By John Shelby Spong
Within the historical past of the Western international, the Bible has been a perpetual resource of notion and information for numerous Christians. even though, this Bible has additionally left a path of soreness. it's indisputable that the Bible isn't constantly used for solid. occasionally the Bible can look openly evil. occasionally its texts are negative.
Bishop John Shelby Spong boldly methods these texts which have been used via heritage to justify the denigration or persecution of others whereas sporting with them the implied and imposed authority of the declare that they have been the "Word of God." As he exposes and demanding situations what he calls the "terrible texts of the Bible", laying naked the evil performed by means of those texts within the identify of God, he additionally seeks to redeem those texts, hoping to get better their final intensity and function. Spong appears to be like particularly at texts used to justify homophobia, anti-Semitism, treating ladies as second-class people, corporal punishment, and environmental degradation, yet he additionally can provide a brand new photograph of the way Christians can use the Bible this day. As Spong battles opposed to the best way the Bible has been used all through heritage, he presents a brand new framework, introducing humans to a formal strategy to have interaction this holy e-book of the Judeo-Christian culture.
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I, p. 5. , vol. II, pp. 793, 796. , vol. VIII, p. 601; vol. I, p. 94. "84 Above all, Foxe's Acts and Monuments reflects the supreme achievement of Protestant historiography, the shaping of English history to its own ends, and the creation of a new historical consciousness among Englishmen. Foxe succeeded in imparting to Englishmen a national ecclesiastical history unique to England, a Protestant view of English history centered exclusively on the Church of England, from its early apostolic origins until the time of Elizabeth.
And just as the history of the English Church had been situated within the apocalyptic dimension of time, so the entire course of English history was now imbued with apocalyptic, eschatological significance. Protestantism and English patriotism had now become inextricably joined, with the role of England in sacred history based upon the independency of both the church and the crown. An examination of the differences between Foxe and Bale may facilitate a greater understanding of Foxe's contribution to Protestant historiography.
47 "So highly necessary, good Christian reader," thus opened Bale's book, "is the knowledge of St. John's Apocalypse or Revelation (whether you wilt) to him that is a member of Christ's church"; for this prophecy 46 47 John Bale, Image of Both Churches (1550), in Selected Works of John Bale, ed. H. Christmas (Cambridge, 1849), pp. 2 5 4 - 5 . , pp. 252, 2 5 1 . "49 The key to history, the meaning of historical events, is to be found in the text of divine prophecy. This indeed was the Protestant revolution in the Christian philosophy of history: a historiographic revolution whose rallying cry was for a literal,figural,and historical reading of Scripture, giving rise to a tight correspondence between prophecy and history.
