"Nonsense"

Before I actually begin to tackle Spong's Thesis, I must address the word "nonsense". Nonsense, as defined by Dictionary.com:

1. Words or signs having no intelligible meaning: a message that was nonsense until decoded.
   
2. Subject matter, behavior, or language that is foolish or absurd.
   
3. Extravagant foolishness or frivolity: a clown's exuberant nonsense.
   
4. Matter of little or no importance or usefulness: a chatty letter full of gossip and nonsense.
   
5. Insolent talk or behavior; impudence: wouldn't take any nonsense from the children.

Merriam-Webster defines "nonsense" as:

1 a words or language having no meaning or conveying no intelligible ideas b (1) : language, conduct, or an idea that is absurd or contrary to good sense (2) : an instance of absurd action
2 a : things of no importance or value : TRIFLES b : affected or impudent conduct

In Spong's mind, traditional Christian ideas are not even worthy of discussion because they are either unintelligible (he literally can't understand the meanings of these ideas) or are actually valueless (as in the content of the word "incarnation", "creation" and "fall" lack appreciable correspondence to anything real).

"Nonsense" for Spong is anything encumbered by meaningless code words. For example, he might read The Apostle's Creed this way:

I believe in God, the 7371 89746422,
the Creator of 41112366 and earth,
and in Jesus 33896, 131456662 only 431, our 3131677

Where the numbers represent a correspondence to some long-dead code, which has no hope of being deciphered. Furthermore, if anyone claims to understand this code, they must be mistaken, because it, indeed, is indecipherable. What Spong appears to be saying is "I personally don't get it so it must be false."