Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Apologetic explanations do not develop unless there is a reality that has to be explained and defended. Jesus was undeniably a figure of history.
John Shelby Spong
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
John Shelby Spong
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: June 16
Author
Philosopher
Priest
Theologian
Writer
Charlotte
North Carolina
Develop
Figure
Figures
Undeniably
Unless
Apologetic
Jesus
Defended
History
Explanations
Reality
Explained
Explanation
More quotes by John Shelby Spong
The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.
John Shelby Spong
I could not believe that anyone who has read this book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in every literal word was the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God. Have these people simply not read the text? Are they hopelessly misinformed? Is there a different Bible? Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and naïveté?
John Shelby Spong
You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you don't have any freedom left, or you're going to build a world that doesn't create terrorists - and that means a whole different way of 'getting along.'
John Shelby Spong
That's why the virgin birth never gets rid of the human mother. The story only gets rid of the human father. So Jesus' life was the life of God nurtured through the Virgin Mary. That's because the virgin birth died as a literal story as soon as we discovered that women had an egg cell. It's interesting to watch what the Roman church did about that.
John Shelby Spong
I can only give away the love that I have received.
John Shelby Spong
The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person.
John Shelby Spong
The task of the church, for example, becomes less that of indoctrinating or relating people to an external divine power and more that of providing opportunities for people to touch the infinite center of all things and to grow into all that they are destined to be.
John Shelby Spong
If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection, also is not believable.
John Shelby Spong
[Charles] Darwin, for example, is the one who made us face the fact that the primary way we tell the Christ story doesn't work anymore.
John Shelby Spong
The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
John Shelby Spong
Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue.
John Shelby Spong
I think one of the things we've got to look out for is human beings claiming that they know how God operates.
John Shelby Spong
I don't like to talk about it in those terms it's impossible to describe who or what God is. Suppose you were a horse, and you were asked to describe what a human being was like. You couldn't do it.
John Shelby Spong
Mother Nature is not sweet.
John Shelby Spong
We were born in a Jewish world, as part of a Jewish faith tradition. We had to translate ourselves into the neo-Platonic thinking Greek world that took us about 400 years. Then, finally a man named Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, recast Christianity in terms of neo-Platonic thought.
John Shelby Spong
The priesthood in many ways is the ultimate closet in Western civilization, where gay people particularly have hidden for the past two thousand years.
John Shelby Spong
You don't take your newborn baby, put that baby on your lap, and say, Now listen, kid, you were born in sin, you're not worth anything, and you've got to pray for mercy. That's not going to raise a healthy adult. And that's what we do Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.
John Shelby Spong
One of my professors said to me once, Any god that can be killed off will be killed, but if I can shake up your faith in your god, it means you already don't have much of a god.
John Shelby Spong
Human wholeness can never be found in the denigration of another
John Shelby Spong
Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, says, From the rising of the sun to its setting, God's name shall be great among the Gentiles. This encompasses the whole world. Suddenly it's not the Jews against the Gentiles, or my tribe against your tribe.
John Shelby Spong
