Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy: A Journey into a New Christianity Through the Doorway of Matthew's Gospel

by John Shelby Spong

The New Testament, while disagreeing on the method of divine-human unity, appears to be very clear about the nature of the Christ experience as some kind of God experience, or an experience of transcendence. The question we then must ask is: Can an experience be real if the explanations of that experience are inconsistent and divergent? I think it can be. My reasoning is that every experience has to be explained to be shared; and whenever human language is used, objectivity is inevitably compromised. There is no such thing as an “objective language” or a “God language.” All of us must talk about our experiences of God in a human language. Human language can never be literal. Every word human beings speak is finally nothing more than a subjectively understood symbol. So while there is unanimity in the New Testament about the reality of the Easter experience, there is a wide divergence in the explanations of what that reality was.