MarkostheGnostic said:

Ooh, well, cook us a good Christian recipe for humble pie why doncha. Spong is a great scholar whom you would do well to read since you obvious are not yourself a scholar of biblical hermeneutics.

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Rev. Spong is a Bishop in the Protestant Episcopal church. He has raised the hackles of the church establishment with what they consider to be heretical and gnostic preaching and books. I never really paid too much attention to all that debate until now, when I see a stated Gnostic praising his work.

I am not judjing you or him for this, it is just an observation, and I will need to investigate Spong's work to form and opinion.

Silversoul said:

It is taken as an article of faith among mainstream Christians that Jesus suffered and died on the cross for our sins, and that this is the source of salvation. Personally, I think this is mistaking the roadmap for the road. God is beyond time, and salvation was available before Jesus just as it has been since his death on the cross. I submit that his death and resurrection were meant to teach us some of the divine mysteries of God. Did God take human form to take on our sins, or was his death meant to show us how God has always taken on the enormous weight of the world's sins, in order to sustain it? God is too great for any one religion, and salvation was never meant to hinge itself on a historical event. The crucifixion teaches that when we suffer, God is there to suffer with us. Whenever we are in pain, we can turn to God to carry us through it and be our fellow sufferer. Salvation is not something waiting for you after you die. It is here and now, if you seek it.

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