David Lee is a reƟred cleric of the Church in Wales. reviews David Hatton reviews The Fourth Gospel Tales of a Jewish MysƟc by John Selby Spong HarperCollins (New York 2013). Hbk. 304 pages. £16.99.
HarperOne pbk. £9.99.
This easy to read book contains an interesting approach to the Fourth Gospel. Spong believes it is a Jewish mystic work by several different authors, addressed to a community of believers excommunicated from the synagogue. This literary genre hides secret doctrines within the scriptures and speaks of both the transcendence of God and his immanence. God can best be perceived through contemplation and illumination. He both conceals and reveals himself.
The Fourth Gospel belongs here. It is not a literal account of what Jesus said and did, but ‘a literary, interpretive retelling of those events’, using a few actual characters but inventing others (the new names in this gospel) and re-shaping all of these, just as artists such as Picasso change their subject’s facial details to express that person’s personality.
Jesus is not a visitor from another realm masquerading as a human, and did not die for our sins. We are not ‘fallen’: we are incomplete. We are called to move from a status of self-consciousness to share in a universal and higher consciousness traditionally symbolised in the word ‘God’ . Judas represents those who refuse to do this, Peter those who hesitate, but eventually accept.
Take the story of the Woman at the Well in Samaria. Sexual immorality is not the theme. The woman represents the Samaritans, enemies of the Jews. The five husbands represent the people from five nations who had been placed by the King of Assyria in the cities of Samaria, but failed to accept the teaching there. The conversation at the well is about human boundaries and Jesus’ role in a world of tensions. Water from the well gives only temporary satisfaction. The living water which Jesus offers is the spirit that binds human life together. The disciples are amazed that Jesus is talking to a woman – and a Samaritan at that – but the new consciousness Jesus brings embraces all people.
Spong emphasises that the gospel’s references to ‘the Jews’ , often seen as a justification for antiSemitism, apply to those who were enemies of Jesus, not the whole community. Jesus often said he loved Lazarus, so he may be ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ mentioned late in the gospel. He represents those who are born of the spirit and share the new life Jesus came to bring. At the crucifixion Jesus commends his mother, Mary, symbol of Judaism, to this disciple, who took her to his own home. The community of the followers of Jesus must cherish the womb that bore them. Christ’ s work is done – the barriers separating the human family are falling away.
The resurrection stories are not about a resuscitated corpse. Mary Magdalene’s ‘I have seen the Lord’ indicates she has seen the new dimension of life waiting to be entered – the achieving of a oneness with that which is eternal. No tomb can imprison that life, which Mary now enters.
Some phrases made me smile. The earliest writers, Paul and Mark, do not mention the virgin birth and Spong reckons such a thought would have been ‘inconceivable’ to them! Lazarus ‘rests in the bosom of Abraham’. If Spong were to spend eternity in someone’s bosom, he would prefer it not to be Abraham’s. He ends the book by saying that the thoughts within it have become for him ‘the basis upon which Christianity can be reformulated’. His frequent stress upon the immanence of God, and a statement ‘God is not an external, distant entity but a life we enter, a love we share, the ground in which we are rooted’, reminded me of Rumi’ s poem speaking of searching the sacred sites of all religions and ‘Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw him, he was nowhere else.’ God’s immanence does not imply that, but to me it points that way. Although Dover Beach reminds us that the tide of religion is receding today, might not the ‘sea of faith’ flow back on the Dover beach through a new Christianity in which God is manmade, but real? With our SOF Network the genesis of a new Church? That would need a miracle, but one happened 2000 years ago. It could happen again!
David HaƩon was a Senior Lecturer in Religion. He is a member of SOF. reviews Patti Whaley reviews The Testament of Mary by Colm Toíbín Viking (New York 2012). Hbk. 112 pages.