“CAN we read great atheist books as holy scripture?” Christopher Gasson asks, provocatively, when introducing this volume exploring what Christians might learn from four critics of faith. Gasson holds that if God is “the ground of our being, then everything that anyone can say about life and the world should tell us more about God” — even if the writers themselves would deny it.
There is precedent for this exercise. After all, the sixth-century Syrian theologian Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagate maintained that, paradoxically, we could be driven towards a better understanding of God by contemplating that which is apparently opposite to God.
Gasson’s perspective is different. He argues that, through careful reading of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Stephen Hawking (1942-2014), and Richard Dawkins (1941-), Christians may discover positive insights that they can incorporate into their understanding of faith, or discover flaws in how Christian teaching has been articulated. The thinkers chosen are neatly balanced: two (Nietzsche and Derrida) from the humanities and two (Hawking and Dawkins) from the sciences.
From reflection on Nietzsche, Glasson says, Christians can learn that the “Will to Power” is a temptation not just for individuals, but for Christianity. To save itself from itself, Christianity must rediscover its founder’s abhorrence of coercion, the attitude of the man whom Nietzsche described as the “one true Christian”. Derrida, meanwhile, can teach us that texts, including scripture, should not be thought of as having only one, final, meaning.
Hawking’s conclusions about the self-existent nature, Gasson thinks, of the cosmos may prompt Christians to ask whether their images of a creator God are adequate: that is, to consider an embrace, if not of pantheism, then at least of panentheism — a conception of God as a distinct intelligence threaded into the fabric of reality rather than standing apart from it.
Dawkins’s critique of Christianity is, on the one hand, itself criticised, as taking the part (American fundamentalism) for the whole. Yet, other Christians are urged to learn from that example what harm may be done by being too convinced of their own grip on truth.
The insights offered are stimulating, but Gasson adopts a regrettably condescending tone to those who don’t share his own (hyper-liberal) theological perspective. For example, it really isn’t fair to assert that conventional Christianity has failed to offer credible thought-leadership in response to social and environmental change. The writings of both Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew on these areas testify to the contrary.
This book grew out of youth-group discussions for participants aged 11-18 at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford. Gasson punctuates his own exposition of the texts with reconstruction of some of those discussions — blending incidents from across the years and disguising actual identities.
These conversations help to lighten the book and, perhaps, suggest discussion questions for others minded to run their own educational programme based on the volume. For a youth group, however, such a venture seems ambitious beyond the rather particular setting of St Mary’s.
The Revd Alexander Faludy is a freelance journalist based in Budapest.
The Devils’ Gospels: Finding God in four great atheist books
Christopher Gasson
Christian Alternative £11.99
(978-1-80341-279-5)
Church Times Bookshop £10.79
