The whole thing is here. [Editor's note: this link broken. We apologize for the inconvenience.]
The Primates have endorsed the Windsor Report including the call for stregthening the instruments of unity and the establsihment of an Anglican Covenant which they advise will be take a process of its own. They have pretty clearly opted for N.T. Wright’s fireproofing of the house. This is a very hopeful sign.
BISHOP SPONG: RESURRECTION AND MIRACLES
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.
In this last of our series on John Spong’s critique of credal Christianity we are taking up thesis number 5 and thesis number 7 in the Spong manifesto. Thesis 5 is:The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity. Thesis 7 is: Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
BISHOP SPONG AND THE ATONEMENT’
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.
Thesis number 6 in Spong’s manifesto is :The view of the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive ideas about God and must be dismissed.
BISHOP SPONG AND THE INCARNATION
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.
The third of Bishop Spong’s theses that we are taking up in this series includes number 2 and number 4 in his manifesto. His second thesis is:Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt. Thesis number 4 is: The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditional understood, impossible.
Happy Fat Tuesday,
To get ready for Lent you should treat yourself to some good Louisiana Music, like Zydeco.
BISHOP SPONG AND THE FALL
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.
The second thesis of John Spong we are taking up in this series is the third in his manifesto: The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
Spong treats the concept of the fall and the story of Adam and Eve in a chapter in his book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, entitled, “Jesus As Rescuer: An Image That Has To Go.” He quite accurately outlines the traditional story of salvation history which begins with a good and loving God freely creating a good creation and as the pinnacle of that creation God creates the man and the woman in his image and likeness. God places the man and the woman in the garden and gives them dominion over the earth. Then the snake appears on the scene and tempts Adam and Eve to break the one commandment that God has given them. Sin enters in and the original relationship with God is broken. From this original sin evil spreads. Traditional theology says that we are all affected by Original Sin and stand in need of an antidote for this sin. God deals with sin and evil by calling Abraham and by giving the law through Moses, by sending the prophets and in the fullness of time, Christ to be the sacrifice for sin. By his death and resurrection Jesus Christ restores our fellowship with God and gives us the gift of eternal life. This basic narrative of salvation Spong calls “Jesus the divine rescuer” which is “dead wood of the past” which “must be cleared out so that new life has a chance to grow.”
MUST CHRISTIANITY CHANGE OR DIE?
A RESPONSE TO BISHOP SPONG
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.
The first of Bishop Spong’s Theses that we will take up is thesis number 1: Theism, as a way of defining God is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
Theism is the belief that there is a God who is distinct from and not dependent on the cosmos. Christian Theism is the belief that this God has revealed himself in creation and history and perfectly in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who has taught us to call this God,” Our Father.” In order to understand more clearly what John Spong means by his theses I have consulted his book, Must Christianity Change or Die? Harper Collins, 1998
This is a response that I gave at the first Episcopal Church Foundation Fellows Conference at House Of Redeemer in New York in I think December of 2000. All the papers and responses were ultimately published in the ATR. Without too much difficulty you can reconstruct the outlines of the paper to which I am responding. Dr. Pressler is arguing for an inductive definition of communion. That is he is for looking at the churches that claim membership in the communion and asking what are the minimal conditions for communion that can be discerned from this investigation. In this article I identify the reasons that cause first world and two thirds world Anglicans to categorize their opponents as inherently immoral in their approach to theology. I make some suggestions for a theological rationale for a pastoral response by the South to the irregularities in the churches of the North.
A Reply to Titus Presler’s “Old and New In Worship and Community”
by Leander S. Harding
1. Titus Presler and I were colleagues in the Diocese of Massachusetts and I remember being spellbound as he recounted some of his missionary experience. I am very appreciative of Dr. Presler’s capacity to enter deeply into the experience of African Christianity and the art with which he is able to convey that experience to us. I remember many years ago being inspired and challenged by his experience in Zimbabwe. Something vital and refreshing of the Spirit of Christ had touched him and through his talk touched me as well. It is wonderful to have a chance to hear more of that story.
A Reflection On Christianity And The World Religions
By
The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.
Lent, 2002
Much of what I have to say in this talk I have learned from the work of the great missionary thinker, Bishop Leslie Newbigin. There is a branch of study called the sociology of knowledge. Sociologists of knowledge, such as Peter Berger, talk about the “plausibility structure” of a society. In every group, in every society, every civilization there are things which “everybody knows” and which are accepted uncritically and in which the rational and conceptional framework of the society are embedded. Recently we have been stunned by polls that show that many people in the Muslim world do not accept that the September 11 terrorists were Muslims but in that world “everybody knows” that Muslims do not do such things. Either they were not really Muslims or they didn’t really do what they are said to have done. It is not that people are being illogical or irrational it is just that they are thinking within the plausibility structure of their own world view. There was a time when everybody knew that the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth. From time to time things happen which call into question that which everyone knows. The important thing to understand is that there is not such a thing as a pure and neutral rationality and that all reason is carried by a community of understanding and is rooted in fundamental convictions which must be taken on faith, on premises which can not be established on any other basis.
This originally appeared in the ATR. The biorgraphical materials supplied by two famous revisionists, Marcus Borg and Karen Armstrong show how strongly biography influences the basic intellecutual stance of a thinker. I sometimes think that the biggest obstacles to classical orthodox faith are emotional rather than strictly intellectual. The series of lectures on which the book is based is advertised by the Episcopal Media Center in its most recent catalog as “five outstanding lectures given at Washington National Cathedral by some of today’s leading theologians”
The Changing Face Of God, Frederick W. Schmidt, Editor.
Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 2000.
Review by Leander S. Harding
This is a short little book consisting of the talks given as a lecture series at the National Cathedral in Washington. The premise of two of the most famous of the lecturers, Karen Armstrong and Jesus Seminar member Marcus Borg, is that traditional creedal Christianity is implausible and unbelievable and that they are leading the way in envisioning “the changing face of God.” I found their essays in particular a wearying, depressing combination of neo-Kantian reductionism and effusive enthusiasm for a kinder, gentler, vaguer religion. These two essays could be used as exhibit A of the current class of those who can be described, as my old systematics professor used to say, as believing in God the good and kind gas.