harwood@cvl.UUCP (David Harwood) (10/30/85)
Recommended reading (fiction) -- in response to
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Article 1415 of net.religion.christian:
>From: gary@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (gary w buchholz)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Reply to Jeffrey Gillette - Ghostbusting Brevard Childs
Message-ID: <1222@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: 22 Oct 85 23:43:45 GMT
Organization: U. Chicago - Computation Center
Lines: 134
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I don't think Man is in need of any "supernatural" redemption. I don't
think any supernatural redemption is either possible or necessary...
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I noticed that the author is a professing 'ghostbuster'
at U. Chicago; possibly, he is a student of the divinity school.
Anyway, I was reminded of a novel written 20 years
ago by Martin Gardiner (the very one who for many years wrote
the mathematical amusements column of Scientific American). It was
about a religious young man from a small town (in Oklahoma I believe),
wanting to be a minister, who went to study at U. Chicago. But his
personality and faith disintegrated when he discovered that all
the acclaimed professors of theology were atheists, who believed in
nothing except the preeminance of their own intelligence.
There's also a novel by sociologist, Peter Berger, who is
respected for his study of ideology, The Social Construction of
Reality. Also a sociologist of religion, a liberal Protestant, he
wrote Rumours of Angels about signs of divine presence in everyday life,
which was the basis for his novel involving -- as I recall from
several years ago -- the moral reality of a Nazi war criminal, and an
ordinary 'angel', amidst the comparatively unreal controversies of
modern Gnostics.
As I recall, the first was The Flight of Peter Proud,
the second, Protocol of a Damnation.