
Eternal Life
A New Vision
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Narrated by:
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John Morgan
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!
©2009 John Shelby Spong (P)2009 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...




















Editorial reviews
For many disciples, eternal life is the great dangling carrot that’s finally handed over to hungry believers at the end of a life well spent serving and living according to selected spiritual principles.
However, in Eternal Life: A New Vision, Bishop John Shelby Spong, a controversial figure in some closed circles, proposes a new idea of what eternal life actually means. According to Spong, eternal life goes, "beyond religion, beyond theism, beyond heaven and hell."
In other words, Spong doesn’t imagine eternal life will be spent lounging on puffy clouds and spending pain-free days and nights worshiping and feeling great from the moment we die until forever...and ever….and ever. Whew.
Narrated with non-judgmental clarity by John Morgan.
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Eternal Life
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Where does Eternal Life rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
One of the best.What was one of the most memorable moments of Eternal Life?
The arguments are amazing.Have you listened to any of John Morgan’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
N/AWas this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
I did listen all at one sitting.Any additional comments?
I've already listened to it again.Fantastic Book! Spong knocks it out of the park.
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A Joy to Read
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Eternal Life Is Right-On!
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I think the book is written with almost painful honesty and certainly with considerable study and contemplative thought.
I agree with Bishop Spong that Christian understanding is changing and must transcend doctrinal, hierarchical, and historical understandings to be relevant to intelligent, educated, thinking people in the twenty first century. I hope this book is shared with the people I love most and with all People of faith who are not afraid.
Eternal life
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thoughtful perspective
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This is an excellent, timely and probing question. Unfortunately, the answer offered is less than satisfying, and is certainly not the "resounding yes" promised in the first chapter.
Spong provides many autobiographical anecdotes as he relates how his own thought process led him to the conclusions drawn in this book. This is helpful, as his opinions are often quite caustic, and being able to see these opinions in the perspective of Spong's own personal experiences renders them at least understandable, if not agreed upon.
Spong identifies religion as the necessary crutch devised by humanity in order to cope with the separation anxiety caused by the evolutionary development of self-consciousness. He dismisses religion as "outdated", "spiritually immature", and "out of touch with modern scientific understanding". He calls for humanity to transcend our religious heritage and enter into new ways of thinking.
He concludes that the meaning of eternal life consists of living meaningfully in the here and now. He identifies God as "not supernatural, but in fact part of us", and argues that this is actually what the Gospel of John was trying to communicate. The path to eternal life: Live fully and love fully, because love is eternal.
Disappointingly, the conclusion stops short of discussing whether and how the individual consciousness is preserved beyond death. Also, Spong fails to subject his belief in Love and in God-as-part-of-us to the same "skeptical scientific scrutiny" used to tear apart traditional religious ideology.
Excellent questions... wishy-washy answers
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What disappointed you about Eternal Life?
Much of the book is a careful and EXTREMELY thorough examination of problems with taking a literal/concrete approach to understanding the Bible and Christian religion. I enjoyed many of the sections in which Spong talked about his own spiritual journey from fundamentalism to where he is now. His discussion of the journey of humanity in understanding life, the world/universe, and God was interesting and good for provoking discussion, but also full of sweeping over-generalizations and interpretations presented as facts. His big conclusions were fine, but not anything new really, and not very well developed.Ideas good, book slow and repetitive
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What did you like about this audiobook?
I really liked the first Spong book that I read, "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism". Each chronologically subsequent book got a bit less precise culminating in this one. What exactly does eternal life mean? He doesn't explain it.Fuzzy conclusion
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