I received Bishop Spong’s new book, Eternal Life: A New Vision, about a week and a half ago and I really enjoyed it. I had been out of the Spong loop for some time, but I had received his last book Jesus for the Non-Religious to review for a podcast a couple years ago.
These two books that I have read from him have been great. They have shown me what to do with the Jesus story among the overwhelming facts that the church/bible is very human. It’s easy to completely dismiss it because of it’s human errors, but Spong shows a way go through the errors and see the truth that can lie within. This latest book is specifically about his death and being prepared and wondering if there is an afterlife. It appears to be the last book he will write, and with the heavy topic comes a feeling of accomplishment for a life well lived and assurance that his career path has been a good one that has enriched lived.
Here are some quotes/tweets that I liked in the book. . .
“I do not want to walk away from religion so much as I want to walk through religion and then beyond it.” [tweeting through spong] #spong
“To believe dated concepts with the human brain is not a sign of orthodoxy; it is a sign of being spiritually dead.” [tweeting spong] #spong
“Galileo, and all of the space-thought that flowed from him, has rendered god homeless.” [tweeting through spong] #spong
“It’s hard to be a biblical literalist if one actually reads the Bible.” [tweeting through spong] #spong
“A god who needed Johnny’s father more than Johnny did was a demonic figure for whom condemnation was an appropriate response.”#bishop spong
Bishop Spong wrestles with the idea of an afterlife when he realizes that God is not some ‘holy other’ in a place outside our world, while at the same time teasing out the ideas of heaven and hell as proposed in the Bible.
I won’t do a book review here, the book was sent out to set up an interview for the podcast, but enjoy the quotes and you can go back and hear the old podcast if you are keen
Tags: eternal life, interview, jesus seminar, john shelby spong, podcast
