Review of Spong's a New Christianity for a New World (3)

Episcopalian "bishop" John Shelby Spong has made clear that he does not believe that God is a person, the Bible is His Word, or that Jesus is His Son. Yet he calls himself a Christian, which is foolishness. This article will answer a few of the complaints he has against the way God is depicted in the Old and New Testaments.

Complaints Against God

Before listing these, it might be of value to point out that complaining against God is futile. Job thought he had a right to know why he was suffering, and God asked him some questions, such as, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" (Job 38:4). The point is that man has so little knowledge of God and His universe that he does not have a place to stand on when it comes to questioning God. When the Lord pointed that out to Job, he was totally humbled and acknowledged, "Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know" (Job 42:3). This conversation was apparently lost on Spong, who thinks nothing is so wonderful as he is. Following are some of his comments.

He protests that God hammered "the Egyptians with plague after plague," including "the murder of the firstborn male of every Egyptian household" (9). He seems to overlook all that led up to this tenth plague. First, these Egyptians had made the lives of the Israelites "bitter with hard bondage" (Ex. 1:14). The king of Egypt even went so far as to command the Israelites to cast their newborn sons into the river (1:22). Is it therefore unfair for God to pay the Egyptians back in kind?

Second, God warned the Egyptians in advance of many of the plagues. It made no difference to Pharaoh—not even when his own servants exhorted him to let Israel go. They were so bold as to say, "Do you not yet know Egypt is destroyed?" (Ex. 10:7). Being warned in advance, many of the Egyptians avoided some of the plagues. "He who feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh" were able to save their livestock (Ex. 9:20).

As for the death of the firstborn, Pharaoh was warned and could have prevented it, but his own stubbornness prevented him from doing so (Ex. 11:9-10). Spong also criticizes Jehovah for drowning the Egyptians in the Red Sea: "Is that the handiwork of a moral deity?" (9). He wants to know who would want to worship this kind of Deity—or even believe in Him? Your congenial editor is raising his hand, as probably are those reading these words. Do we believe God is just—or don't we? The Bible has been shown to be the Word of God both with internal and external proofs, and therefore we believe. Now what proofs does Spong offer that anyone should agree with him? All he can offer is his human reasoning, which is not very logical. Whoever and Whatever God is, He is more powerful than mankind.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana is known for the following quote: "Life is hard, but it's harder when you're stupid." Consider the facts: 1) God brought ten plagues upon Egypt; 2) Many of these were foretold by Moses, including the tenth one, in which the death of every firstborn Egyptian. 3) Pharaoh commanded Israel to depart from Egypt, which they did immediately; 4) Then, Pharoah ordered his army to pursue them. 5) The Egyptians thought they had Israel trapped against the Red Sea, but a) God put a pillar of cloud between Egypt and Israel (Ex. 14:19-20), while b) He divided the waters and, with an east wind blowing all night, made the ground dry.

After ten plagues, predicted in advance, the supernatural intervention of a pillar of cloud, and Israel escaping through the sea on dry land, what is Pharoah going to do? A wise person would say, "There's no way we're going to win this battle, is there?" He might even say to himself, "How do we know those walls of water will not collapse if we follow Israel into the sea?" All of the evidence Pharaoh has would virtually shout to him, "Don't do it! Don't go after them!" But life is "even harder when you're stupid." The walls of water returned to their normal depth, and all of Pharaoh's army drowned. On what basis can anyone find fault with God in this matter?

Spong criticizes God for making the sun stand still so that Joshua could "have sufficient daylight to slaughter the Amorites in a battle" (9). One gets the feeling that Spong does not believe in justice—that the guilty should be punished. He neglects to observe that the Amorites were given 400 years to repent of their ungodliness. God told Abram that his own descendants would be afflicted during this time because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet complete (Gen. 15:13-16). By the time Israel left Egypt, it was time for God to use Israel to punish them.

So then, Spong objects to the Amorites being punished, period; even worse is the fact that He made the sun stand still in order to accomplish the task, as if such a thing would pose a problem to Almighty God. Spong complains that God would do such a drastic thing just to kill Amorites. Yes. And He can handle the force of gravity, can He not? He created the universe from nothing; is there some reason He cannot make the sun stand still and handle gravity at the same time? (Of course, Spong does not believe in miracles, period—whether walking on water or raising the dead.)

The claim is made that "we wonder whether the Amorites could have ever worshiped such a God" (9). Joshua was not sent to change their worship habits; he was sent to destroy them. They had neglected 400 years of opportunities to change their worship; they refused. Now was not the time for evangelism—but judgment. Yes, God has the right to punish the wicked! No one living today will escape standing before the judgment seat of Christ (2 Cor. 5:10). If there is one lesson to learn from the Old Testament, it is that God judges.

Consider the beauty of what occurred that day. Joshua was defeating the Amorites in battle; so, he commanded the sun and the moon to stand still—and they did! This action enabled Israel to finish the battle. Afterward, the text reads: "And there has been no day like that, before it or after it, that the Lord heeded the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel" (Joshua 10:14). All that Spong can do with this truly inspiring passage is trash it and mumble something about Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church. How God worked this miracle, only He knows. The Catholic Church merely assumed that our earth was the center of the universe.

The Atonement

The next complaint Spong registers involves the atonement God arranged for the removal of sins. First, he claims that Christianity borrowed from the Jewish Day of Atonement (10). Apparently, he missed the fact that Yom Kippur was a type God set up under the Law of Moses that Christ would later fulfil in the New Testament system. He says that Christians take delight in referring to Jesus as the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Second, he then asks:

Is such a God—one who requires bloody human sacrifice—still worship-worthy today, when we finally raise this offensive idea to consciousness (10)?

The cannibalistic ritual of eating the flesh of the deceased deity is filled with ancient psychological nuances that are disturbing to modern sensitivities (11).

One is tempted to ask Spong, "How would you go about ridding mankind of his sins?" Would he give the sinner a severe tongue-lashing and let him go? Would he assure him he will love him no matter what he does—and save him anyway? Or would he simply dismiss sin as an obsolete concept concerning which man need not bother himself? It likely might be the latter, since Spong denies God's definitions of what sin actually is.

To deal with Spong's criticism, one should not start with the Old Testament, but with the New. How did God choose to deal with mankind's sins? He required a sacrifice of blood. Is this something borrowed from pagan rites? No. God did require an animal sacrifice in the Old Testament, but it was "not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins" (Heb. 10:4). The Old Testament sacrifices were a type of what could really remove sins—the blood of Christ.

But the plan did not grow out of anything that occurred in the Old Testament period (such as pagan practices); it preceded them. God had this plan in mind before He created the world. Peter proclaims that mankind was not redeemed by such corruptible things as gold or silver—"but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:18-19). This much has already been mentioned, but the next sentence pertains fully to this discussion.

"He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you" (1 Peter 1:20). Why did God require a bloody sacrifice (as Spong puts it)? This actually is a good question. God found the only solution possible to the problem of sin. Since Spong does not really care about sin, he probably did not devote any time to answering this question. Let's reason it through.

We must, first and foremost, recall that God is holy. No corruption resides in Him. He cannot lie, for example (Titus 1:2). Because of the nature of His very being, He cannot fellowship those who are laden with sin. But God created man to have fellowship with Him (as the Garden of Eden demonstrates—Gen. 3:8). When therefore man chose to sin, how could God respond? Sin separated man from God (Isa. 59:1-2). There is no way to un-sin. No one can time travel back to before the sin was committed in order to make the right decision as part of a do-over. Suppose someone wearing a white shirt fell into a coal bin. What could he do? He could pretend the shirt was not dirty, but others would notice. He would need a cleansing agent to remove the dirt.

So it is with sin. What kind of a cleansing agent removes sin? The blood of Jesus. But why? Because the life is in the blood. God told Noah not to eat the "flesh with its life, that is, its blood" (Gen. 9:4). "For the life of the flesh is in the blood…" (Lev. 17:11, 14). "Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is life; you may not eat the life with the meat" (Deut. 12:23).

Jesus took our place; He received our punishment for sin. A guilty person could not stand in, being worthy of the same punishment. Only one free from sin could do so, and since the life is in the blood, blood must be shed, and we are cleansed by that blood. The fact that Spong could not comprehend this method of removing mankind's sins does not make it any less powerful. Jesus' blood gives us life.

Now, if someone thinks he can come up with a better system for redeeming mankind, please tell us what it is. Tell us how you would have handled sin if you were God. The world anxiously awaits a workable solution to the problem. Sure, one could take away our free will, and that would work. We would always do what we were programed to do. God did not even create the angels to be robots. And what animal would choose of its own free will to give himself for mankind? Plants and vegetables are out, too. Money can't buy a way out of sin's consequences; good works cannot earn a way out from under the burden of sin; philosophers cannot think their way out. Only the blood of the one who took our place can wash our sins away (Acts 22:16; Rev. 1:5).

No one's consciousness ought to feel offended; rather all should rejoice in salvation. The Lord's Supper is neither cannibalistic nor a ritual. It is the way our Lord asked to be remembered—to remind us that He gave Himself (His body) and His blood (wherein is life) for us (1 Cor. 11:23-26). No one has ever—or will ever—come up with a plan to equal God's, let alone excel it.