Bishop Spong

I don't know how many of you have heard of Bishop Spong. Like so many popularizers of modernity, he is rather dated (modern equivalents would be Pagels or Ehrman). I am sure they still have all his books at Barnes and Nobles. His most famous was Why Christianity Must Change or Die. I am reading some essays from Gordon Fee (a New Testament scholar) and came across one where he was responding to a debate between Spong and Stott. I really liked what Fee had to say and what he pointed out about Spong.

Even though I see Spong like any boy band, destined for the dollar bin at the Book Nook, His bland attempts at saying something unique is actually repeated over and over (much like the LA created boy bands ... from N' Sync to Linkyn Park).

At one point Fee makes the comment that instead of having any real view on the Scriptures, Spong "is jousting still with the windmills of his past." I have not read Don Quixote, but think that image is fairly appropriate for this kind of scholar (Spong). But my favorite line and the one that made me want to blog is:

"In the final analysis, Spong pushes us to make a clearcut choice between him, with his obvious enchantment with modernity, and Paul, who says that when he proclaims Christ he speaks the very message of God. Faced with such choice, and it is the only choice Spong allows us, I will go with Paul every time. For in Paul I find the love of God and God's wrath against our sin brought together in the cross; in Spong I find merely soft mush."

There you have it friends. Me and Fee are going with Paul everytime.

By the way, I haven't forgotten about Wendell ... I will pick back up with part 4 very soon.