Letter to the editor: Spiritual new wave

Notes: "In the January 2012 issue ['The Bible .. to be continued', p. 9], we were told how Bishop John Spong, in his most recent book, offers a new kind of Christianity. Its Bible eschews reference to history in favour of ongoing sacred allegory. Its central character is not a divine redeemer but rather human consciousness, which has broken through to a new level of understanding. The name for this perennial option is gnosticism and it was the spiritual new wave of the first and second centuries. A heretical substitute for the Christian gospel, gnostic interpretation has nothing to do with serious New Testament scholarship, which Spong snidely calls twisting our brains into a 1st-century pretzel. .... Spong's rejection of the Redeemer, whom he calls the divine invader, is also a rejection of what He offered: grace".

Subjects: Spong, John Shelby, 1931-2021; Spong, John Shelby, 1931-2021. Re-claiming the Bible for a non-religious world; Gnosticism; Bible - Criticism, interpretation, etc. - Episcopal Church