Chapter 7 - The Bishop and the Bible
Chapter 7
The Bishop and the Bible
On the basis of John Spong’s statements published in the preceding issue of Crux, one could cavalierly note that a response to his use of Scripture would have to be included among the legendary collection of the “world’s smallest books.” For in fact there is very little that passes as biblical interpretation in his presentation; what appears instead are several moments of rhetorical, out-of-hand dismissal of the biblical perspective on homosexuality, set up by a railing against those who “use the Bible to perpetuate the attitudes and prejudices of the past” (p. 21). Nonetheless, one must also take seriously the bishop’s own profession of love for the Bible, and his desire to “rescue it for the church from the clutches of fundamentalism.” What I propose to do in this response, therefore, is to take both the bishop and Scripture seriously, and to do so (1) by suggesting that in the final analysis his statements about love for Scripture and his cavalier attitude toward it in the debate are quite incompatible, and (2) by offering an interpretation of the Pauline texts on the issue of homosexuality that is at once faithful to the point of view of Scripture and compassionate to those in the gay community, as compassion is defined by the gospel.
1. If one cuts through the rhetoric so that one can see what the bishop is trying to do, two things emerge. First, although I was not able to hear the debate personally, even a casual reading of Spong’s prepared address, as well as his off-the-cuff remarks, makes it clear that he was playing to his audience. The problem with such a method is that it may very well backfire on a speaker, in two ways: On the one hand, while such a play to the audience may win points with the already-converted, it is highly unlikely that it will be persuasive to those whose minds are not yet made up and would like to hear careful, reasoned arguments. Unfortunately, for those whose minds are also already made up on the other side, such argumentation has the effect of belittling, and therefore of being anything but Christlike. On the other hand, it leaves the bishop highly suspect as to whether he had carefully thought through the matter of audience at all. If his goal was to caricature those who disagree with him, so that those who agree might have reason to thumb their noses at other believers, then he surely succeeded. If it was to win over unbelievers for the Christian faith, Spong’s presentation, which tends to belittle the Bible in the process, hardly approaches genuine evangelism.
From my point of view, such rhetoric functions as a totally “lose-lose” proposition: (a) it divides Christians in the public forum, rather than demonstrating that Christians can disagree in public without resorting to worldly methods of trying to conquer opponents; (b) it may indeed offer solace to fellow travelers on the issue of homosexuality, but it scarcely offers them a positive attitude toward Scripture, so that the net result will finally be an inability to hear the gospel itself, since that rests on Scripture alone and nothing else. To put all of this another way, the problem with Spong’s attack, despite his protests to the contrary, is that it can only have the effect of demeaning Scripture, both in the eyes of those whose love for the Bible is equal to (in light of Spong’s rhetoric I would think “greater than”) that of Spong himself, and in the eyes of those who do not know our Lord Jesus Christ and whose only hope of hearing the gospel lies in the very Scriptures that Spong belittles before their eyes.
Second, in playing to his audience in this way, Spong thereby also tries, on the one hand, to distance himself as much as possible from a view of Scripture that he calls fundamentalistic, and, on the other hand, to approach the issue of homosexuality by way of an argument from cultural relativity that rather totally removes any moral implications from such behavior.
Spong’s opposition to fundamentalism is thoroughgoing, but not always fair, mostly because he seems determined to throw the net too widely, so that the term includes people like Stott, whose own work and attitudes are as far removed from the fundamentalism that Spong eschews as is Spong himself. But “fundamentalism,” it should be noted, may refer either to a set of conclusions about Scripture that are often unduly “literalistic” and, from my point of view, obscurantist, or to the mindset of those who hold such views. One of the primary characteristics of this mindset is the tendency to divide the whole world into two camps: “us” and “them.”
Unfortunately, this is the very mindset that Spong himself adopts, both in his present address and in most of his earlier books. His rhetoric has the clear effect of placing all people in two camps regarding Scripture — especially on the matter of homosexual behavior — Spong’s and everyone else’s, the latter whom, besides “fundamentalist,” he brands variously as “naive,” “sexist,” and “blatant homophobics,” who “quote the Bible with abandon in order to uphold their perspective.” That, of course, is precisely the attitude that he himself caricatures at the beginning as “fundamentalistic.”
The bishop is right; fundamentalism should be rejected, but fundamentalism of all kinds, including that which he both rails against and models, where those who disagree with his own passionately held positions are dismissed by name-calling rather than by taking their contrary positions seriously as carefully and prayerfully considered. The problem with Spong’s view of Scripture is not simply that it represents “unreconstructed liberalism,”45 but that by its narrowing of the perspective so starkly, Spong himself seems unaware of the large “middling” group, both evangelical and otherwise, who probably represent the majority of contemporary New Testament scholars. I do not herewith suggest that the majority has it right, heaven forbid, but that one represents a kind of scholarly naivete that does not take that majority with some considerable seriousness when doing biblical studies. And this Spong seems incapable of doing.
One of the fundamental postulates of hermeneutics is that interpreters come to texts laden with presuppositions, both about the texts they are interpreting and the world in which they live, including their own baggage. I do not herewith consider myself exempt from such; indeed it is always easier to see this baggage in another than in oneself. But surely the bishop’s strong reaction to his own personal history colors his thinking and negates his ability to take Stott’s arguments seriously in their own right. My own experience with scores of students over many years who have made a journey similar to Spong’s, usually to a lesser degree, is that they “love” people only in the direction they are traveling, but cannot find the grace to do so in the direction from which they have come. Despite his protestations of holding in “honor” the church of his youth, the rhetoric of his prepared address speaks a different story of prejudice and unresolved anger.
2. As to his use of Scripture, several things may be said, carefully, I hope, since not everything that one believes can emerge in the format in which this “debate” was carried out. Not having heard the debate, I read his Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), so that I might be a bit better informed about his way of reading and understanding Scripture. To his discredit, the method revealed there represents the same kind of rhetoric and the same failure to take seriously New Testament scholarship as a whole as one finds in the present debate. Whatever else, exegesis is not John Spong’s strong suit. In some ways I knew that beforehand, since my previous knowledge of his work was through his “historical reconstruction” of Jesus which argues that Jesus was the groom at the wedding of Cana with Mary Magdalene as his bride. This has rightly been dubbed “silly” by a knowledgeable lay theologian, because it deals with “history” in such a non-historical, purely speculative way, yet wants to be taken seriously by others. As one may well expect, no New Testament scholar gives such a view the time of day. Exegesis and history must be made of sterner stuff!46
The most obvious rhetorical ploy in Spong’s argumentation in the debate with Stott is to be found in the fact that his longest and most impassioned attack is not over the issue of homosexuality at all but against Scripture’s alleged patriarchalism. The stratagem seems plain enough: to attack Scripture’s (consistent) attitude toward homosexuality as obscurantist by attacking its (from Spong’s point of view, equally obscurantist) attitude toward male-female relationships. But “guilt by association” will not do.
To be sure, on the matter of homosexuality as behavior Scripture has a universal point of view: that such behavior lies outside the intent of creation and is consistently labeled as sinful. The texts which speak to this issue are thus consistent with the overall view of Scripture at every significant point of Christian theology: creation, the fall, redemption, and consummation. Those who take Scripture’s own view on this matter are not therefore merely “applying ancient biblical verses”(!) to this issue. We are trying, on the contrary, to be sensitive to the whole of Scripture and its view of what God is doing in our world through Christ and the Spirit.
On the other hand, on the matter of male-female relationships the Bible is not consistently patriarchal, at least not as it is defined in Spong’s prejudicial way. While no one will deny that the Old Testament presupposes a patriarchal worldview, as do all of its neighboring cultures, it neither defends nor theologizes that presupposition. That is simply the “stuff” of the world into which Israel was brought into existence. But the perspective of the New Testament is strikingly different. While the world into which the gospel came, both the Jewish and Greco-Roman world, one needs to point out was still patriarchal, both Jesus and Paul offer a radically altered perspective, in which they not only affirm women but see the good news of the gospel as destroying any significance attached to racial, social, and sexual distinctions, which belong to human fallenness. After all, it is the Paul whom Bishop Spong appears to dislike so intensely who said that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).47 That the Bible has been used by some of its well-meaning friends to continue to attach significance to these distinctions does not make the Bible itself homophobic, nor those who stand against Spong on the matter of homosexual practice.
What is striking in Spong’s presentation is his apparent need to use this form of guilt by association as his way of categorically dismissing those who hold a different view of Scripture from his, since he seems to have much more difficulty dealing with the biblical texts on both of these issues. What he is tacitly arguing, of course, is that patriarchalism and opposition to homosexuality are at root the same thing. But this is not the perspective of the Bible, nor, others of us would argue, should they ever be so easily confused. A lack of compassion by those who hold such views is correctly fought against; but Scripture makes sharp distinctions between morality and mores, even if Spong would have us believe that the distinction is wrong. I, too, condemn in the name of the God who has revealed himself in Christ all forms of racism and male domination of women. And I was doing the latter long before it became a fad on the part of the religious establishment of which the bishop is representative. It ought to be condemned because it is wrong; and it is wrong not because I or Spong pronounce it so, but because Scripture has revealed it so as over against all that redemption in Christ means and provides “for us people and our salvation.”
3. What is easily the most incongruous aspect of Spong’s view of Scripture, is his professed love for the Bible, on the one hand, and his thoroughly cavalier attitude toward it, on the other. He offers us a clearcut choice: His view or Scripture’s own perspective. Scripture is variously set aside for modernity; indeed “a Bible that reflects tribal, racial, nationalistic, and sexual prejudices needs to be confronted” (p. 22). I would agree; but the larger question is whether Spong’s is an adequate view of the Bible as a whole, or whether he is jousting still with the windmills of his past, especially with the way his fundamentalistic tradition interpreted the biblical text. Spong’s basic hermeneutical stance on these matters is to distinguish between “the letter of Scripture” and “the spirit of Scripture” a common, but exegetically indefensible, use of a Pauline text to support a modern idea. What is at stake is not the “letter” or “spirit” of texts, but the intent of any and all texts within the larger context of a given writer and finally of the whole of Scripture itself.
It should be noted at this point that most of Spong’s execration of biblical texts (on pp. 22-23) reflects either especially poor exegesis on his part (including 1 Cor 11:7-12 [he reads w. 8-9 exactly backwards and acts as if Paul did not also write w. 11-12, which were offered apparently as correctives precisely so that one would not read w. 7-9 the way Spong does]; 1 Tim 2:9-15; Rom 1:26-27) or positions espoused in some texts that do not themselves reflect the view of Scripture as a whole. Whatever else one may wish to say of Spong’s rhetoric, this is simply bad form as far as interpretation is concerned.
Here we are clearly dealing with basic issues as to the nature of Scripture: what it means for Scripture to be the Word of God, and how it functions as such in the life of the believing church and of the believer. And here Spong and I part company rather radically. He sees views like mine as anachronistic at best, as spiteful at worst; I see his as sitting in judgment on the biblical text in such a way that the living God has very little chance of sitting in judgment on him and calling his own sins into account.48 When one can so easily pick and choose where and how he will allow God to speak to him or her through Scripture, especially on what Scripture considers matters of righteousness, why should one want to have Scripture at all?
In the final analysis, Spong pushes us to make a clearcut choice between him, with his obvious enchantment with modernity, and Paul, who says that when he proclaims Christ he speaks the very message of God. Faced with such a choice, and it is the only choice Spong allows us, I will go with Paul every time. For in Paul I find the love of God and God’s wrath against our sin brought together in the cross; in Spong I find merely “soft mush,” in which the only “biblical” defense of homosexuality is a paragraph which does not have a single moment of Scripture in it, where gay and lesbian people are “demanding” to be seen as “holy,” created thus in “God’s image,” and “called to the fullness of their gay and lesbian humanity in God’s Holy Spirit.” The bishop may indeed believe that to be so; but he certainly cannot sustain that view on the basis of the church’s Scriptures, either from specific texts or from its overall perspective. And for me to speak so is not to speak as homophobic, but is to speak the truth in love on the basis of what one finds in the biblical texts themselves. In answer to Spong’s rhetoric, “Why is it that some of us think today that people who wrote the Bible between 1000 B.C. and 150 A.D. knew enough about homosexuality to pronounce judgment on it for all time?” the obvious answer is, “because, as the church’s basic creeds have always maintained, we believe that Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that what God himself has inspired is a word for all seasons.” If Paul is homophobic, then Scripture itself is homophobic. And if I must choose between Spong and the Bible, then I must go with the Bible, which is not homophobic, but is God’s Word of redemption and transformation to all who will hear and obey.
4. That leads, finally, to some words about the Pauline texts that Spong dismisses out of hand. Regarding Paul’s views of homosexual practice as the ultimate expression of God’s having given people up to their own degradation, Spong responds, “What a strange idea! And it’s not the only time that Paul is wrong.” There you have it; modernity, clothed in a bishop’s robe and wearing a mitre, over against the apostle himself, without whom there would have been no Christianity within which Spong could be bishop. But Spong’s interpretation49 of Romans 1 misses Paul exegetically by a mile, and theologically as well.
At issue in Romans 1 is human fallenness, described by the apostle as “the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth of God by their wickedness.” The ultimate form of such wickedness, Paul says, based on the futility of thinking about life apart from God and without thanksgiving to him, is idolatry, in which mere creatures “exchange the glory of God” for the exaltation of the creature. They simply “believe a lie,” both about God and about themselves. The ultimate expression of this exchange, Paul concludes, is homosexual activity, in which those created in God’s image as male and female so as to reproduce the race — procreation, not recreation, is after all the primary reason for sexuality — exchange their natural, created sexuality for that which is not natural, precisely because it cannot lead to the reproduction of more human beings equally created in God’s own image. Persistence in such activity is condemned along with all other forms of idolatry, in which the creature and his or her desires is preferred to the Creator; and this is the consistent view of Scripture.50 This does not make homosexual practice any worse than the other sins enumerated in w. 28-30; but neither does it allow that such “unnatural” activity is less than what it is: a form of choosing the creature over against the Creator, just as is adultery and promiscuity.
But in any case, judgment is never the final word; it is merely the first word. The final word is redemption. And those who are involved in homosexual behavior are invited to this redemption along with those of us whose idolatries have taken different forms. Thus, in the vice list in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Paul includes two words for practising homosexuality51 along with eight other expressions of “wickedness” that if persisted in will exclude people from the final eschatological kingdom. But the last word is the word of redemption: “But such were some of you; but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified by the authority of Jesus’ name and by the power of the Spirit.”
And here is where Spong’s and an evangelical understanding of Christian faith part company radically. Spong persists in a brand that is thoroughly unbiblical at its crucial center; “redemption” for him means passive tolerance on the part of God toward human fallenness, in which God in Christ affirms us in our fallenness, forgives us for it, but leaves us there. And because in our fallenness that seems so decent of God, we would like to think that such decency is what redemptive love is all about. But that is precisely the “soft mush” of traditional liberalism.
The New Testament has a different point of view, in which God’s love is both stronger and gentler than that promoted by the bishop. In love Christ has not only redeemed us, and thereby delivered us from our rebellion against him, but has given us his Holy Spirit, his own empowering presence, so as to transform us, recreate us if you will, back into his likeness. Redemption in Christ and by the Spirit, therefore, does not whitewash sinners and leave them in their sins, but transforms sinners, recreating them in God’s own likeness, to reflect his image and glory which we in our fallenness here so thoroughly debased. Such transformation may not “cure” our orientation toward sin; but the Spirit, Paul says, and thousands have experienced it so, is sufficient. Those who walk by the Spirit are promised that they will not fulfill the desires of the flesh, including the desires that have to do with our modernity, in which we try to outsmart God as to what “good” means for our fallen human race. In this matter, and obviously in others as well, give me the word of the living God, and deliver me from the words of a bishop who has given up Scripture for his own modernity.