Overview

Drawing on a lifetime of wisdom, New York Times bestselling author and controversial religious leader John Shelby Spong continues to challenge traditional Christian theology in Eternal Life: A New Vision. In this remarkable spiritual autobiography about his lifelong struggle with the questions of God and death, he reveals how he ultimately came to believe in eternal life.

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9780060778422

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In Spong's perpetual quest for truth and knowledge, he has transformed the enigmatic cosmic energy of the 'big bang' into an afterglow of human hope for the ages. -- Daniel H. Gregory, M.D., Senior Attending Physician, Bassett Healthcare Fear of death is the most fundamental fear of human existence. The only way it can be conquered is through knowledge and experience of your eternal being. Eternal Life: A New Vision is elegant invitation to find this part of yourself and be liberated. -- Deepak Chopra, author of The Third Jesus His courage, candor and intense awareness are unique gifts to people both inside and outside Christianity at this critical time in human and planetary history. -- Matthew Fox, author of Original Blessing This work, bound to be influential, offers new insights into religion's big questions about life and death, making an invaluable contribution to both religious scholarship and faithful exploration. -- Publishers Weekly Spong has spent his life and work making sense of this most fundamental human issue ... His fans will find this spiritual autobiography fascinating, but so, too, should anyone interested in the still uncomfortable topics of death and mortality. -- Booklist With subtlety and complexity, Spong promotes an idea of an ongoing existence beyond our physicality, one that entirely supercedes religious notions of Heaven or Hell and even conventional notions of God ... Spong's writing here as elsewhere is intelligent, engaged, comforting, and uplifting. -- Library Journal Spong once again puts his intellectual money on common sense ... Religion's purpose, he claims, is security, not Truth - a key insight that demands, in turn, a set of wholly new visions... Spong ... [is] a unique visionary. -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch John Shelby Spong, the reinterpreter of Christianity for the doubtful, retired as the Episcopal bishop of New Jersey in 2001 but not from his religious provocations... People have to get beyond the idea of God as a heavenly judge who hands out rewards and punishment,. -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution Eternal Life: A New Vision doesn't actually give us a clear vision of eternal life at all. Spong would never do that... Instead he frees us to dream a dream of what life, eternal or otherwise, might be. -- Central Coast Express Spong invites us to engage the questions, to revel in the mystery, and finally to find our place within God's place, our time within God's time, and our life within God's life. -- Anglican and Episcopal History

Spong has spent his life and work making sense of this most fundamental human issue . . . His fans will find this spiritual autobiography fascinating, but so, too, should anyone interested in the still uncomfortable topics of death and mortality. --Booklist

Spong once again puts his intellectual money on common sense . . . Religion's purpose, he claims, is security, not Truth - a key insight that demands, in turn, a set of wholly new visions. . . . Spong . . . [is] a unique visionary. -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Eternal Life: A New Vision doesn t actually give us a clear vision of eternal life at all. Spong would never do that.... Instead he frees us to dream a dream of what life, eternal or otherwise, might be. --Central Coast Express

Author Information

John Shelby Spong, the Episcopal Bishop of Newark before his retirement in 2000, has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard and at more than 500 other universities all over the world. His books, which have sold well over a million copies, include Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy; The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic; Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World; Eternal Life: A New Vision; Jesus for the Non-Religious, The Sins of Scripture, Resurrection: Myth or Reality?; Why Christianity Must Change or Die; and his autobiography, Here I Stand. He writes a weekly column on the web that reaches thousands of people all over the world. To join his online audience, go to www.JohnShelbySpong.com. He lives with his wife, Christine, in New Jersey.

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