Jesus for the Non-Religious [Paperback]

This highly accessible and rewarding book is Jack Spong at his most direct and most engaging. In a series of short tightly-written chapters he strips away the interpretive mythology surrounding Jesus of Nazareth, clearly identifies the Jewish religious and liturgical background out of which those interpretations came, and leaves us with a portrait of the man in whom God's love was to be seen so uniquely.

Spong is the first to admit that in this book he revisits themes he has explored in greater depth in his previous books - especially 'Liberating the Gospels' - but the reader can sense that in this latest work Spong is offering us a chance to step back and review the bigger picture, and to observe how his more detailed theological insights from previous studies come together into a coherent whole.

The book has extensive textual notes which flesh out the supporting arguments behind some of his propositions, together with an extensive bibliography which will guide any dedicated reader into the deepest waters of biblical scholarship and progressive Christianity.

I commend this book highly as the latest part of the journey on which Jack Spong leads his readers towards the authentic Jesus and an authentic Christian faith.

Philip Jones

Over the years Bishop Spong has been working out his progressive Christian theology. Of the books I have read by him, this seems to me to be his best effort to date.

I had previously read by him:
Resurrection: Myth or Reality? : A Bishop's Search for the Origins of Christianity
Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile
and
A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying & How a New Faith is Being Born

My recommendation would be, if you haven't read any of these books, to only read "Jesus for the Non-Religious" - or at least to begin with it after which the others may only be of interest to you if you wish to trace the development of Spong's thought.

The biggest step that Spong has made in this book is in his speculation of how the story of Jesus that eventually appeared in the Gospels might have been built up in Jewish discussions, probably in good part in synagogues, of who Jesus had been and what his life and death had meant. In these discussions, the impact of Jesus was understood to a significant degree in terms of Old Testament texts, leading to the four New Testament Gospel accounts. Explaining in this way, Spong is able to make sense of how the myths arose and what the original images of Jesus were. Spong then can present a Jesus more relevant to our times, free of reliance on supernaturalism, by emphasizing how the life and death could nevertheless reveal the love of God in a Jesus who led people past boundaries: "tribal", of "prejudice and stereotype", and "religious".

Spong presents compelling reasons for the acknowledgement of the reason for the origin and for the power of Christian myth. In doing, he presents a powerful alternative to the literalized interpretations: he's attempted this before but seems most successful in this book.

One question that remains for me is whether Spong has remained too dependent on constructing his own image of Jesus. Perhaps his message might be even stronger if, without in any way denying the power of Jesus, he accepted that the details of the life of Jesus may never be knowable but emphasized more, as he speculated in discussing the impact in the synagogues to try to understand what Jesus meant, that Christianity is a response by many. As Spong acknowledges, Paul himself did not find much about the life of Jesus significant enough to share in his letters and yet didn't Paul of something of great power about Christianity to share with those his letters were intended for? It may be that a turning us to Christ as Paul did, to Christian history, and our shared condition is what a progressive Christianity can best do rather than join the many who compete to speculate upon a "winning" image of Jesus. Nevertheless, as Spong points, moving past "tribal" boundaries, "prejudice and stereotype", and "religious" boundaries may be among the best ways we can acknowledge that "Jesus is Lord".

But might it be possible, due to all the uncertainties and speculations about Jesus, that it might be necessary in order to be a Christian that one let a definite image of Jesus go ... just as Spong has encouraged us to let a definite image (the theistic one) of God go? Paul seemed not to have communicated a detailed Jesus in his letters? Why then now so long after Jesus, Paul, and so many others are we reaching to justify doing the right things by creating an image of Jesus whose authority we then appeal to and direct others to? Founders are important but so to are successors: at this time, informed by but not tied up by history, it is our present and future actions that matter. It seems up to the living to find what God means today and to act effectively in response. One of Spong's own teachers seems of help on this, I recommend Paul Tillich as in his
The Courage to Be
when one feels ready to take another step into progressive Christianity.

Jesus for the Non-Religious by John Selby Spong
reviewed by Walter Emerson

Having read the book I still do not understand why the author gave it the title he did. He systematically demolishes all the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, from the Nativity (Mary was no virgin, Jesus was not born in Bethlehem) to the Resurrection (no empty tomb) and Ascension (no lift-off). For most thinking Christians the `facts' presented in the Gospels, that is all the supernatural goings on, are and were just impossible. He is pushing there at an open door. But we have to reconcile that admission with our repetition of the Creeds, Sunday after Sunday, when most of what we say `we believe' we don't in fact believe. Some of us try to rationalise it by saying to ourselves that the first-century Christians were locked into their culture to believe that all these myths had to be true, either because they had been `foretold' or because it was unthinkable to believe in a prophet or messiah unless he had a solid portfolio of miracles on his c.v. Human experience and understanding has moved on since then; we don't have to believe in miracles to accept the extraordinary nature of Jesus. We repeat these ancient creeds, not because they are factually and historically correct but because they helped the early Christians in expressing their belief in the essential natures of God and Christ: a belief which we have in common with them.

A large part of Bishop Spong's book is devoted to explaining how the myths came about and their essential Jewishness. Saint Paul himself, a thoroughgoing Jew and almost the inventor of Christianity, was steeped in the Jewish belief in atonement for Man's past sins; in God as fearsome and ruthless in punishment of those exciting his wrath, to be placated by sacrifices in atonement and endlessly praised and worshiped. It is a very different view of God from his present-day representation as a loving and forgiving father; yet our liturgy is still full of endless pleas for mercy; we are still `miserable offenders' who, while grovelling, `acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness', reminding God that he has shown mercy on occasions in the past and imploring him to do so again. For Saint Paul and later for the evangelists the humiliation of Christ on the Cross could be explained only as a triumphant and supreme act of atonement for all men's sins, past and present. Few now would really believe that such atonement was desired or necessary, or indeed made any sense.

Many Christians reading the book, while acknowledging that it states starkly what they accept as true, must be left with an empty feeling that, stripped of all old beliefs, going to church must be now for them no more than a farce. Yet we are reluctant to put aside the perceived closeness to God, all the beauty of the liturgy, the music, the singing, the wonderful biblical stories, the fellowship, the great architecture. But what is the point of it all?

Well the author of this book does not leave it there. He stresses throughout, with tedious repetition, his own belief in what he calls the Jesus experience. Jesus was, for him, a perfect man. He displayed a humanity which had an astonishing effect on all who knew him, an effect passed on throughout the world and through 2000 years. Spong is not an atheist, but he rejects traditional theism. For him Jesus is more than a humanist saint. He is not divine in the theist sense of divinity; he is the man whose perfection can inspire us all. What Spong does not attempt to explain is how the Jesus phenomenon arose in a `man born of a woman'. Was such perfection in his DNA, and if so, did some mighty mutation of his parents' genes bring it about? A chance mutation? Nor does he really explain what he means by `humanity'. The word's most obvious meanings are the human race and all its attributes, which must include a readiness to quarrel, to go to war, to exercise cruelty and greed, to disobey all the prohibitions of the Ten Commandments, to love and to perform acts of generosity. His definition must refer to the last two, which is probably that of humanists generally; but he does not call himself a humanist. And whence do those criteria of `good' humanity come?