Study Guide Developed by Gil Stafford
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Study Guide
The Fourth Gospel:
Tales of a Jewish Mystic
Written by John Shelby Spong
Begin and end each session with a prayer.
Allow for a check-in period where each person can share for two minutes.
Ask for people to share what they thought/felt about the readings for the session.
What new insight did they learn?
Was there something in the reading they found disturbing/disagreeable?
General study questions for each Part:
Part I—Introducing the Fourth Gospel
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Before you read any part of Spong’s book what was your perspective on the
Gospel of John?
How might Spong’s suggestion that the Gospel of John was written in at least
three stages influence your understanding of the gospel? (Chapter 2)
What you think about Spong’s goal to pull the anti-Semitism and Creedal
orthodoxy out of the Gospel of John? What difference might it make for the
understanding of Christianity/Jesus if he succeeds? (Chapter 2)
What is the value (if any) in understanding “The first passion story to be written is
thus a liturgical interpretation, not remembered history?”
In studying pages 26-29 what do you find most enlightening? Most disturbing?
On page 39, Spong writes, “The spilt between revisionist Jews and orthodox Jews
which led to the followers of Jesus being expelled from the synagogue when this
gospel was being written was both real and clear. This gospel reflects the pain and
trauma of that expulsion, as well as the necessity for reformulating the Christ
message so that it will endue in its new reality as a movement that is outside the
synagogue.” How might this statement be applied to Christianity today? Or not?
(Chapter 4)
How has or has not anti-Semitism distorted the reading of the Gospel of John?
Affected Christianity? (Chapter 5)
“While God may not be subject to change, the human perception of God is: and
history, even the history of the Bible, is the story of the ever-changing human
perceptions of God.” (Chapter 5) Agree? Disagree? How or why? (also see quote
on page 54 beginning with the third paragraph, “The idea of a changing God…”)
Can you relate in any way to the evolution of Jewish mysticism in, around, and
following Jesus’ presence on earth? (Chapter 5)
Focusing on pages 56-57 and Spong’s discussion of the wisdom tradition, how do
you interpret his statement, “The journey into the self, however, was perceived to
be the same as a journey into God?”
What does it mean to you when Spong says (page 57) “God must be understood
as a verb, calling, informing and shaping us and all creation into being all that we
were created to be?”
Study Guide Developed by Gil Stafford
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Have you ever had a mystical experience that took you into a “new level of
consciousness?” (page 59) Could you describe it? (Chapter 7) What do you think
about Spong’s comment, “Ultimate truth, however, cannot be captured in finite
human words?”
How might we see “Jesus as a doorway into a new consciousness?” How might
that effect our understanding of Christianity today?
Part II—The Book of Signs: Mythological Characters Wrapped Inside History
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How or not does Spong’s insistence that the writer of the Gospel of John, used the
characters in the story as literary figures to make his point (as opposed to literal
characters and events)?
How has this statement affected your understanding of Mary the mother of Jesus?
“Embrace this fact and face the reality that this is the sum total of what we know
about the mother of Jesus until the ninth decade, when the gospel of Matthew
begins to develop her image mythologically via miraculous nativity stories.”
(page 79)
How might it affect your reading of the Gospel of John if the mother of Jesus is
symbol (a mythological figure) and not a literal person (in this Gospel story)?
(Chapter 8)
How might it affect your understanding of the Bible if the story of the wedding of
Cana is symbolic and a story about Jesus literally turning water into wine?
(Chapter 8)
How might this statement affect your understanding of Christianity? (from page
88) “A realm is more of an experience…A realm could be an experience of new
levels of consciousness, the ability to see beyond the limits of physical vision.”
What do you think of Spong’s statement on page 91? “Self-consciousness,
however, does open up the possibility of escaping all the boundaries and touching,
seeing and experiencing a universal consciousness, a radical new awareness of
connectedness, a mystical sense of identity with that which is ultimate. That is an
experience that only self-conscious human beings can have.”
What do you make of the writer of the Gospel of John having Jesus equating
himself to the healing serpent of Moses? (page 91-92)
In Chapter 10 Spong writes (page 106)—“Jesus is a barrier breaker. Before him
falls the human division first between Jews and Samaritans and then between
women and men. A vision of the “realm of God” begins to come into view.” What
implications might this have for us today?
(From pages 107-111) Spong discusses tribalism. How can we (or not) apply what
he says to our world situation today?
(From pages 112-116) “God was present in Jesus, but was not confined to his
single life.” What does mean for us today?
What does this statement mean to you? (page 119) “Stepping out of the familiar
religious forms of yesterday and into the post-religious freedom of tomorrow is
never easy. It takes courage and a willingness to think outside religious
boundaries.”
Study Guide Developed by Gil Stafford
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How might this statement apply to Christians today? (page 123) “Not all of the
followers of Jesus could walk the walk into the new consciousness that John was
outlining…They could not bear the anxiety of the uncertainty that maturity
always requires….They could not make the transition that following Jesus
required.”
(from page 127) “If one hears the question literally, one must respond with a
literal answer.” What might that mean for us today as we read the Gospel of John
and understand Jesus in light of a new level of consciousness?
Reading Spong’s explanations of the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus
walking on the water in Chapter 13, has this changed your perspective of these
stories in the Gospel of John? How so?
(page 131) “The Jesus says one of the most provocative things that John ever
records him as saying: “You must,” therefore, “eat my flesh” and “drink my
blood.” (132) Spong says that Jesus means, “Eat my flesh—take my life into
yours. Drink my blood—open your spirit to my spirit.” How might we use these
statements to create a new way of thinking and talking about the Episcopal
celebration of the Holy Eucharist?
What does this statement from Spong mean to you? (page 140) “Jesus is a
doorway into a universal consciousness that no one can know until he or she steps
into it.”
What might this statement mean for us today? (page 150) “If the Jewish
traditionalists could not move out of the past and walk in the light that Jesus came
to give, said John, they were choosing to live in darkness, to hide in the religious
security of yesterday. That, John asserted, is to make a virtue out of closed minds.”
How might Spong’s statement about Lazarus affect your understanding of Jesus
and/or scripture? (page154) “Every symbol employed by John reveals that
Lazarus is not a person, but a sign and a symbol.”
In light of the Lazarus story, Spong says, “Jesus thus represents an ultimate threat
to our tribal and religious life?” How so?
Part III—The Farewell Discourses and the High Priestly Prayer
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What does this statement mean to you? (page 173) “Oneness is achieved in our
willingness and in our ability to love one another. God is experienced as present
in us, in our freedom to escape our needs and to give ourselves away to one
another.”
What does this statement mean to you? (page 185) “Salvation, now perceived as a
call into wholeness, had been accomplished, but only in those few who
‘believed’—that is, those who had stepped beyond their drive to survive and into
a new sense of what it means to be human.”
What does this statement mean to you? (page 185) “John said (Jesus) had died to
pen human life to a new meaning, an new definition. His death was to be the
moment of his glorification, the moment when God was fully revealed in him.”
(page 186) “Indeed you will do even greater deeds than the ones I (Jesus) have
done. The secret, however, is for you to keep the new commandment. You have to
love, not for gain, but for love’s sake.” Comment and thoughts?
Study Guide Developed by Gil Stafford
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What do you think about Spong’s statement that “a little while” is to understand
this is an internal manifestation not an external one? (page 186)
(page 193) Comments and thoughts? “For John there was no fall into sin and thus
no time when the human and divine were separated: One literally permeated the
other. Since in John’s mind God was not an external being, there was no division
between God and life—at least no division with spatial, temporal, or more
connotations. Jesus, therefore, did not die for your sins. Neither was he the victim
who God punished so that God did not have to punish the deserving sinners, nor
substitute the sacrificial animal for the sinner. Those were concepts that this
author could not have comprehended.”
In Spong’s interpretation of “God’s Vineyard” (pages 195-197) how might we
reimagine Christianity? “What Jesus is describing here is not redemption of the
fallen but transformation of the open…There is now a mystical and mutual
indwelling that will create a new humanity.” (page 197)
What do you think of Spong’s statement, “God cannot be limited to one mediator?”
(198)
(page 206) Discuss this statement: “We are not fallen; we are simply incomplete.
We do not need to be rescued, but to experience the power of an all-embracing
love. Our call is not to be forgiven or even to be redeemed; it is to step beyond
our limits into a new understanding of what it means to be human. It is to move
from a status of self-consciousness to a realization that we share in a universal
consciousness.”
Part IV—The Passion Narrative: From Darkness to Light, From Death to Life
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“John Sanford, a Jungian analyst, sees Judas in Jungian terms as the shadow side
of Jesus. Human wholeness in Jung’s thinking is not possible unless one’s shadow
is embraced. Sanford argues that the drama of the corss is an internal drama as
much as it is an external one.” Discuss and comment on the ideas outlined on
page 223.
“Life is never found in a physical struggle to preserve it (John 18:9-11; page 230).
It means that the drive to survive can no longer distort our humanity, nor can it
compromise our existence. It means that the life of God lives in us. (232) How
might Spong’s statement change how we live life?
What do think about Spong’s statement (page 243) “The messianic claim has been
renounced. God could never again be seen in the power symbols of either religion
or politics, in church or state.”
How might accepting Spong’s contention that Lazarus as a mythological figure
who is the beloved disciple shape our understanding of Christianity? What do you
think about Spong’s statement that Lazarus is the archetype of the Jesus
movement? (251) That the beloved disciple is the ultimate definition of a Jesus
follower. (252)
What you think about Spong’s statement—“John is not writing a literal narrative:
he is creating a mystical portrait of oneness, of new life, of a transition into a new
being, a new consciousness.”
Study Guide Developed by Gil Stafford
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Spend some time on the words on page 258. “To John the cross was a portrait of
one who could live without boundaries, of one who could love without limits and
of one who, in the moment of dying, could exhibit the courage to be all that he
was meant to be… God is present in our willingness to give ourselves away, to
escape the driving power of survival which wraps us in self-centeredness…The
call of Jesus was to life—new life, abundant life. It was a call to enter the ultimate
life of God.”
Part V—Resurrection: Mystical Oneness Revealed
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What was your take away from Chapter 27 on John’s presentation of the Easter
story?
(page 282-283) What implications for us might this statement mean for us today?
“John is painting an interior experience in external colors using objective words.
(Mary Magdalene) is the first to see that in his freedom to step beyond the human
drive to survive, he reveals a new dimension of life and consciousness.”
What does this statement mean for you? “Perhaps John is trying to say to us that
the resurrection we seek is not so much that of Jesus as it is of ourselves.” (288)
(page 298) “The Christian life is not about believing creeds and being obedient to
divine rules; it is about living, loving, and being.” What does Spong’s statement
mean for Christians who agree with it?