Is Spong trying to convert us all to that one belief?

It is emphatically not necessary to believe the literal claims that Jesus is God as recorded by John, “because the Jesus of history did not say them” (p. 206). As to the “I Am” sayings of Jesus, which literally are claims to deity, we today are to worship the “I Am” by “having the courage to be the self God created each of us to be.” “The Christian is the one called so deeply into life, into love, and into being that he or she can say with a Christ-like integrity, I AM!” (p. 207) In other words, the final message which Spong would use to replace the Bible message is this: The universal community is all mankind proclaiming, “I AM!” Spong’s final message is that men who disobey God and reject his written word “shall not surely die,” but rather “shall be as gods” experiencing a wondrous new meaning in life. Where have we heard that message before?

Spong Wrong But Not Alone

Spong is wrong but not alone. The ministers of Satan are becoming bolder in their attacks against Christ and the Bible. A recent Time Magazine article reports that the “Bah, Humbug! approach to the Scriptures” was once more limited to “seminaries and elite universities,” but that such studies are now “coming out of the closet” into public domain (“Jesus Christ, Plain and Simple,” Time Magazine, 10 January 1994, pp. 38-39). Three new books are cited as examples, all of them sharing with Spong the denial of the virgin birth of Christ, his miracles, his atoning death, and his resurrection. We shall briefly mention these three books which are full of bizarre and brazen blasphemy.

John D. Crossan wrote Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography claiming that the deity of Christ is a myth. The account of his birth is said to be imaginary, and he performed no miracles but may have used trance-like therapies on people. After his crucifixion Jesus was probably buried in a shallow grave and eaten by wild dogs. Burton Mack’s The Lost Gospel asserts that there is no certain record of the life and teaching of Christ; the gospel narratives are not historical accounts but are “imaginative creations.” The Five Gospels is another recent book, produced by seventy-four biblical scholars who belong to the Jesus Seminar (a group which meets twice a year to debate and to vote on the authenticity of the recorded sayings of Jesus). Time Magazine calls The Five Gospels a “breezy new colloquial translation,” including the four traditional gospel accounts plus the so-called “Gospel of Thomas.” All the sayings of Jesus are color-coded to indicate the degree of certainty about how authentic they are, but “precisely 82% of Jesus’ words are judged inauthentic.”

Time to Rise Up

It is time for the people of God to rise up as a mighty army and to go everywhere preaching the Word of truth. “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived,” but we must continue to hold high the blood-stained banner of Christ (2 Tim. 3:13). The gospel of Christ is still “the power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16). Let us preach the literal truth of all the facts, all the commands, and all the promises of the gospel of Christ without fear or favor toward any man. True gospel preaching includes “all the counsel of God,” including Bible principles of morality, the terms of pardon, the pattern for the one true church, and anything else “concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:24-27; 8:12). The harder Satan fights against the truth, the harder the people of God must fight for it. The gospel does not need to be reformulated, it needs to be preached, obeyed, lived, proclaimed, and defended!

Guardian of Truth XXXVIII: 14, p. 8-11
July 21, 1994