Carolina QuotesIntegrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. From this perspective, all human claims to possess objectivity, certainty, or infallibility are revealed as nothing but the weak and pitiable pleas of frantically insecure people who seek to live in an illusion because reality has proved to be too difficult.
John Shelby Spong Carolinian
Source
p. 99
- work
- Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (1994)
- year
- 1994
- locator
- p. 99
Cite this record
“Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are th…” John Shelby Spong. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-0C763EC9A9. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/0c763ec9a9
More from John Shelby Spong
The Christian story did not drop from heaven fully written. It grew and developed year by year over a period of forty-two to seventy years. That is not what most Christians have been taught to think, but it is factual. Christianity has always been an evolving story. It was never, even in the New Testament, a finished story.
True religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers.
In [the story of Jesus] I found ... a center for my being. Behind the supernatural framework of the first century, behind the language of myth, magic, and superstition, I discovered a life I wanted to know; a life that possessed a power I wanted to possess; a freedom, a wholeness for which I had yearned for years.