I'll let you off this time, Bill. ;)

It's not so much that Spong gets up my nose as a Christian -- it's that he's not even on the radar. He has defined himself off the map. There is nothing he believes that is distinctively Christian at all. That's okay for him, and people who want to believe along with him, but for people who really do see something unique in this Jesus of Nazareth guy, and think a religion centered around him is not such a bad idea, it has nothing to say, or at least nothing more than Buddhism or Taoism or Pastafarianism.

"Very left" -- well if you take Christian theologians generally and line them up from left (fewer truth claims, looser view of scripture) to right (absolute truth claims, very tight view of scripture), these people fall way left.

I don't know what exactly Rossing says about the Apocalypse -- but disagreeing with Tim LaHaye, and denying the Rapture as a separate event from the paraousia, are not terribly left, and one could hold those tenets and still be close to the center (depending on one's other beliefs of course). There's a danger of saying "the far right would hate this therefore it's far left" -- a lot of the spectrum lies to the left of the far right that is nevertheless not all that left.

Cool science books. I would say I have very similar views as yours regarding science. Although the Sagan thing just sounds like gobbledygook, if it's not simply process theology or ill-described pantheism. Neither of which is evil in itself, although I do happen to disagree with them.

At which point I've probably run my mouth far enough.

O..O
=o=