Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell - Paperback

by John Shelby Spong (Author)

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.

How does one journey past the limits of religion to find an authentic, modern belief in eternity?

• The Meaning of Mortality: Walk with Spong through his own personal encounters with death, from childhood to his work as a bishop, as he deconstructs the fears that shape traditional belief.
• Beyond Heaven and Hell: Why the traditional, behavior-controlling concepts of reward and punishment must be abandoned to find a mature spirituality.
• A New Vision of God: Discover a God not as a supernatural, external being, but as the Ground of All Being--the source of life, love, and consciousness in which we all participate.
• The Path of the Mystics: How the mystical tradition, from the author of John's Gospel to today, points to a universal consciousness that transcends death itself.

Back Jacket

Bishop John Shelby Spong, author of Jesus for the Non-Religious, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Sins of Scripture, and many other books, is known for his controversial ideas and fighting for minority rights. In Eternal Life: A New Vision, a remarkable spiritual journey about his lifelong struggle with the questions of God and death, he reveals how he came to a new conviction about eternal life. God, says spong, is ultimately one, and each of us is part of that oneness. We do not live on after death as children who have been rewarded with heaven or punished with hell but as part of the life and being of God, sharing in God's eternity, which is beyond the barriers of time and space. spong argues that the discovery of the eternal can be found within each of us if we go deeply into ourselves, transcend our limits and become fully human. By seeking God within, by living each day to its fullest, we will come to understand how we live eternally.

Always compelling and controversial, Spong, the leading Christian liberal and pioneer for human rights, wrestles with the question that all of us will ultimately face. In his final book, Spong takes us beyond religion and even beyond Christianity until he arrives at the affirmation that the fully realized human life empties into and participates in the eternity of God. The pathway into God turns out to be both a pathway into ourselves and a doorway into eternal life. To Job's question "If a man (or a woman) dies, will he (or she) live again?" he gives his answer as a ringing yes!