General Articles

Jim Thornton on Critique of Lloyd Geering’s Christianity without God in the September 2005 issue

On the dangers of accepting uncritically the writings of scholars who, like Geering, have become celebrities, I entirely agree with you. Even the most distinguished scholars in whatever field are, of course, all fallible and are likely to make significant mistakes, sometimes even mistakes of major importance. I am confident that Geering himself would unhesitantingly agree with us both on this point, for he always welcomes and encourages critical reactions to his own writings, and he would hate to think any of his writings were to be “taken as gospel”.

On the question of mysticism, I confess to be puzzled by your reaction to Geering’s argument. Unless I have misunderstood him, he has argued that the doctrine of the incarnation was an early step towards the abandonment of transcendental theism.(1).

[p64] “There is an unbridgeable gulf between the theistic God and all that has been created. Yet this is exactly what the doctrine of the Holy Trinity controverts, for it asserts that the gulf has been bridged.”(2)

I don’t think he was denying that early Christian thought was theistic, but rather that the seeds of non-theism were already being sown, and that the emergence of the doctrine of the trinity was an (ultimately vain) attempt to retain a belief in the transcendence of God along side the belief in God’s immanence. The doctrine of God’s immanence clearly has close ties with mysticism and the doctrine of incarnation. (See p. 71 and Ch. 6 passim.) Consequently, the passages from the N.T. which you quote, including St Paul’s mystical passages, far from contradicting Geering’s argument, seem to me to support it. Early Christian thought was of course a modification of the theism of Judaism which for the most part did indeed emphasise that there was “an unbridgeable” gap between God and His creation. The doctine of the incarnation was, on the face of it, incompatible with this legacy of Judaism, with the result that the early fathers had the task of reconciling these opposing ideas, and came up with the doctrine of the trinity. Defenders of orthodox Judaism and the religion of Islam, as well as secular critics have been convinced that this doctrine involves a plain contradiction. Wouldn’t you agree that orthodox Christian doctrine has for centuries insisted that God is BOTH immanent and transcendent, and in response to the obvious question “How can He be both?” the standard answer has tended to be that this is a divine mystery?

(3)

I take Geering’s point to be that the gradual abandonment, or playing down, of the doctrine of the trinity, especially in modern times, has tended to be in the direction of panentheism at the cost of transcendence, and that the seeds of this trend can be traced to the doctrine of the incarnation. When you say “mysticism was fairly central to Christian spirituality” and Geering says “ it is generally rejected by Christian orthodoxy” I see a tension but no necessary contradiction. But in any case, evidence of mysticism in the N.T. writings seems to me to support Geering’s argument rather than undermine it. Or do you think I have misunderstood him? (4)

You refer to Geering’s claim that theism has added to the purely human words of the Bible a dimension of authority which they did not deserve and that this fact often caused the inquisition in mediaeval times and fundamentalists in modern times to become irrational, dogmatic and fanatical. Again, he writes, "This damning feature of theism [is seen in relation to] the disquieting ability to co-exist with or even encourage social evils like slavery and apartheid." (page 137) He might have added to the list of evils, the persecution of homosexuals, the subordination of women, and the defence of the beating of children as a means of discipline. You regard all this as knocking down a “straw man”. Is it really? It does seem to me to be true that if once you believe a doctrine to have a transcendent perfectly good God as its author rather than a human origin, any human criticism of that doctrine tends to be automatically rejected as being overruled or irrelevant. But in any case, Geering would surely agree that theism is not a necessary condition for generating a tendency for people to become “irrational, dogmatic and fanatical”, but simply a sufficient condition. Other social factors can also have this tendency, such as political ideologies like communism, especially when any criticism of the ideology is ruthlessly suppressed by those in power. Moreover, he nowhere suggests that ALL theists can be said to have the undesirable qualities referred to. His point was simply that theism often does lead to the nurturing of those qualities. That this is so seems to me to be true, especially in the light of burgeoning fundamentalism, both Christian and Islamic, where belief in the infallible authority of a transcendent God is central to the religious belief.

With regard to Geering’s scepticism concerning the Resurrection, you claim that this is based a priori on his materialist philosophy. You have accused Geering of neglecting his duty to be fair, but it seems to me that this claim of yours is perhaps itself open to a similar criticism. I’m not sure whether Geering would describe his philosophical position as “materialist” but even if he would, the suggestion that his rejection of the Resurrection of Jesus in its traditional interpretation, and that his rejection of a belief in life after death is not based on evidence (which is what “a priori” means) is highly misleading. (5)

I would have thought that scepticism with regard to the alleged evidence for the Resurrection based on the stories of the post crucifixion appearances is far from being a priori. (6)

It is well known that the phenomenon of apparently experiencing the presence of a deceased loved-one shortly after their death is quite common. The question arises, is such an experience apparent only or have they really survived death? This question certainly has to be addressed by reference to evidence. It seems that your view is that the evidence points to real survival, whereas his view is that the evidence points to only apparent survival. No doubt which view one adopts will at least in part depend on wider metaphysical grounds which one regards as coherent and convincing. Such grounds are of course themselves the proper subject of critical examination and argument, and are not entirely independent of empirical evidence. If you regard Geering’s scepticism of resurrection, whether of Jesus or others, as a priori because of his metaphysical viewpoint, wouldn’t it be equally true to say that your acceptance of resurrection is equally a priori because of your own metaphysical viewpoint? In short, I think that your suggestion that Geering’s views are not to be taken seriously because they are biassed by his philosophical presuppositions is open to this “tu quoque” objection. (7)

Your citing the testimony of many “trained minds who have had long and overwhelmingly persuasive encounters with the supposed dead” seems to me to be somewhat naive. This is not to accuse such people of being liars but simply to make the point that all reports of experiences, whether of trained minds or not, are necessarily theory laden. That is, the very wording of the reports encapsulate an interpretation. (8)

However, we know that some reports of experiences, however sincere, encapsulate misinterpretations of reality and are therefore illusory, even though there may be no doubt that they have had an unusual experience. (Witness those who kill innocent people in response to what they sincerely believe to be commands from God. Unless, therefore, we have criteria for distinguishing illusory from non-illusory experiences of resurrected people, we have no way of knowing which reports put us in touch with the truth. I wonder what criteria you think would fill the bill. An appeal to dreams, most of which clearly do not put us in touch with the real world, no matter how vividly real they seem at the time of dreaming, seem to me even more to suffer from the same problem. I know that when I have dreamt of having a conversation with Tony Blair there is overwhelming evidence that I have never really had any such a conversation, even though at the time of dreaming it seemed extremely real. If I have an equally vivid dream of having a conversation with my dead father, what reason do I have for thinking that in this case it is essentially any different?

Incidentally, scepticism with regard to the reality of post crucifixion appearances of Jesus which the apostles (including Paul) experienced does not commit one to the belief that the apostles were either liars or suffering from mental illness. Sincere and sane people are not immune from having illusory experiences, and nor is Geering at all doubtful that the apostles and countless other Christians really did have experiences that profoundly changed their lives. His scepticism is directed at the interpretation of those experiences; interpretations that are encapsulated in their very description. (9)

Finally, you say “I consider Lloyd Geering to be profoundly mistaken about matters of plain fact; fact whether seen from the point of view of a theist, or non theist.” You accuse him of confusing opinion with fact. What you say may be true, but I am not sure that you have made out a good case for this conclusion. In particular, I am unclear which among the examples you give of “matters of plain fact” (which you claim Geering rejects) are indeed just that, and not matters of opinion. To suggest that Geering is deliberately “playing with the facts” strikes me as unfortunate, as it casts doubt on his intellectual integrity. (10)

My view is that it is virtually certain that he is wrong on some matters (who has written a book of this scope that is free from errors?), but knowing him as I do I don’t believe for one moment that he deliberately set out to deceive.

The writer of the Critique, Michael Cocks, replies to some points

(1) With regard to “mysticism”: I quoted Geering’s only reference to it in his book: he denies that it has anything to do with Christianity.

Firstly, I understand Geering as saying that the Wisdom writers were concerned with living this physical life, and that while God was quoted as a kind of formality, he was not regarded as being relevant. They had already put God on the shelf, and Geering is maintaining that Jesus was continuing that humanistic tradition.

Secondly, “transcendental”, can imply “wholly other” or, as I will argue later, we can take another meaning, “including, and going beyond.” If we lose faith in the “beyond” then the “including” cannot be transcended.

(2) Where is the evidence for this unbridgeable gap? Geering does not cite references supporting such a notion. Against such a gap we can cite the Genesis stories: “God is walking in the garden in the cool of the day” Gen.3.8 “And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend. Ex.33.11. And Gen 18.13: “Then the Lord asked Abraham ‘why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Can I really have a child when I am so old?’ God speaking to the child Samuel, Elijah and the still small voice, Hosea and his ‘young men shall see visions and old men dream dreams’. What about the prophets listening to the internal voice of God? What about prayer? Again the plaintive voice of Hosea’s God addressing Israel as his bride? What about the Urim and Thummim, the mantic devices to ascertain the will of God? Would it not be true that humanity has always experienced the divine as also within, to be felt, to be prayed to, whose will is to be intuited? Depending on where you look in the OT, it could be reasonably argued that Christianity is largely continuous with the OT. To which passages would Geering appeal to for the “unbridgeable gulf”? Perhaps he might quote Isa. 55.9: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” But it is not correct to suggest that Judaism is all one thing or another.

(3) In the OT instances I have cited, while God is man-like and certainly not distant, we can agree that he is not seen as incarnate. With regard to the NT, differing theologies can be found, but they do not have the rigidity of definition that they acquired in later Catholicism. Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven, and Paul’s about union with the Cosmic Christ both refer to dying to self, and rising in awareness of participating in universal Spirit. We can quote the parable of the Vine and the branches (John 15), the union of Father, Son and believer (John 17) Paul’s Body of Christ (1 Cor 12) The marriage of Heaven and Earth in Rev. 21. These examples all imply conscious union with a higher and transcendent order of reality, “transcendent” in the sense of “including and going beyond”. The lower order incarnates the higher order.

(4) Geering’s sole reference to mysticism is in the paragraph I quoted. Mysticism just doesn’t belong to Christianity, it seems.

(5) The WIKIPEDIA definition A priori is a Latin phrase meaning "from the former" or less literally "before experience". In much of the modern Western tradition, the term a priori is considered to mean propositional knowledge that can be had without, or "prior to", experience. On what evidence does Geering’s rejection of a belief in life after death rest?

(6) I did point out that the stories are contradictory. But I think it should be agreed that Paul believed rightly or wrongly that Jesus had appeared to him. He had also stayed with Peter not so long after the crucifixion, and will have heard Peter’s testimony about any resurrection appearance.

It is a fact that Geering ignores Paul’s quite contemporary testimony. It is hard to believe that Geering has not read Paul, so we are led to suspect he rejects Paul on a priori grounds, propositional knowledge “that can be had without experience.” That must be the reason why Geering comes up with the theory that the resurrection stories only surfaced a generation after Paul, when the gospels were being written, and that they were based on the Transfiguration.

(7) In the course of his reply, Jim Thornton writes, “Unless, therefore, we have criteria for distinguishing illusory from non-illusory experiences of resurrected people, we have no way of knowing which reports put us in touch with the truth. I wonder what criteria you think would fill the bill?”

There is of course a large body of research in this field, to which I shall allude in an article called “Thoughts about the validity of supposed paranormal experience” at the end of the section EXPERIENCE.

(8) It is the case that such experiences are theory laden. We all try to make sense of our experiences.

(9) It must be accepted that Geering cannot allow resurrection appearances to be other than illusory, without abandoning his materialist/naturalist stance. All apparent indications of survival of physical death must be illusory. However it is not the case that Geering allows for any even illusory resurrection experience. He favours instead the theory that the resurrection story arose a generation later when the gospels were written, as a reinterpretation of the Transfiguration experience.

(10) Materialism/Naturalism has proved a very successful philosophy as a background to scientific endeavour. It can be called an opinion and it is an opinion that determines what will be seen as facts. The opinion does not have the option of regarding resurrection appearances as indications of an afterlife.

Allow one experience to indicate an afterlife, then the philosophy or opinion will need to be transcended “included and gone beyond” into a much more complex philosophy put forward by QM scientists and philosophers.

I see Lloyd Geering as having integrity in that he is faithful to his philosophy, in the light of which he feels entitled to ignore data which conflicts with it. He does not feel bound to the Bible. He wants a new kind of Christianity.

General Comment: I invited Jim to comment on my critique of Lloyd Geering's book, because I believed that he would not in general agree with it. I did this on the principle that an opponent is much more likely to tell you what is wrong with your thinking, than someone who agrees. I should also acknowledge Jim's viewpoint is probably similar to those obtaining in the majority of university philosophy and psychology departments in English-speaking countries. And I thank him for his kindness in writing his reply.

The issues of “illusoriness” and “every experience is theory laden” are addressed in this edition under the paragraph heading EXPERIENCE. The matter of course is of central interest to a journal like this.

- Michael Cocks.