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The Five Fundamentals: A Conclusion


If the "Five Fundamentals" articulated by traditional Christians in the early years of the 20th century represent the essence of Christianity then the time has come to acknowledge that we have come to the end of this noble faith tradition. Those "Fundamentals" assume a supernatural, theistic deity, who manipulates the laws of the universe to do miracles. Isaac Newton put an end to that notion in the 17th century. The "Fundamentals" also assume a three-tiered universe that educated people stopped believing in after Galileo. Even the Vatican pronounced Galileo correct in 1991. These "Fundamentals" define human life as something that was created perfect at some specific date in history (Bishop Ussher suggested 4004 B.C.) only to fall into sin and thus to require an intervening act of divine rescue. That view of human origins died in the 19th century at the hands of Charles Darwin whose work was ultimately authenticated by the discovery of DNA evidence that links all life into one common origin. The "Five Fundamentals" assume that human beings can possess knowledge of God that is in fact beyond the capacity of the human mind to embrace. Insisting that interpretive myths can be literalized, the "Fundamentals" claim to possess truth by direct revelation, not recognizing that God cannot be bound by the human limits of time and space and that human words about God can not, therefore, be literalized by anyone in any age. Indeed the "Five Fundamentals" are so bound to a worldview and to a frame of reference that no longer exists that to insist upon them as the defining convictions of a Christian is to close out the possibility that modern men and women can be committed Christians without twisting their brains into pre-modern pretzels.

Since in the common mind, however, these "Fundamentals" have become identified with traditional Christianity itself, many people, including the popular voices in the media, assume that a dismissal of these "Fundamentals" constitutes a dismissal of Christianity itself. Therefore, those of us who refuse to surrender the title Christian either to the Benedict XVI's or to the Falwell-Robertson brands of contemporary Christianity have a responsibility to say what it is that we do believe and why we continue to call ourselves Christians. In this concluding essay on the "Five Fundamentals" I want to do just that.

I no longer define God as a being who exists somewhere outside the boundaries of this world, who possesses supernatural power and who intervenes in human history periodically to answer prayers, to do a miracle or to accomplish the divine will. That is nothing more than the "theistic" definition of God, and it must be recognized today as no more than a human creation. The theistic God is portrayed as a great big human being who has escaped human limitations. So deeply has "theism" captured the definition of God that the word "atheist," which literally means one who does not believe in a theistic God, has come to mean one who does not believe in any God at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchen and Sam Harris do not understand that distinction. That is certainly not my situation.

We have today finally begun to recognize that no human mind can grasp the reality of God, so human efforts to define God are as nonsensical as the efforts of horses might be if they attempted to define a human being. God is a reality that can be experienced but never defined. There is also the chance that when we think we are experiencing God, we are in fact facing only our own delusions. All religious systems are typically loathe to face or to admit that possibility..

Honesty compels me to state that I am a God-intoxicated, but not a theistic believing Christian. I experience God as that transcendent dimension of life and I use the undefined human word "other" to name. God to me is experienced as the power of life that surges through the universe and that comes to self-consciousness in human beings alone. God to me is experienced as the presence of love that enhances life and that human beings alone can name. God to me is experienced as the "Ground of Being" empowering all that is, to be what every created thing can be, but which only human life can understand or articulate. So I worship this God of life by living fully and I call this aspect of God "Holy Spirit." I worship this source of love by loving wastefully and I see this quality uniquely in the portrait of the all loving Jesus of Nazareth. I worship this "Ground of Being" that I "the Father" by having the courage to be all that I can be. I think that the God experience met in the affirmation of life, love and being is in fact a therapeutic pathway to wholeness and that wholeness is and can be a factor in restoring one to health and healing. I do not think that this is miraculous or supernatural, I think it is rather natural and real. I do not believe that I could tolerate emotionally a chaotic world run by a miracle-working, manipulating, capricious deity rather than the universe in which I live, which is stable and ordered by the natural laws of the universe.

I define myself as a Christian, by which I mean I am a disciple of Jesus, who is for me the human icon through which I embrace the reality of God. When I look at Jesus' life, as I have received it through both tradition and scripture, I see one who was so fully alive that I perceive the Source of Life in him. I see one who so totally loved that I perceive the Source of Love in him. I see one who was free to be all that he was meant to be so I perceive the Ground of Being in him. Since my God experience convinces me that God comes to me as life, love and being, I have no problem joining with St. Paul and saying of this Jesus that "God was in Christ." It is that undoubted experience that underlies all the doctrine about the divinity of Christ. To meet this Jesus is for me to meet the reality of God through a human medium. That does not find me literalizing the ancient symbols through which my ancestors sought to explain the God presence they believed they met in him. I am not much attracted to primal myths like virgin births, miraculous acts, the resuscitation of deceased bodies or the cosmic ascension of a deity returning to the divine abode above the sky. I do believe with all my being, however, that the reality of God transcends all human barriers including the ultimate boundary of death. Jesus is vital to me in understanding that God presence. My hope for eternity also resides in that conviction.

I do not believe in something called original sin or what classical theology called the "fall of man." The sooner Christianity can part with that antiquated idea, the better. I am a post-Darwinian not a pre-Darwinian. Human life was never made in a state of perfection so it could not possibly have fallen from that original perfection into the trough of "original sin." If we are not fallen, it is nonsensical to suggest, as classical Christianity does, that only the intervening, rescuing God could save us. Rather, human life has evolved over 4 ½ -5 billion years until it arrived at our present self-conscious stage. The evil that marks human life does not rise, therefore, out of some mythical, pre-historic fall into sin but in the reality of the continued incompleteness of our humanity as we evolve into what we were created to be. So we do not need a savior or one who will rescue us from our sin. What we need rather is to be empowered to become more deeply and completely human, to live creatively with the chronic anxiety that is the unique mark of self-conscious creatures who know their limits. Thus the story of the Christ must be totally rethought in light of this new understanding of human origins. The old way cannot be restored to credibility even by artificial respiration.

These facts alone render the current mythology about Jesus as the divine visitor to earth to be both dated and inadequate. They reveal Pope Benedict XVI's book about Jesus to be completely irrelevant to the current Christological debate. This new perception of our origins will quickly and totally take the Church out of the business of providing certainty and security and will cast us finally into a deep and radically different search for truth. The context in which all religious questions are discussed will be changed. "The Five Fundamentals" will be seen as little more than fading images in a rear mirror reflecting a world that no longer exists. These realities raise powerful and provocative questions. Does the Christian Institution, in any of its forms, have the ability, strength or willingness to undergo this radical new process? There is little evidence to encourage one to think so. Pope Benedict XVI still lives in a fantasy world in which he regards ultimate truth as something that has been captured in the creeds, doctrines and dogmas of his Church. He assumes that a first century Bible, a fourth century creed and thirteenth century dogmas can escape the limits of their time and place in history. He continues to play superiority games, asserting that his Roman Catholic Church alone possesses ultimate truth, thus rendering all others as "defective," an argument too absurd to elicit defensiveness. The Archbishop of Canterbury has, at the same time, sacrificed truth for unity, as if a church united in homophobia or any other prejudice is worth fighting to save. Mainline Protestantism is in such a statistical freefall that with a few notable exceptions in each tradition, it has lost the nerve needed to stand for much of anything. These forms of Christianity will die of boredom long before they die of controversy. Evangelicals and fundamentalist offer the snake oil cure of religious certainty, surrounding their 2000-3000 year old sacred scriptures with the irrational claim of inerrancy. The Christian Church of tomorrow can live without any of the "Five Fundamentals," but it can no longer live with them. It is time to say so loudly, persistently and bluntly.

A new Christianity for a new world is struggling to be born. It will not be a majority movement, but like the ancient biblical images it will accept its vocation to be leaven in the lump, light in the darkness and salt in the soup of this world. I am confident that such a day is dawning in the Christian world. I await its arrival with what Charles Dickens called, "Great Expectations."

Roger Morrison wrote:In so doing Spong challenges traditional Christianity as he states, and spear-heads with others, the need of a "New Christianity In A New World".

While I personally do not agree with some of his personal sentiments; in his debunking the 5 Fundamentals I see it as an absolute necessity to eventually be accepted by all as a move towards living justly in a world inspired by "The Two New Commandments".

Here it is for your consideration and comments:

The Five Fundamentals: A Conclusion


If the "Five Fundamentals" articulated by traditional Christians in the early years of the 20th century represent the essence of Christianity then the time has come to acknowledge that we have come to the end of this noble faith tradition. Those "Fundamentals" assume a supernatural, theistic deity, who manipulates the laws of the universe to do miracles. Isaac Newton put an end to that notion in the 17th century. The "Fundamentals" also assume a three-tiered universe that educated people stopped believing in after Galileo
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Huckeberry: I have noticed that the image three tiers has become completely outmoded. I do not however see how that fact makes the possiblity that the ground of being is personal and intentional (theistic God) any more or less likely. I also think saying Newton shows God would not manipulate physical laws is just plain silly. The ground of those laws if personal and intention may or may not manipulate them. If God is the ground of being then Newtons laws depend upon Gods will not the other way around.
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. Even the Vatican pronounced Galileo correct in 1991. These "Fundamentals" define human life as something that was created perfect at some specific date in history (Bishop Ussher suggested 4004 B.C.) only to fall into sin and thus to require an intervening act of divine rescue. That view of human origins died in the 19th century at the hands of Charles Darwin whose work was ultimately authenticated by the discovery of DNA evidence that links all life into one common origin.
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Huckelberry: As Darwin is a hero of mine I must have some sympathy with this statement. I think the idea that Adam was started perfect was once an easy assumtion but not a very necessary one and one I do not think has been very helpful in understanding everything else that happens afterwords. Even if I am a traditonal Christian I see no reason to hold to this particular naïve notion.
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The "Five Fundamentals" assume that human beings can possess knowledge of God that is in fact beyond the capacity of the human mind to embrace. Insisting that interpretive myths can be literalized, the "Fundamentals" claim to possess truth by direct revelation, not recognizing that God cannot be bound by the human limits of time and space and that human words about God can not, therefore, be literalized by anyone in any age. Indeed the "Five Fundamentals" are so bound to a worldview and to a frame of reference that no longer exists that to insist upon them as the defining convictions of a Christian is to close out the possibility that modern men and women can be committed Christians without twisting their brains into pre-modern pretzels.

Since in the common mind, however, these "Fundamentals" have become identified with traditional Christianity itself, many people, including the popular voices in the media, assume that a dismissal of these "Fundamentals" constitutes a dismissal of Christianity itself. Therefore, those of us who refuse to surrender the title Christian either to the Benedict XVI's or to the Falwell-Robertson brands of contemporary Christianity have a responsibility to say what it is that we do believe and why we continue to call ourselves Christians. In this concluding essay on the "Five Fundamentals" I want to do just that.

I no longer define God as a being who exists somewhere outside the boundaries of this world, who possesses supernatural power and who intervenes in human history periodically to answer prayers, to do a miracle or to accomplish the divine will. That is nothing more than the "theistic" definition of God, and it must be recognized today as no more than a human creation. The theistic God is portrayed as a great big human being who has escaped human limitations. So deeply has "theism" captured the definition of God that the word "atheist," which literally means one who does not believe in a theistic God, has come to mean one who does not believe in any God at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchen and Sam Harris do not understand that distinction. That is certainly not my situation.

We have today finally begun to recognize that no human mind can grasp the reality of God,
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Huckelberry: This last sentence sums up rather clearly what the preceeding paragraphs have fumblingly repeated. However in its simple form it should be visible that the idea is exactly what the traditional church has been teaching for the last 2000 years. It might be notice that it is what Judism has taught for its existence. Islam has taught the same. It is likely that the same realization could be found in other religious systems as well. I think Mr Spong is using a lot of words to slip around the center of what is different about his view.
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so human efforts to define God are as nonsensical as the efforts of horses might be if they attempted to define a human being. God is a reality that can be experienced but never defined. There is also the chance that when we think we are experiencing God, we are in fact facing only our own delusions. All religious systems are typically loathe to face or to admit that possibility..

Honesty compels me to state that I am a God-intoxicated, but not a theistic believing Christian. I experience God as that transcendent dimension of life and I use the undefined human word "other" to name. God to me is experienced as the power of life that surges through the universe and that comes to self-consciousness in human beings alone. God to me is experienced as the presence of love that enhances life and that human beings alone can name. God to me is experienced as the "Ground of Being" empowering all that is, to be what every created thing can be, but which only human life can understand or articulate.
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Huckelberry: I think this portion makes the difference between Spongs thought and traditinal Christianity clearer. Spong seems to see divinity as an inpersonal power that is flowing directly through himself and othre humans. It is unconscious and nonintentioal untill it finds it true existence in Mr Spong, oh yes,and in the rest of us. Naturally it would not make sense to speak of either atonement by God or our dependence on Gods intention. Our intentions are Gods intention. This is a rather Nietzchean will to power view of the universe. But instead of a steely eternal round it is combined with this romantic image of Jesus loving. I do not really mind the romantic image but I do thik the combination a bit unstable. If the power of our being is impersonal power then its connection to love is ambiguous. There are other expressions of power which might express human potential as well.
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So I worship this God of life by living fully and I call this aspect of God "Holy Spirit." I worship this source of love by loving wastefully and I see this quality uniquely in the portrait of the all loving Jesus of Nazareth. I worship this "Ground of Being" that I "the Father" by having the courage to be all that I can be. I think that the God experience met in the affirmation of life, love and being is in fact a therapeutic pathway to wholeness and that wholeness is and can be a factor in restoring one to health and healing. I do not think that this is miraculous or supernatural, I think it is rather natural and real. I do not believe that I could tolerate emotionally a chaotic world run by a miracle-working, manipulating, capricious deity rather than the universe in which I live, which is stable and ordered by the natural laws of the universe.

I define myself as a Christian, by which I mean I am a disciple of Jesus, who is for me the human icon through which I embrace the reality of God. When I look at Jesus' life, as I have received it through both tradition and scripture, I see one who was so fully alive that I perceive the Source of Life in him. I see one who so totally loved that I perceive the Source of Love in him. I see one who was free to be all that he was meant to be so I perceive the Ground of Being in him. Since my God experience convinces me that God comes to me as life, love and being, I have no problem joining with St. Paul and saying of this Jesus that "God was in Christ." It is that undoubted experience that underlies all the doctrine about the divinity of Christ. To meet this Jesus is for me to meet the reality of God through a human medium. That does not find me literalizing the ancient symbols through which my ancestors sought to explain the God presence they believed they met in him. I am not much attracted to primal myths like virgin births, miraculous acts, the resuscitation of deceased bodies or the cosmic ascension of a deity returning to the divine abode above the sky. I do believe with all my being, however, that the reality of God transcends all human barriers including the ultimate boundary of death. Jesus is vital to me in understanding that God presence. My hope for eternity also resides in that conviction.
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Huckelberry: His comments about seeing the source of life in Jesus are straight traditional Christianity. I am puzzled by his standing above believeing in miracles and resurection yet he believes the same writen even larger in the exravagent idea he might continue beyond death himself, a most extraordinary miracle.
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I do not believe in something called original sin or what classical theology called the "fall of man." The sooner Christianity can part with that antiquated idea, the better. I am a post-Darwinian not a pre-Darwinian. Human life was never made in a state of perfection so it could not possibly have fallen from that original perfection into the trough of "original sin." If we are not fallen, it is nonsensical to suggest, as classical Christianity does, that only the intervening, rescuing God could save us.
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Huckelberry: Well, Mr Spong has already explained that the divine power is flowing directly through himself uninhibited by any differentiation between creator and created. He has said he is going to live forever. What need is there for God. Spongs power is unlimited uncreated eternal and cannot be stopped.

Huckelberry:And if human power is unlimited and eternal it is probably well to minimize the problem of evil created by our own decisions and the ongiong brutalization of life our evil causes. Just dismiss all that by calling it an outmoded doctrine. One can say the Eden and snake story is not exactly literal. Does that erase the realities the story is talking about? I do not think so.
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Rather, human life has evolved over 4 ½ -5 billion years until it arrived at our present self-conscious stage. The evil that marks human life does not rise, therefore, out of some mythical, pre-historic fall into sin but in the reality of the continued incompleteness of our humanity as we evolve into what we were created to be. So we do not need a savior or one who will rescue us from our sin. What we need rather is to be empowered to become more deeply and completely human, to live creatively with the chronic anxiety that is the unique mark of self-conscious creatures who know their limits. Thus the story of the Christ must be totally rethought in light of this new understanding of human origins. The old way cannot be restored to credibility even by artificial respiration.

These facts alone render the current mythology about Jesus as the divine visitor to earth to be both dated and inadequate. They reveal Pope Benedict XVI's book about Jesus to be completely irrelevant to the current Christological debate. This new perception of our origins will quickly and totally take the Church out of the business of providing certainty and security and will cast us finally into a deep and radically different search for truth. The context in which all religious questions are discussed will be changed. "The Five Fundamentals" will be seen as little more than fading images in a rear mirror reflecting a world that no longer exists. These realities raise powerful and provocative questions. Does the Christian Institution, in any of its forms, have the ability, strength or willingness to undergo this radical new process? There is little evidence to encourage one to think so. Pope Benedict XVI still lives in a fantasy world in which he regards ultimate truth as something that has been captured in the creeds, doctrines and dogmas of his Church. He assumes that a first century Bible, a fourth century creed and thirteenth century dogmas can escape the limits of their time and place in history. He continues to play superiority games, asserting that his Roman Catholic Church alone possesses ultimate truth, thus rendering all others as "defective," an argument too absurd to elicit defensiveness. The Archbishop of Canterbury has, at the same time, sacrificed truth for unity, as if a church united in homophobia or any other prejudice is worth fighting to save. Mainline Protestantism is in such a statistical freefall that with a few notable exceptions in each tradition, it has lost the nerve needed to stand for much of anything. These forms of Christianity will die of boredom long before they die of controversy. Evangelicals and fundamentalist offer the snake oil cure of religious certainty, surrounding their 2000-3000 year old sacred scriptures with the irrational claim of inerrancy. The Christian Church of tomorrow can live without any of the "Five Fundamentals," but it can no longer live with them. It is time to say so loudly, persistently and bluntly.

A new Christianity for a new world is struggling to be born. It will not be a majority movement, but like the ancient biblical images it will accept its vocation to be leaven in the lump, light in the darkness and salt in the soup of this world. I am confident that such a day is dawning in the Christian world. I await its arrival with what Charles Dickens called, "Great Expectations."
.......................
Huckelberry: all I can find in the way of rethinking here is a selection of pieces of traditonal thinking while leaving out the other pieces that do not fit Mr Spongs self as God view of the universe.
I supose if one thinks a personal God capricious manipulative and uncaring then I suppose gettin rid of him might be making the best of a bad situation. I do not share Mr Spongs belief that the personal God is descibed this way.

I hope You found it interesting... Warm regards, Roger

Those "Fundamentals" assume a supernatural, theistic deity, who manipulates the laws of the universe to do miracles. Isaac Newton put an end to that notion in the 17th century.

richardMdBorn wrote:I think that Spong's statements are problematic both historically and philosophically. Let's focus on a short passage:

Those "Fundamentals" assume a supernatural, theistic deity, who manipulates the laws of the universe to do miracles. Isaac Newton put an end to that notion in the 17th century.

Why is that the case? Newton did not think that was true. How do Newton's laws exclude the possibility of miracles? They don't work for objects moving close to the speed of light or for subatomic particles. Perhaps they don't work when God intervenes in history.

Yong Xi wrote:

richardMdBorn wrote:I think that Spong's statements are problematic both historically and philosophically. Let's focus on a short passage:

Those "Fundamentals" assume a supernatural, theistic deity, who manipulates the laws of the universe to do miracles. Isaac Newton put an end to that notion in the 17th century.

Why is that the case? Newton did not think that was true. How do Newton's laws exclude the possibility of miracles? They don't work for objects moving close to the speed of light or for subatomic particles. Perhaps they don't work when God intervenes in history.

Obviously, Spong does not believe in the supernatural including an interventionist god. He views Newton's discoveries to be universally applicable and the final say.

As already stated by others, Spong is really a pantheist appealing to a Christian audience. If his views were ever accepted to any degree by other "Christians", it wouldn't be long before Christ would be jettisoned. In Spong's world, perhaps other so-called enlightened or perfected individuals could be substituted for Christ. Christ is only useful as the embodiment of pantheism and has no power outside of that.

richardMdBorn wrote:I think that Spong's statements are problematic both historically and philosophically. Let's focus on a short passage:

Those "Fundamentals" assume a supernatural, theistic deity, who manipulates the laws of the universe to do miracles. Isaac Newton put an end to that notion in the 17th century.

Why is that the case? Newton did not think that was true. How do Newton's laws exclude the possibility of miracles? They don't work for objects moving close to the speed of light or for subatomic particles. Perhaps they don't work when God intervenes in history.

Yong Xi wrote:

richardMdBorn wrote:I think that Spong's statements are problematic both historically and philosophically. Let's focus on a short passage:

Those "Fundamentals" assume a supernatural, theistic deity, who manipulates the laws of the universe to do miracles. Isaac Newton put an end to that notion in the 17th century.

Why is that the case? Newton did not think that was true. How do Newton's laws exclude the possibility of miracles? They don't work for objects moving close to the speed of light or for subatomic particles. Perhaps they don't work when God intervenes in history.

Obviously, Spong does not believe in the supernatural including an interventionist god. He views Newton's discoveries to be universally applicable and the final say.

As already stated by others, Spong is really a pantheist appealing to a Christian audience. If his views were ever accepted to any degree by other "Christians", it wouldn't be long before Christ would be jettisoned. In Spong's world, perhaps other so-called enlightened or perfected individuals could be substituted for Christ. Christ is only useful as the embodiment of pantheism and has no power outside of that.

Roger Morrison wrote:So I assume you found it interesting? ;-) Maybe Spong does give too much credit to Newton?

that That does not alter a negative understanding of "God" described by the adjectives Spong, and an increasing number of others, use. Their preference seems to be the New Testament, rather than the Old Testament "God'. Well within their rights.

Richard, we seem to be at our usual stalemate... You tend to believe in a "God" of miracles, with no more/better substantiation than you falt Spong voicing as his base. Just what practial evidence--outside of Bible quotings, not in the least suggesting THEY are practical--bases your "God" belief?

Idon't think you responded to my last questions-&-answers on the ealier thread... Will you? Warm regards, Roger

Roger Morrison wrote:

Yong Xi wrote:

richardMdBorn wrote:I think that Spong's statements are problematic both historically and philosophically. Let's focus on a short passage:

Those "Fundamentals" assume a supernatural, theistic deity, who manipulates the laws of the universe to do miracles. Isaac Newton put an end to that notion in the 17th century.

Why is that the case? Newton did not think that was true. How do Newton's laws exclude the possibility of miracles? They don't work for objects moving close to the speed of light or for subatomic particles. Perhaps they don't work when God intervenes in history.

Obviously, Spong does not believe in the supernatural including an interventionist god. He views Newton's discoveries to be universally applicable and the final say.

As already stated by others, Spong is really a pantheist appealing to a Christian audience. If his views were ever accepted to any degree by other "Christians", it wouldn't be long before Christ would be jettisoned. In Spong's world, perhaps other so-called enlightened or perfected individuals could be substituted for Christ. Christ is only useful as the embodiment of pantheism and has no power outside of that.

Hi Yong Xi, Correct in your first sentence, possibly in your second. As you carry that to your conclusion, I have to ponder. For those "Christians" who do not see Christ as the redeemer of "fallen man", as an increasing number do, would that be so catostophic?

Actually, which is most important, the message, or the messanger? To this point in time it seems the messenger has been glorified while his message of how humanity can live together in peace, justice and hamony has barely been experimented with by the collective Christian Church. Their interest is more about after-life than the-here-and-now. Except as that might influence their passage into Heaven. As I see it, Warm regards, Roger