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The Christian story did not drop from heaven fully written. It grew and developed year by year over a period of forty-two to seventy years. That is not what most Christians have been taught to think, but it is factual. Christianity has always been an evolving story. It was never, even in the New Testament, a finished story.

— John Shelby Spong Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy (2016)

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More quotes by John Shelby Spong

What the mind cannot believe the heart can finally never adore.

Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991)

The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any Gospel.

Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991)

Jesus could not have imagined such an idea as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991)

Above all, words must be recognized as symbolic pointers to truth, not objective containers of truth.

Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (1994)

All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Shelby Spong (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.