It kind of sounds like we both concluded that progressive Christianity's tendency to redefine the key terms of the faith to mean more sympathetic things was untenable... only we then ran in different directions. (Although, to be fair to progressive Christianity, Spong is kind of a jerk; there are better spokespeople.)
I'm fascinated by the idea that you find more mental footnotes in heresies than in orthodoxy. If anything I would lean towards saying the opposite: the early heresies seem to say fairly straightforward things (Jesus was a man and not God, Jesus was God and not a man) while the orthodox position is one that has to employ very careful definitions of things like "persons" and "nature" and "will" to make any sense at all.
"There's no empirical evidence for or against God, so therefore the question is irrelevant" seems odd to me because I don't see the logical connection between whether something is provable given current evidence and whether it's important. (P vs NP, anyone?) Pascal certainly believed that we have no rational way to decide God's existence based on the evidence at hand, but he still thought that the correct answer was relevant. (Pensee 229: "If I saw nothing [in nature] which revealed a Divinity, I would come to a negative conclusion; if I saw everywhere the signs of a Creator, I would remain peacefully in faith. But, seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied; ... My heart inclines wholly to know where is the true good, in order to follow it; nothing would be too dear to me for eternity.")
I also wish I'd taken better notes of how my ideas have changed over time. :-)
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I'm fascinated by the idea that you find more mental footnotes in heresies than in orthodoxy. If anything I would lean towards saying the opposite: the early heresies seem to say fairly straightforward things (Jesus was a man and not God, Jesus was God and not a man) while the orthodox position is one that has to employ very careful definitions of things like "persons" and "nature" and "will" to make any sense at all.
"There's no empirical evidence for or against God, so therefore the question is irrelevant" seems odd to me because I don't see the logical connection between whether something is provable given current evidence and whether it's important. (P vs NP, anyone?) Pascal certainly believed that we have no rational way to decide God's existence based on the evidence at hand, but he still thought that the correct answer was relevant. (Pensee 229: "If I saw nothing [in nature] which revealed a Divinity, I would come to a negative conclusion; if I saw everywhere the signs of a Creator, I would remain peacefully in faith. But, seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied; ... My heart inclines wholly to know where is the true good, in order to follow it; nothing would be too dear to me for eternity.")
I also wish I'd taken better notes of how my ideas have changed over time. :-)