2007-12-25

A fun year for atheists (Dr Peter Jensen), — and another interview with Spong

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Updated:

I’m sure it’s a crime to put Peter Jensen and John Spong in the same heading.

A fun year for atheists — by Anglican archbishop Dr Peter Jensen — with comments. (On Unleashed)

And a livestreaming/downloadable interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong Click on Most Popular Recent Interviews and navigate to the Spong interview. His recent book Jesus for the Non-Religious is the background to this interview.

Or for the abridged 3’30” interview go to the ABC site and navigate to “Best of the Year” and then to Listen to the excerpt.

Spong describes himself as “god-intoxicated” but wants to reaffirm our “full humanity”. Why doesn’t he therefore simply argue for humanism? Why can’t he simply let go of his god-complex?

In the excerpt he discusses the evolution of the idea of the heavenly origin of Jesus:

Paul in first few verses of Romans says Jesus was declared to be Son of God by resurrection;
Mark then says he was made son of God at baptism;
Matthew then says he was made son of God at conception, and Luke picks up on this idea;
John says he was son of God from the beginning of the universe.

In the longer interview Spong says he’d much rather debate Richard Dawkins and feels he has more in common with Richard Dawkins than with Peter Jensen. Why? Dawkins and Spong live in the same century — says Spong. Jenkins represents the right wing fundamentalist superstitious world view of the ancients.

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