“ETERNAL LIFE”

– an account of Bishop Jack Spong’s talk on 22^nd October

A funeral used to be a solemn send-off into a new life. In recent years it has become a celebration of the past life of the deceased person. What is going on here?

This was Bishop Jack Spong’s introduction to his talk, delivered to a nearly full Saint John’s Church, Princes Street, where he kept his hearers’ close attention throughout the two hours of talk and questions. Bishop Spong courageously shared some of his experiences, both as a pastor and in his own personal life. He also described how he had wrestled with the problem of worn out or broken language and images that have been passed down to us from previous epochs, and which have not been refreshed or renewed in the light of our current understanding of the world we inhabit. He hoped his latest book, on which his talk was based, would stimulate further debate, both inside and outside the church.

Why don’t the old formulas work for many people? Since the time of Isaac Newton we have learned a great deal about how the visible universe works. We know that thunder is not the roar of an angry God. We know that our planet is in no way the centre of the universe. We know that there is no such place as “above the sky”: God has been made homeless by astrophysics and cosmology. If God is responsible only for those things we still don’t understand, God is now under-employed. The work of Charles Darwin has shown us that we humans do not have the unique status (a little lower than the angels) we once thought we enjoyed. We are mammals who make up one component of an amazingly intricate web of interdependent forms of life.

There are two common responses to this. Some cling ever more fiercely and defensively to the security of the old formulas. Others walk away and become the church alumni. Jack Spong could do neither of these. He was driven to go on a hard journey that took him “beyond religion, beyond theism and beyond heaven and hell”.

· Beyond religion: in the sense that, as sketched above, the old formulas have been hollowed out and not replenished.

· Beyond theism: in the sense that the image of the external, supernatural, all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful judge is no longer credible and is of little help today.

· Beyond heaven and hell: in the sense that religion as a social control mechanism (“do as we tell you or you will suffer awful, everlasting consequences in the next life”) is repellent.

Jack Spong’s starting point is that it takes a lot of courage to be human. We should admire humanity, not denigrate it as we so often do in our liturgy and hymns. Religion should give us the courage to live fully: religion that offers only security will fail.

Secondly, we must recognise that, as beings existing in a framework of time and space, we cannot know anything (which we might call God) outside this framework. However, we can experience God or divinity or the eternal through the way we live our human life. We should seek God, not outside the universe, but inside ourselves as, perhaps, the Ground of Being. God was in Jesus of Nazareth when Jesus became fully human. Divinity can be perceived as the depth dimension of humanity.

Bishop Spong concluded his talk by reiterating that mere words can never be adequate to capture the reality of God or Eternity, but re-stated his firm belief that we can touch eternity by touching life in depth.

As I review these paragraphs before submitting them to The Sign, I am acutely aware that my paraphrases, partial quotations and summaries fail to capture the integrity and courage with which Bishop Jack Spong is pursuing his journey. For those readers who missed his talk, I can only urge you to read his book. Its full title is “Eternal Life: A New Vision - Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell”. The Cornerstone Bookshop at Saint John’s would, I am sure, be glad to sell you a copy.

George Haskell.