From the Big Bang to God
by Lloyd Geering
Steele Roberts (Wellington, NZ, 2013) pbk. 194 pp. £23 inc. p&p from NZ. ISBN 978 1927242148
Like many readers of this magazine, I owe a debt of gratitude to Lloyd Geering for his bold thinking and writing over many decades. He has also set a fine personal example as a radical theologian who faced antagonism from his church with dignity and courage. Now, in his latest book, he faces what might be his toughest challenge yet: to cover nearly 14 billion years in under 200 pages.
As stated in the subtitle, it is indeed an awe-inspiring journey, and one which this reader found exhausting and exhilarating by turns. The work is divided into three parts (the evolution of the physical universe; the evolution of the human thought world; and the human situation) and it is the second part where Geering seems most assured and has most to offer.
To discuss the world of human thought, he draws on terminology of both Teilhard de Chardin (who coined the word 'noosphere') and Karl Popper (who called it 'World 3' in distinction from the physical 'World 1' and the sensory 'World 2'). By the end, it is clear that Geering's take-home message is the one already familiar to SOF members from Don Cupitt. However old or young the physical universe may be, and however long sensory beings may have lived on earth, it was only with the dawn of language that human thought could create the idea of a physical world and ask – and answer – questions about it.
The end of the journey comes with our current humanistic age, when '"God" comes down to earth in humankind', an age that dawned, in Geering's opinion, with the work of the nineteenth-century theologian and philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. His Essence of Christianity, published in 1841, put the world of religious thought 'the right way up' by recognising that the idea of God had its origin in the evolved human mind, and not the other way round. Geering writes of Feuerbach in words that apply equally to himself (and to other 'SOF' theologians): 'Feuerbach did not disparage the idea of God … He went beyond the debate between theist and atheist and reached a much more positive conclusion by recognising the real essence of the word God and the role it had played. … The attributes that comprise "God" represent the projection of our highest moral qualities, such as love, compassion and forgiveness onto a cosmic backdrop. Even when the imagined divine "being" disappears, these values remain. Though they are human values, it is to them that we must respond as our forebears responded to God.' (From the Big Bang to God, pp. 147–148)
This is all good stuff, but is already familiar. And the whistle-stop tour of cosmic evolution in the first half of the book is too superficial to be of much value. A similar criticism can be made of the short Part Three on our current situation: too much ground covered too quickly to count as more than notes for further study. So while (for the past debt I owe its author) I should like to commend this book warmly, I can in fact do so only hesitantly.
Anthony Freeman is a retired priest in the Church of England.
This book is due to come out in the USA. At present it is only available from the NZ publisher: info@steeleroberts.co.nz