Unbelievable: Why Neither Ancient Creeds Nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today

by John Shelby Spong

I am a Christian. I am a disciple of Jesus. Why? Because when I look at the life of Jesus, as that life has been refracted to me through both scripture and tradition, I see a person who was so fully alive that I perceive in him the infinite Source of Life. I see one who loves so totally, so wastefully, that I perceive in him the infinite Source of Love. I see one who was profoundly capable of being all that he could be, whether it was on Palm Sunday when he was hailed as a king—there is nothing so seductive as the sweet narcotic of human praise—or on Good Friday when he was being put to death, when even the threat of non-being did not alter his humanity. In both experiences, Jesus was and is what he was and is. He was not changed by flattery, nor was his being diminished by the imminence of his death. So I join with St. Paul in the affirmation of faith, “God was in Christ,” bringing oneness out of diversity, wholeness out of brokenness and eternity out of time.