Spong's Second Thesis

2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

Assuming the first thesis is valid, this second would follow nicely. When I was an atheist, I could agree with Spong on this. The idea of God was simply a human invention used to control and give superficial meaning to lives. Therefore the stories set down in the Bible concerning Jesus as the "Son of God" was pure propaganda. This became my first concern: was Jesus who the Bible said he was?

For my part, it seemed rather elementary; either I accepted what the New Testament had to say about Jesus or I reject, in its entirety, the whole "story". Everything found in the last 27 books of the Bible is predicated on the idea that Jesus was somehow simultaneously a mere man AND God, from its basic intent to its historicism, especially its metaphysics and ethics. While the Bible MAY contain some good and helpful advice, its underlying view of the world is warped and suspect, if there was no incarnation. Essentially, Spong is correct: IF the Bible is wrong about God, it is also wrong about Jesus as well.

On to the real issue at hand. Is Jesus God incarnate? Spong thinks that this is an impossibility, or, more to the point, nonsense. Spong sees Christ as the "hero of a thousand faces" and no one can make a concrete claim about who or what exactly Jesus was (except Spong, of course). Jesus was whatever your influences indicate he was. Whatever the case, Jesus was "love"--From which Spong can make the claim that Jesus could not endorse such notions as hell, guilt of sin and Judgment. While I cannot formulate an iron-clad argument for Christ's divinity, neither can Spong refute such a claim, except through recourse to a particular view of materialism and advanced physics--even these raise as many questions as they do answers. In the end, this may simply be a matter of belief, of faith, one way or another. I can live it as such; Spong seems to be unable to do so.

Unfortunately for Spong, while conceiving of God and Jesus in theistic terms does not make it true, there are still many people, myself included, who can quite easily conceive of God in theistic terms. I wouldn't go so far as to accuse Spong of lying, as some have, on this point, but I will say, he's being very loose with his language. Again, if Spong can no longer conceive of a theistic God, then that is a failing on his part. (Note that the standard he sets here is only having a conception of a certain kind of deity.)