Posted by DK on 4/24/2001, 3:20 pm

Posted by Dave Kenady on 4/2/2001, 9:50 pm , in reply to "Thought I'd venture out into mainstream Christianity... (part 1)" continued from part 1.... To put content into these two assertions, the reader needs to note, first, that the four gospels do not agree on which women went to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week. Someone is wrong. Second, Mark and Luke assert that the women did not see the risen Christ in the garden. Matthew and John assert that they did. Someone is wrong. Third, they don't agree on who was the first person to have a resurrection experience. The candidates mentioned are Cephas (or Peter), the women, the two travelers on the road to Emmaus, and Mary Magdalene. They could not all have been first. Someone is wrong. Fourth, they don't agree on where the disciples were when they first encountered the risen Jesus. Mark says it will be in Galilee. Matthew says it was in Galilee on top of a mountain. Luke says it was never in Galilee, but always in the Jerusalem area. John says it was first in Jerusalem and then much later in Galilee. Someone is wrong. If Christianity is built on a literal reading of these texts, it is on shaky ground indeed. Add to that the fact that growing exaggerations have so clearly entered these texts, and confidence in their literal accuracy plummets once again. Yet look at just one illustration. In Mark, the resurrection is announced by a young man dressed in a white robe. There is nothing to lead one to the conclusion that this was a supernatural figure. In Matthew, however, this messenger has become quite supernatural. He is identified as the "angel of the Lord." He descends in an earthquake and rolls away the stone. His appearance was said to be like lightning and his raiment white as snow, causing the soldiers to fall over like dead men. By the time Luke writes, Matthew's angel has grown to two angels. Finally, in the later gospel of John, the angel seems to become Jesus himself, for Jesus is made to repeat verbatim the words of the messenger. So we are led to ask, What really happened at that first Easter? The fact is, we do not know and we cannot find out. We can only view its effects and make a judgment, and that may not be enough to keep this faith system going. This story will continue. For now, let me suggest that this is sufficient data from the Bible itself to destabilize the literal view of the meaning of Easter as the restoration to life of the Jesus who died on the cross. That is not an insignificant step to take--but it does not tell us much about what the original power of Easter was. -------------------- The Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong, D.D., is the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. As the author of 14 books, he is the most published member of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States. His best-sellers include "Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism" and "Why Christianity Must Change or Die." He is a frequent lecturer at conference centers and on college campuses and will be a guest lecturer at Harvard this spring. Link: A Bishop Speaks http://www.beliefnet.com/frameset.asp?boardID=13408&pageloc=/story/72/story_7216_1.html ---------- Posted by Steve B. on 4/3/2001, 8:00 am , in reply to "Thought I'd venture out into mainstream Christianity... (part 2)" Dave, How do you define "mainstream Christianity"? I've been aware of John Spong for years, and it never occurred to me that he might be considered part of mainstream Christianity. When I think mainstream Christianity, I think of men like Billy Graham and R.C. Sproul, or the professors I knew at the Lutheran college I attended before coming out to Washington state. I don't think of John Spong, who as far as I can tell, is not even a Christian in the same sense of the word I consider myself a Christian. Sincerely, Steve