Re: [asa] spong wrong

Hi George,

A bit enigmatic is Spong - as you point out sometimes he says something
worthwhile, but then again...

Personally, I put him in the category of people who ask the right
questions, but give the wrong answers!

On the posted quotation, I would have said it falls for the typical
subjectivist nonsense of claiming all truths are relative except, of
course, for the truth that all truths are relative. In particular, it
seemed to me to be rather absolute in intent, despite its decrial of
absolute statements. That said, I'm not sure HOW one is to assert
anything if one holds to absolute relativity in respects of
propositional claims - but that's really Spong's problem rather than mine.

But such trite observations aside, whatever gave Spong the idea that the
contingency of the physical universe implies anything about human
knowing? This is, isn't it, precisely the claim being made? One sees
this a very great deal; "space-time is relative, therefore all human
predication is relative". Apart from the rather slender grasp of
relativity shown in the predicate, the conclusion hardly seems to follow
by weight of logical necessity!

The problem to me is that relativists of Spong's sort WANT to allow room
for the obvious fact that very often propositional claims prove to be
wrong. Problem is they do so by denying that propositional claims may
sometimes be right, and that some propositional claims can be more right
than others (e.g. "George W. Bush is from New Mexico" vs "George W Bush
is from Greenland") OR that propositional claims need not be absolute in
any case (e.g. "George W. Bush is pretty powerful"). By failing to allow
that the truth content of propositions isn't binary (i.e. either 100%
"right" or 100% "wrong") Spong et al simply land themselves in a
philosophical muddle. A bit paradoxically, I think it's because Spong
actually DOESN'T respect limitations in human knowing that he ends up
saying such silly things.

As for Spong in faith-science dialogue? Never mind that he
misunderstands the theories of science, from the quotation cited (and
from what I know of him from elsewhere) I should have thought that he
has scant grasp of the attitude and method of the sciences. In
particular, he seems to regard scientific theories to be pretty absolute
- otherwise why appeal to them as a basis for the sort of claims he
wishes to make? Like many theologians, Spong takes scientific truth
claims a whole lot more seriously than scientists themselves do!

Incidentally, sorry I never got back to you on your very good remarks
about Barth. I would have liked to have engaged on that particular
subject but, unfortunately, I haven't read much of him. Just last week,
however, I picked up the full set of the Church Dogmatics, so it looks
like I'm going to remedy my ignorance (or perhaps compound it <smile>).

Blessings,
Murray Hogg
Pastor, East Camberwell Baptist Church, Victoria, Australia
Post-Grad Student (MTh), Australian College of Theology

George Murphy wrote:
> Many on this list will have heard of former Episcopal bishop John Spong
> but perhaps have never read anything of his. (I say "former" because
> although he is still in traditional Anglican understanding a bishop, he
> has not only retired but has said - if I understand him correctly - that
> he will no longer function as a bishop.) I get his email newsletter,
> which occasionally has something to worthwhile to offer & more often
> doesn't, but in any case is a window on ultra-liberal religious
> thought. Spong thinks he knows something about science & I'm told at
> one time hoped to head the Episcopal science-theology effort. The
> following is from his most recent newsletter.
>
> "Since human beings are creatures of both time and space, and since we
> know from the work of Albert Einstein that time and space are relative
> categories that expand and contract in relation to each other, then we
> must conclude that any statement made by anyone, who is bound by time
> and space, will never be absolute. There are no propositional
> statements, secular or religious, that are exempt from this principle."
>
> To which one need only reply, "The speed of light in vacuum is the same
> in all inertial frames."
>
> What Spong has done is to fall for the oldest relativity fallacy there
> is, "Everything is relative."
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

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Received on Fri Jun 6 19:38:31 2008