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Quote by John Shelby Spong

“When I look back at the Christian faith, I see that we have had to retranslate, almost reinvent ourselves a number of times.”

Quote by John Shelby Spong

Author

John Shelby Spong

John Shelby Spong is an American author and theologian known for his modern interpretations of Christian doctrine and his challenges to traditional religious beliefs. His work spans multiple fields, including religion, theology, history, and literature. more

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“We were born in a Jewish world, as part of a Jewish faith tradition. We had to translate ourselves into the neo-Platonic thinking Greek world; that took us about 400 years. Then, finally a man named Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, recast Christianity in terms of neo-Platonic thought.”

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“What happened in the Western world was that Plato ceased to be the way people thought. Aristotle was rediscovered, and the modern, educated world moved toward Aristotelian thinking.”

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“The Protestant reformation was an attempt to recast the Christian faith in terms of the new learning of the 16th century, the enlightenment learning. It was the first time that the Christian church did not have the capacity to keep itself unified as it recast itself, so it split into Protestant and Catholic traditions.”

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“It's the 21st century, and somebody has to rise from within this faith tradition and retranslate it for the post-modern world... The Earth is not the center of the universe, therefore, God is not a being who lives above the sky, who splits the Red Sea from time to time, or creates a miracle, or whatever.”

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“I don't like to talk about it in those terms; it's impossible to describe who or what God "is." Suppose you were a horse, and you were asked to describe what a human being was like. You couldn't do it.”

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“There's no way a human being can escape his or her human-ness to be able to imagine God. We can talk about how we've experienced God, not what or who God is.”

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“I experience God as the power of life, the power of love and the ground of being. I don't say that's what God is; I say that's my experience of God.”

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“Some people think prayer is telling God what to do. I don't think that's the case.”

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“Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. It doesn't. That's magic, that's not God. Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

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“If you're really thinking prayer can stop rockets or bullets, you have to ask why some people do get hit by rockets or bullets. Are they people who no one prayed for? Are they people who God just didn't like? I don't think so.”

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