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Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell |  | Author: John Shelby Spong
Publisher: HarperOne
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $12.21
as of 3/18/2010 13:10 PDT details
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New (33) from $12.21
Seller: OB1S
Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 5639
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 0060762063
Dewey Decimal Number: 236.2
EAN: 9780060762063
ASIN: 0060762063
Publication Date: September 1, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780060762063 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
Bishop John shelby spong, author of Jesus for the Non-Religious, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Sins of Scripture, and many other books, is known for his controversial ideas and fighting for minority rights. In Eternal Life: A New Vision, a remarkable spiritual journey about his lifelong struggle with the questions of God and death, he reveals how he came to a new conviction about eternal life. God, says spong, is ultimately one, and each of us is part of that oneness. We do not live on after death as children who have been rewarded with heaven or punished with hell but as part of the life and being of God, sharing in God's eternity, which is beyond the barriers of time and space. spong argues that the discovery of the eternal can be found within each of us if we go deeply into ourselves, transcend our limits and become fully human. By seeking God within, by living each day to its fullest, we will come to understand how we live eternally. Always compelling and controversial, spong, the leading Christian liberal and pioneer for human rights, wrestles with the question that all of us will ultimately face. In his final book, spong takes us beyond religion and even beyond Christianity
until he arrives at the affirmation that the fully realized human life empties into and participates in the eternity of God. The pathway into God turns out to be both a pathway into ourselves and a doorway into eternal life. To Job's question “If a man (or a woman) dies, will he (or she) live again?” he gives his answer as a ringing yes!
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 33
 A refreshing honest approach February 12, 2010
Julie K. White (Naalehu, Hawaii)
I have enjoyed reading this book because Spong is refreshing honest. He shares his personal story and expounds on the questions most of us have but don't have the courage to voice. He offers a new perspective to the idea of eternal life that isn't sprinkled with fairy dust. The book is filled with thoughts about the church, the Bible, different religious views, scientific reasearch and some philosophy. It was a well rounded and insightful read about a topic most of us would love to understand better.
Spiritual Frontiers February 4, 2010
Judith Cauley
John Spong never disappoints and least of all in his latest book which is both evokative and provacative.
A summary of essential claims January 23, 2010
Dr. N.Burr.Furlong (Houston, TX USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Spong's "Eternal Life: A New Vision" - A Precis by N. Burr Furlong
Spong observes that man's primary fear and insecurity comes from realizing the inevitability of death - our own or that of a loved one. Early in his ministry he felt doubts about Biblical and church authority, especially regarding death. He outlines his search through O.T, N.T., other religion's scriptures and parapsycholological writings for the nature of eternal life which led him to the opinions that most Christian teachings on this issue (mainly the ideas of reward and punishment) were fashioned to control behavior in this life. More generally, perhaps the language of space and time are inadequate to describe either the path to, or the nature of, eternal life.
He then examines critical evolutionary steps leading to human death anxiety: life, consciousness and self-consciousness. He traces his personal realization of the reality of death and the role of his early church experiences and concludes that the main purpose of organized religion seems to be to cope with our human fear of death. Some sort of "religion" may have "worked" for 200,000 years as ideas of God evolved through: animist powers or spirits, fertility deities, tribal deities, many Gods, one God until three major concepts now prevail: Judeo-Christian, Muslim and Hindu-Buddhist. Generally all of these traditions include a God or Gods who are external to, and more powerful than, human beings. Spong uses this history to demonstrate that religions are the products of human invention to meet human needs (rather than revelations with divine authority).
Many view God as 1. Something "other" with attributes we lack, 2. A source of supernatural aid and 3. A way to achieve immortality. This God is pleased to accept: our humble access, the confession of our own unworthiness, our strict obedience and our unending praise. Spong feels that a God with these qualities is unworthy of being worshiped or believed in - a God created by men to control the behavior of adherents to doctrines that are life suppressing, crude, debilitating, hostile and, for the most part, irrational and unbelievable. We must go beyond these human inventions (this type of religion must deservedly die) and admit that there is no God "out there", no Earth Mother, no Superpower, no heavenly record books, no pearly gates, no deistic "clockmaker".
But the God experienced by many people through the ages is real and these experiences have often been outside of organized religion. It is more than coincidence that secular liberal politics to make fair an unfair world has grown more popular as institutional religions have faded - the content of traditional religion is felt no longer relevant to human needs. A new approach to God will be required for most Christians. Those who have had a direct experience of God say that deity must be looked for within.
As far as we know, the physical laws governing the furtherest galaxies are the same as the laws on earth which connect all matter and energy uniformly. Life on earth is governed by directions coded in DNA and much DNA is common to all life forms - again evidence of a substantial unity. Jung and many modern psychologists feel that consciousness is a universal whole and recent evidence on the nature of memory and awareness is most easily interpreted as centered in a unified matrix capable of being tapped into by individual minds as self-consciousness. Thus, separateness is an illusion. At the heart of every human, a God common to all has being as an unbounded presence and timeless reality. In commenting on Paul's statement "in God we live and move and have our being", Spong says we are a part of who and what God is, and God is a part of what we are.Unity is held together by love; thus, religion should be about the enhancement of life through love.
Spong feels that, rather than claiming Jesus was resurrected into a divine immortality, it is more meaningful to think that Jesus triumphed over death because he was so profoundly human that his life opened to that which we call divine. The gospels were written in an attempt to convey what was really a non-verbalizable experience. In the various written accounts of the resurrection, no two are alike. He feels many disciples, back then and since then, have experienced "Christpower" - the holiness that they felt in Jesus was now a part of themselves. The truly human, which is found in Jesus, is met not beyond but at the heart of life.
The human quest for life after death is not based on the claim that my life or anyone else's will last forever in space and time, but on a new awareness that self-conscious human life shares in the eternity of God so that I will live, love and be part of who God is, bound not by my mortality but by God's eternity. In living fully, we enter life's timelessness; I do, I can and I will escape barriers of time and space. Spong enlarges on three questions that arise:
1. Is this vision of life assuring enough to inspire those who are suffering to trust it? It obviously was for the first disciples, many of whom faced persecution and death with equanimity.
2. Is the life beyond this life sufficiently personal? Spong finds a new meaning for personhood in St. Francis' prayer: "It is in giving that we are receive, it is in loving that we are loved, it is in forgiving that we are forgiven and ultimately it is in dying that we live".
3. Will I know my loved ones? The lives of those who are a part of what we are must share eternity with us..
The essence of this new approach is that Life is holy; we should live fully, love wastefully, be all we can be and help others to do the same.
In an Epilogue, Spong comments on defining the choice to die. What choices are open to us morally, ethically and legally to voluntarily bring our life to an end when circumstances make such a decision necessary and even desirable? What happens when medical technology's ability to to expand life becomes merely the process for postponing bodily death? The vision of humanity which he has developed in this book should make us realize that our seemingly individual and fragile lives are part of the very source of life and should lead us to discover we have a new responsibility of weighing quality against quantity. We can then let our days come to an end, voluntarily, appreciatively and purposefully - a profoundly Christian decision that honors life rather than longevity.
He goes on to say, his deepest joy is his connections with friends and loved ones; so that if he were rendered incapable of continuing these relationships, if his physical appearance or mental acuity were to become grotesque, if the medical and emotional expenses to keep his body functions going were too burdensome, he wants the legal power and moral authority to terminate his biological life. Life is holy and precious and he wants the moment of his departure to be celebrated like the moment of his arrival, with joy and great expectations.
Maybe not what you're expecting January 1, 2010
Brian Smith (West Chester, OH USA)
I've read a few books by John Shelby Spong now. Spong is among the handful of Christian (maybe post-Christian) writers who has had a pretty big impact on how I view Christianity and the church. And, I've always been obsessed with the afterlife. So, when I heard he had written his "final" book on this particular subject, I had to pick it up. Eternal Life: A New Vision is the title.
Spong takes the subject on using an interesting technique. The book is mostly an spiritual autobiography. But, he overlays his individual spiritual development on top of the journey man has taken over time going from primitive religion to a more complex "modern" religion to what Spong claims will be a post-religious world. There are times in this book (and others by Spong) where he comes across as angry with the church and he tends to overstate his case against the anthropomorphic and hands-on god we were taught in Sunday school. But, if you can get by this, I think he has a lot of very important things to say. What I found particularly interesting in this book is that while the events of our lives are completely different, Spong and I have been on a very similar spiritual path from the simplistic faith of our childhood to feeling it is all slipping away to a what we feel is a more real and realistic faith. As Spong attacks the idols we've made of scripture, the church and even Christianity I think many will feel disoriented and even angry. But, Spong doesn't duck the hard questions, the criticisms of religion in general and Christianity in particular. There were times when I felt I just wanted to put the book down because it seemed like an demolition of Christianity. But, I resisted that an pressed through to the end and I'm glad I did.
It's always cool when I find someone else shares an experience I did because I was one weird little kid. I remember the prayer "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.". Now I'm sure that millions (billions?) of kids around the world have said that prayer trillions of time and most of them crawl into bed and think nothing of it. But, not me and not Spong. As he puts it "That prayer made it quite clear that death was an option for me. It also associated death with going to sleep, with darkness and with the night, while identifying waking with the dawn, the daylight and even the resurrection." As a child, I suffered with insomnia, scared to sleep because to sleep meant I might die and to die meant I might go to hell. But, I hadn't put that all together consciously until I was an adult.
The bulk of the book is about Spong's dealings with death of loved ones and acquaintances and about his spiritual journey. He gets into redefining what God means to him now, in a way very similar to Karen Armstrons "The Case for God" which I reviewed recently. He talks about how his view of Jesus has evolved also from being God incarnate to a man who fully fulfilled his potential. A lot of this is probably a rehashing of concepts he has expressed elsewhere. I did love his definition of faith as "faith has become therefore not the task of believing the unbelievable, but he task of living, loving and being. The mission of faith is no longer to convert: it is to transform the world to that every life will have a better chance to live fully and thus to commune with the source of life; to love wastefully and thus to commune with the source of love, and to find the 'courage to be' and thus to commune with the Ground of Being."
Finally, Spong does work his away around to discussing life after death (after he has redefined life) and spoken about how we are all part of one greater consciousness. He does answer the question "Do you believe in life after death?" in the affirmative. He does believe that we will have a personal life after our bodies have ceased to function. He does not know if we know or see our loved ones again. An honest answer. But, he does point out that none of us is an independent creature. What we are is what we are in relation to each other. So, we cannot be apart from being in relationship.
Overall, I found the book most definitely worthwhile. I am learning to live with uncertainty. I appreciate the fact that Spong does not overreach and answer questions that he simply doesn't know the answer to. But, some may find the book unsatisfying in that regard. There's no denying that, at the very least, there is a veil beyond which we cannot see. As Carly Simon put it in her song "Life is Eternal" (that I'm listening to right now), death is (only) a horizon. She says only a horizon. But, the horizon is the limit of our sight. We can make some educated guesses. But, we only truly know once we get there.
 Sorry, But I don't get it. December 20, 2009
seeker (CT)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Having read an earlier book by Mr. Spong, which I found ultimately disappointing, this book seems very much a continuation of his previously stated positions. In general, Mr. Spong seems to espouse a watered-down kind of Christianity, perhaps for the worthy goal of constructing a "bigger tent," so to speak, i.e., a religious view consistent with the views of other less traditional Christians, including those with less faith and a more limited interest in religion. However, is the net result improvement or decline? This book seems to be going further in that direction, to construct a tent big enough even for atheists, of which I think it would be fair to categorize Mr. Spong. Unfortunately, the pews are increasingly empty and the faithful seek salvation elsewhere.
Of course, Mr. Spong is well entitled to his personal views. In fact, it is clear that he has deeply thought about the subject of God and death, and has considerable experience in related spiritual matters. That is reflected in his book and is probably its most favorable aspect. On the other hand, it is the foolish elitist arrogance that is the most unfavorable aspect of the book. In other words, he doesn't just explain his view, but must base it on criticism of more traditional Christianity, which he likes to call fundamentalist, as compared to his atheistic "Christianity." I suppose that is the nature of atheism to some extent, a belief based on non-belief.
As mentioned, however, there are some strengths to the book. Spong's atheism is not at all like that of materialistic atheists, for example, the "new atheists" or followers of scientism. On the other hand, Spong seems to make common cause with them in attacking traditional religion, making passing but favorable comments about Dawkins and Harris in the book. The saving grace, in my opinion, is Spong's appreciation, at least, of the new level of human consciousness brought to us by Jesus. Thus, Spong seems to adopt a middle position between non-spiritual atheists and secular "Christians."
The part I really "don't get" is that Mr. Spong ends up stating his firm belief in a personal after-life, while at the same time not believing in God as an "other" as compared to human consciousness alone. Hence, the question is how and why is there the reality of immortality without the reality of God? As a metaphysical system, it strikes me as very insufficient. (At least with process theology, there is a melding of God and human consciousness, in which God is part of the universe, though not outside the universe and omnipotent.)
So, in sum, Mr. Spong's view seems to be to have faith in personal immortality and, at the same time, not to have faith in God. I certainly respect his view, but I do not think it will resonate with many people and for good reason. As a personal statement of Mr. Spong's belief, I found the book marginally interesting and having an element of originality, but too much is left out, too much is denied.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 33
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