(On Christ's Second Coming)
"The parousia
is clearly
understood, not as a separate catastrophic occurrence, but as a
separate
pervasion of the daily life of the disciples and the
Church. The
coming is an abiding presence." [Jesus and His Coming
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967), p .176]
(On Revelation 11:1 ; Early Date of
Revelation)
"It is indeed
generally agreed
that this passage must bespeak a pre-70 situation. . . . There
seems
therefore no reason why the oracle should not have been uttered
by a
Christian prophet as the doom of the city drew nigh."
(Redating the
New Testament pp.. 240-242).
"It was at this point that I
began to ask
myself just why any of the books of the New Testament needed to
be put
after the fall of Jerusalem in 70. As one began to look at them,
and in
particular the epistle to the Hebrews, Acts and the Apocalypse,
was it
not strange that this cataclysmic event was never once mentioned
or
apparently hinted at (as a past fact)? (Redating, p.
10).
"One of the oddest facts about
the New
Testament is that what on any showing would appear to be the
single most
datable and climactic event of the periodBE the fall of
Jerusalem in
A.D. 70BE is never once mentioned as a past fact. . . . [T]he
silence is
nevertheless as significant as the silence for Sherlock Holmes
of the
dog that did not bark". (Ibid., p. 13.)
(On the Forty Years and That
Generation)
"I believe
that John represents in date, as theology, not only the omega
but also
the alpha of New Testament development. He bestrides the period
like a
colossus and marks out its span, the span that lies between two
dramatic
moments in Jerusalem which boldly we may date with unusual
precision.
The first was when, on 9 April 30, 'early on the Sunday morning,
while
it was still dark,' one man 'saw and believed' (Jno. 20:1-9).
And the
second was when, on 26 September 70, 'the dawn of the eight day
of the
month Gorpiaeus broke upon Jerusalem in flames.' Over those
forty years,
I believe, all the books of the New Testament came to
completion, and
during most of that period, if we are right, the Johannine
literature
was in the process of maturation." (p. 311)
(On the
consequences of the
needed re-dating of the New Testament
books)
"the rewriting of
many
introductions to - and, ultimately, theologies of - the New
Testament."
"Coming - presence" (Parousia) of Christ should not be seen
as future
events, but as a symbolical mythological presentation of
"...what must
happen, and is happening already, whenever the Christ comes in
love and
power, whenever are to be traced the signs of His presence,
wherever to
be seen the marks of His cross. `Judgement DAY' is a dramatized
idealized picture of everyday" (His in the end... Clarke,
London, 1950
Pg. 69). Again I will quote the words of Robinson. "...Did Jesus
ever
use language which suggested that He would return to earth from
heaven?
A critical examination of the data leads him to answer `NO'.
Jesus'
sayings on the subject really express the twin themes of
vindication and
visitation. e.g. His reply to the high priest's question whether
or not
He was the Messiah (Mark 14:62+): `1 am: and you will see the
Son of man
sitting at the right hand of power: and coming with the clouds
of
heaven'. In Math 26:64 and Lk.22:69 a word or phrase meaning
from now
on' or 'hereafter' is inserted before `you will see"' (Jesus and
His
coming - S.C.M., London 1957).
WHAT OTHERS HAVE
SAID
"Robinson, the reknown late Bishop from England begins this
book, "I
thought I would see how far one could get with the hypothesis
that the
whole of the New Testament was written before 70." That, of
course, was
the year in which the Roman army sacked and burned the Temple of
Jerusalem. As it turns out, Robinson got much further than he
ever
expected, and that on a journey made more impressive by his lack
of any
predisposition toward a "conservative" point of view.
His conclusion is that there is no compelling evidence -
indeed,
little evidence of any kind - that anything in the New Testament
canon
reflects knowledge of the Temple's destruction. Furthermore,
other
considerations point consistently toward early dates and away
from the
common assumption (a prejudice with a seriously circular
foundation)
that a majority of early church authors wrote in the very late
First or
early-to-middle Second Century under assumed names. Whether or
not one
agrees with every word of Robinson's analysis, he makes his case
well
and should help all New Testament students rethink the
presuppositions
that underlie much of what is currently written about First
Century
Christianity." (Redating the
New
Testament at Presence Books)
"In the field of eschatological studies, no topic seems
thornier than
that of the resurrection, regardless of the particulars of one's
perspective. A great deal of misunderstanding about the
resurrection in
"preterist" circles stems from our tendency to see the concept
of "body"
largely in dualistic terms that do not reflect Paul's way of
thinking.
This is especially true of Paul's discussions of resurrection,
and a
recovery of the Hebrew understanding of body will go a long way
toward a
proper understanding of resurrection in first-century corporate
terms.
To this end, John A.T. Robinson's 1952 classic The Body: a
study in
Pauline theology is a valuable contribution to the
literature
surrounding Transmillennial=AE thought as much as his book,
Redating
the New Testament. "One could say without exaggeration that
the
concept of the body forms the keystone of Paul's theology,"
contends the
author. Robinson's own eschatology does not embrace complete
fulfillment, yet this quality reprint of this classic book in
Pauline
studies provides the serious student a missing piece of the
puzzle of
Pauline eschatology." (The Body at
Presence
Books)
Robinson, A.T.
Remembered
By the Rt. Rev. John Shelby
Spong
Bishop
of Newark
One of the great mentors of my life was an
English bishop
and New Testament scholar named John Albert Thomas Robinson. He
burst
into public awareness in the United Kingdom in the late fifties
when he
testified before a commission seeking to ban the novel Lady
Chatterley's
Lover. For a bishop to favor Lady Chatterley titillated the
English
media who love juxtaposing religion with sexual expose. People
were not
aware at this time that this Bishop of Woolwich was also a
serious
student and a prolific, if not yet well known, writer.
In 1962 a
back ailment required that John Robinson be confined to bed for
a number
of months. His fertile and imaginative mind was freed from other
distractions and he wrote a little book called Honest to God
that
appeared on the bookstands in 1963. It made the controversy
about Lady
Chatterley's Lover look pale by comparison. This book forced
people to
recognize that the language of traditional religion was not a
language
that people believed today whether they continued to use it or
not. An
advance story in London's SUNDAY OBSERVER trumpeted the
headline,
"Bishop says the God up there or out there will have to go."
Thus, the
Church was launched into what came to be known as the "Honest to
God
Debate," and John A. T. Robinson became a household word in the
English-speaking world.
That little book sold more
copies than
any religious book since Pilgrim's Progress. It was translated
into
dozens of languages. It was discussed, not just in religious
circles,
but in pubs, on golf courses and over bridge tables. It brought
religion
out of the churches and planted it firmly on Main Street.
One
would think that the leaders of the churches would have welcomed
such an
initiative, but that would be to misunderstand the nature of
institutional religion. The religious establishment, instead,
recoiled
defensively. Every would-be theologian rushed into print to
denounce
this book. Calls were issued for Bishop Robinson's resignation
or for
him to be deposed for heresy. A book of reactions to Honest to
God was
published to keep the waves rolling. It revealed just how deeply
John
Robinson had touched the hot buttons of religious fear that the
traditional defenders of the faith struggle to conceal.
The
echoes of this debate reached my ears in my small-town parish in
Tarboro, North Carolina. I did not rush to read the book.
Reviews
indicated that it quoted extensively from Rudolf Bultmann,
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, and Paul Tillich. I was quite familiar with these
thinkers
and so I dismissed the book as a popularizing effort of no great
significance. Nonetheless I placed the book on my reading
schedule, and
finally got to it in 1965.
I remember the day I first
opened
this book. Vacationing on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I
sat on
the beach one afternoon with Honest to God. I did not put it
down until
I had read it through three times. I knew from that moment that
my life
would never be the same.
John Robinson made me aware
that my
childhood understanding of God would not live in my world. He
forced me
to face the fact that the words of both the Bible and the Creeds
sound
strange to post-modern people and that my faith had to grow or
it had to
be abandoned. I began on that day the long, tortuous and, to
this
moment, not yet completed process of rethinking all of the
symbols of my
religious past so that I could continue to claim them with
integrity. I
also pledged myself never again to use pious clich s that I
clearly no
longer believed.
This book drove me first back to the
Bible. I
knew that the Noah story, or the splitting of the Red Sea story,
could
not be literally true, to say nothing of the stories of Jesus
turning
water into wine, walking on water and ascending to the heaven of
a
Ptolemaic universe that had ceased to exist with Copernicus. My
church
had prepared me poorly, I discovered, to live as a believer in a
post-Copernican world, to say nothing of a world shaped by such
giants
as Newton, Darwin, Freud or Einstein. The Church still lived in
a World
of miracle and magic, where reward and punishment were meted out
by God
according to human deserving.
Seven years later, in
1972, this
internal struggle emerged externally in the form of my first
book which
was deeply shaped by the "Worldly Holiness" chapter in Honest to
God. My
publisher entitled my book Honest Prayer, hoping, I am sure, to
be
pulled into the Honest to God energy that was still abroad. In
1973 I
first met John Robinson. This larger-than- life man came to
speak in
Richmond on the 10th anniversary of the publication of Honest to
God. He
was very British, displaying little emotion. After the session I
was
introduced to him. I thanked him for what his writing had meant
to me. I
presented him with a copy of Honest Prayer. We talked for a
while and
then we each returned to our respective lives. Five years later
in 1978
John and I met again at the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican
Bishops
of the world. I was now one of those bishops and John, who had
returned
to Cambridge to teach New Testament, was present as a
consultant. Both
of us, bored by the speeches, decided to leave early and walk
through
the woods of Kent to discuss the New Testament. We came across a
country
pub and stopped to share "a pint." We even engaged in the pub
game of
"bowls," but all the while still discussing the New Testament.
It was
such a pleasant experience that we decided to repeat it each
day. So
while the bishops were debating, John and I probed the gospel
tradition
and I learned from his incisive mind.
In those years
John and I
both continued to write books which addressed the theme of
bringing the
church into dialogue with today's reality. I read everything he
wrote.
John Robinson's echoes were heard in me every time I spoke and
certainly
every time I wrote. When one reviewer referred to me as the
American
Bishop Robinson, I was deeply touched. After Lambeth, John and I
began
to correspond. I yearned to bring him to lecture to our diocesan
family,
and finally he agreed. Six months before his scheduled
appearance,
however, John wrote that he had received a cancer diagnosis and
had only
a few months to live. He sent me a copy of the sermon he
preached at
Clare College, Cambridge, the Sunday after he received the
diagnosis. I
was deeply touched by it, though it made me aware of how lonely
I would
be without this kindred spirit. John died in the early months of
1983.
In my grief I was pleased to be asked to write the American
tribute to
him published in THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY. Someone else had
recognized how
important he was to me.
I did not have either John's
intellectual training or his Cambridge PhD. Yet after his death,
in a
real sense I was the only other bishop who was addressing
publicly the
issues he had raised. That fall of 1983 I published a book
entitled Into
the Whirlwind: The Future of the Church. It marked a watershed
moment
for me from which there was no turning back. It was not that it
was a
great book, but reading it today I discover that the seeds of
every book
I have written since were present in its pages.
In 1988
Living
in Sin? came out. That book was for me the kind of birth to the
wider
public that the debate on Lady Chatterley's Lover had been for
John
Robinson. Because of that book and the controversy it sparked, I
increasingly found myself occupying the space in which John
Robinson
once stood and bearing the hostility he received. Now I was the
most
controversial bishop in the Anglican Communion. My vocation
clearly was
to transform Christianity so that it could be lived out
appropriately
today. Each new book fueled this growing flame. Invitations to
lecture
began to come in from across America, as well as from Australia,
Canada,
New Zealand and the United Kingdom. To be a bishop leading this
debate
became the heart of my vocation. Hence, I worked long hours lest
I
violate either the integrity of my office or of my scholarship.
I could
not walk away from the role for which everything in life had
equipped
me. I have lived this role with vigor, yearning more than once
to have
had John's counsel.
This past summer I returned once
again to
the United Kingdom on a lecture tour. I had speaking engagements
in
Yorkshire, Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Sheffield, Leeds, Milton
Keynes, London
and Leicester. There were also breaks to allow us to visit
family and
friends. In one of these downtimes I came face to face with John
Robinson once again.
We went to visit two friends,
formerly of
St. Peter's, Morristown, who now live in a tiny, secluded
village in
Herefordshire. To our amazement their next-door neighbor was
John
Robinson's only brother, Edward. We spent an evening with him
reminiscing about John's career and his influence. My tour ended
at a
conference in Leicester for an organization called "The Sea of
Faith,"
where I debated the radical English theologian Don Cupitt. To my
joy a
member of this conference was Ruth Robinson, John's widow. Once
again we
spent an evening remembering John Robinson. It was as if grace
had
touched me twice. The theological child of John A. T. Robinson
had been
welcomed home. I have now lived and worked twelve years beyond
the life
span of my mentor. I have picked up and addressed some issues
that never
surfaced for him. It has sometimes been a lonely journey. Today
I can
see the horizon of my career and wonder who the next John
Robinson will
be.
There will always be the "John Robinson" role
present in the
life of the Church. It will be welcomed by some, feared and
hated by
others. But that role is always the means by which growth and
the
renewal of the church is accomplished. I have been privileged to
walk,
however ineptly, in these footsteps.
TABLE OF CONTENTS: THE
BODY
Preface
Introduction
(1) The Old Testament
Background
1. Form and Matter
2. The One and the
Many
3. Body
and Soul
4. Boundary of Self
(2) The Pauline Usage
(i)
The
Concept of the Flesh
(ii) The Concept of the Body
II
THE BODY
OF THE CROSS
The Human Situation
The Process of
Redemption
(1)
Self-Identification
(2) Victory over evil
(3) Reproduced
through
baptism
III THE BODY OF THE RESURRECTION
(1) The
Extension of
the Incarnation
(2) The Origin of the Doctrine of the Body of
Christ
(3) The One and the Many
(4) Christ, the Church and
God
(5) The Old Body and the New
Dictionary of Key Greek
Terms
Index of Biblical References
Index of Names
Contents, Redating the New Testament
(1976)
Preface
I Dates and
Data
II.
The Significance of 70
III. The Pauline Epistles
IV. Acts
and the
Synoptic Gospels
V. The Epistle of James
VI The Petrine
Epistles
and Jude
VII. The Epistle to the Hebrews
VIII. The Book of
Revelation
IX. The Gospel and Epistles of John
X. A
Post-Apostolic
Postscript
XI. Conclusions and Corollaries
