An Open Letter

Jodster of You Need to be Saved made a comment to my blog of a few days past, in which he invited me to respond by email. I did, but lost it due to my own stupidity. Then, I decided that since it began here, I would post an open email to him in this blog space.

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Thank you for contributing your comment to my post, Reading John Shelby Spong. It is fine to disagree with each other, just as long as we don't become disagreeable in the process. In good spirit, I have decided to respond to your offer to communicate further with you. While it would not advance either of our interests to become embroiled in an endless debate, there may be some use in dialoging a bit more. I'm unconvinced, but we shall see.

I write neither as a theologian nor as a historian. I trust that no one will quibble overly much with any minor errors of fact that I might make.

What I most wish to respond to is the very first part of your comment where you find it interesting that so many people want to change the meaning of the scriptures. Of course, that makes me wonder if you really read the article on which you are commenting. As I understand it, the whole point of Spong's work is to try to find the meaning of scripture and not to change it at all. The meaning of scripture cannot be changed, but it is possible that we don 't know all of meaning yet — because we may have been looking through the wrong prism.

We do know that the gospels were written by Jews. We do know, that in the beginning, Jewish believers of Jesus worshipped with other Jews in the same synagogues. In synagogue, The Torah would be read completely in one liturgical year. Spong believes that the gospels were written in the same vein — to be read alongside those very same scriptures. The Easter reading, for example, would coincide with Passover readings.

Each gospel writer found his way of harmonizing the gospel account, as he envisioned it, with what was being read from The Torah on a given Sabbath. They wrote in a midrashic style, so that Jews who would hear the gospel might see Jesus for who He is: one in whom God was present, just as he was present in The Torah.

Another way of putting it is that the gospel writers did not, originally at least, set out to supply a factualized, chronological account of the life of Christ. Their purpose, as Jews, was to reveal Him to other Jews in ways that were relevant to them. If Spong is correct (and he may or may not be — I'm really just blogging about something that I have read and that makes much sense to me), Christendom may have been not interpreting scripture nearly as fully or correctly as possible since Jews and Christians parted company towards the end of the first century. When that happened, Gentiles began to filter Jewish writings through Gentile mentality.

Which brings me to a sensitive and troubling area of your writing. In both your comment to me and in your own blog, you make rather broad statements about Jews. These seem to me to be the kinds of statements that have been made for millennia and have caused Christians to inflict unspeakable hardships on Jews. I think you verge on anti-semitism — unintentionally, I trust.

Since I do not believe this [near anti-semitism] to be your main meaning or intention, I urge you to take great care in how you generalize about a whole ethnic group. Please remember that they gave us both Jesus and the scriptures — all of the scriptures with the possible exception of Luke who was most likely a former Gentile who had already proselytized into Judaism.

You do understand that the early Jewish Christians worshipped in the synagogues with other Jews? They tolerated and were tolerated. It seems that it was largely after the Romans crushed Jerusalem in 70 AD that the two groups moved more firmly and irrevocably apart. Jews decided that they needed to focus on maintaining their core beliefs. Christians moved more and more into the Roman realm, which may be the reason why Pontius Pilate got off so lightly in the gospels and why the Jews were rather excoriated.

I understand your point of view very well, for I was once a young evangelical who studied The Word and accepted it as literal truth. I had sublime assurance that my beliefs were completely true and that others' were highly suspect. Supposed revisionists, like Spong, would infuriate me to no end, and I feared for their souls.

Eventually, I came to realize that God cannot be confined to my little box of narrowly-formed dogma. My evangelical theology was far too small and limiting. My trite beliefs needed to be reexamined and redefined. If God is God, then he can withstand my honest doubts, my vacillations, my search, my own wandering in the wilderness.

I know that your youthful dogma is not about to be steered off its straight and narrow course by the likes of my feeble natterings. I write with a tiny glimmer of hope that you might be slightly more open minded about the sincerity of the faith of others — if not now, then maybe someday — perhaps.