Others are not so kind. "This is not only shocking, it's one of the craziest things I've heard so far," said Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark.

Archbishop McCarrick's remark came just a few days after he broke a long silence on Bishop Spong by writing in a newspaper column of the Bishop's "strange journey" and suggesting that he has created a "church without morals."

Conservatives in Bishop Spong's own denomination were no happier.

"I think Spong is self-destructing," said the Rev. Todd Wetzel, the executive director of Episcopalians United, a conservative group based in Cleveland. "Much of his thinking will soon be dismissed. It no longer represents constructive theological thinking nor responsible thinking."

Bishop Spong sees his latest thesis as consistent with his career in the ministry. As a young priest in his native North Carolina in the 1960's, he fought for the equality of blacks both inside and outside the church. In the 1970's, he became an early champion of the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church. In the 1980's, he called on the priests in his diocese to "bless" homosexual unions and later ordained a sexually active homosexual man against the rules of his own denomination. 'Self-Judging Rhetoric'

By viewing St. Paul as a gay man, he said, he hopes to make homosexuals more comfortable in the Episcopal church and to attract people who left the church feeling that it was a moribund institution wedded to ancient ways of thinking.

In his book, the Bishop writes that he does not mean to be "salacious or titillating" by suggesting St. Paul was gay. But, he adds, "Nothing else, in my opinion, could account for Paul's self-judging rhetoric, his negative feeling toward his own body and his sense of being controlled by something he had no power to change."

In the interview, Bishop Spong said that he sees himself as playing an important role challenging accepted notions within the church and society.