The Flight of Peter Fromm

Rating:
Summary: Story of Scandalon
Review: "Scandalon" is the Greek for what is normally translated in English: "stumbling block," or "rock of offense." Especially is it important as Jesus used it in Mt. 18:2ff, such as beginning of verse 6: "whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble."

This fictional account with some bordering of the author's theological jaunts have been written in a story of young fundy seminarian at U of Chicago Theology school and his subsequent distrust of the faith handed down.

Replete are these tales of people coming into contact with supposed scholars of Scripture who refute its teachings by their creative and imaginative historical probings. They don't keep open mind to other scholarly credentialed views which can make just as impressive a scholarly position as these, or maybe even refute such.

Written in early to mid twentieth century background, now interesting to view the author's certainty of evolution, while now most all of the supposed facuality of its model as been swept out from under it. The fossil record is nonexistent and it is unable to solve many of the purely scientific problems which confront it. Even its most adamant followers now state it on "faith terms," i.e. no transitional proof, just big significant changes one has to believe occurred without any evidence.

The theological much that is expressed here of a liberal and neo-orthodox mindset has been exposed to be theologically backrupt now. The Jesus Seminar, et al suppose that learned people will put all their spiritual stake in non-existent documents, with wild creative plots built upon their shaky suppositional foundatins.

Here, we see how one soul was deceived and caused to stumble. Shame on these women and men who think they are doing a service to young souls, when their bent is so blindly strued.

For opposing evidence, read "The Long Way Home," by John Jewell; "Case For Christ," Lee Strobel, and "After Modernity . . . What?" by Thomas Oden.

Rating:
Summary: Peter Pious Loses Faith
Review: Gardner's book captures what the ordinary reader misses. The letter-writing form, to a beloved colleague, imitates the epistles of the early apostles, both in form and in content. Peter Fromm (the German form is Peter Pious) travels the gamut of 20th Century theology, with a crisis moment on Easter Sunday. The krisis is at once Kierkegaardian and Barthian.

Our primary interlocutor skeptic is Homer, the Odyssean hero of travel and disaster. When the Pious One sends letters to Homer, we can expect some major fireworks. The major irony of the work is that Homer sits at home, while Peter (like the Apostle Paul) travels the world on a big boat, sending letters back home to Homer.

The chapter on the "Molecules of Jesus" is the center-piece of the work, alongside Peter's Easter Crisis. For anyone who has read the New Testament, the issue of the resurrection and the current question of the intellectual credibility of such a faith claim is still stunningly appropos. Resurrection is ever the stumbling block to faith.

The discussions of Barth and Tillich, from the viewpoint of theological students is unparalleled. Peter's/Gardner's musings on "Who will meet me at the Pearly Gates?" are simply genius in their articulation.

I am a theological prof who uses this novel to introduce theological students to the gravity of their beliefs. I press them to decide whether to be Truthful Traitors or Loyal Liars, as does our "hero" Peter Pious.

The New Testament Peter denied Christ three times. I am not altogether sure that Martin Gardner's Peter has met his match. Peter Fromm's denial is overt, but not necessarily sure, deep, or three-fold. I found the easy skeptism of the Carlos Castenada Peter on a beach chair the least credible part of the book. I can't imagine that Our Peter would have given it all up so easily. If so, he had little faith at the start.

Cocka-doodle-doo,

The Div Prof Chick

Rating:
Summary: Humorous, Eye-Opening Intellectual and Historical Fiction
Review: This is one heck of an entertaining book. The main reason is this: Gardner's narrator, Homer Wilson, is downright hilarious. Both his telling of Peter's story and his asides remind me of Uncle Screwtape in C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters. Throughout the book, Homer subtly spins every story he recounts and every subject he addresses. His descriptions of certain real-life people are especially funny. For example, Homer describes C. S. Lewis, whose works were broadly Christian, as an "Anglican apologist." He describes J. Gresham Machen, who hated to be called a fundamentalist, as "the last of the scholarly fundamentalists." And those are just two little examples of Homer's spinning. It is strangely exciting to read a story narrated by someone you know you can't trust.

_The Flight of Peter Fromm_ is poignant in that Peter is ultimately ruined by Homer's spinning. Reason does not demand the loss of faith that Peter experiences, but the constant influence of the culture in which he lives, which subjects all things Christian to radical doubt while accepting the bases and consequences of agnosticism unquestioningly, eventually wears him down. Fortunately, Peter's end is hardly the necessary one for those committed to the life of the mind.

Finally, this story is eye-opening in that it reveals what can happen to those who are too brash and self-assured. Peter just knew he would convert the University of Chicago; instead the University toppled him. If Peter had been a little more humble he may have emerged from divinity school with his faith alive and enriched and refined.

I would recommend _The Flight of Peter Fromm_ to both agnostics and Christians. Agnostics, as they enjoy the outcome of Peter's story and conclude that that outcome was inevitable, should take a moment to notice the subtle deceptions of Homer Wilson, and at least consider the possibility that they should test their own thinking more rigorously than they usually do. Christians should take a good hard look at the road that leads, step by tiny step, to unbelief, and ask whether reason demands each step taken down that road. Hopefully all readers will appreciate the meticulous research, wonderful details, and humor that combine to make _The Flight of Peter Fromm_ a truly remarkable work of intellectual and historical fiction.