Charles Templeton. Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996.
Charles Templeton was a Christian evangelist and a close friend to
Billy Graham. Templeton left the Christian faith and became an
agnostic. In this book, he explains why.
A lot of his reasons are not particularly new. They include the
problem of how God can permit evil and suffering, the implausibilities
within the Bible (i.e., the Flood story), biblical contradictions, the
problem of how God can damn so many people in the world to hell for not
being Christian, inconsistencies between the Bible and science, the
reality that many people embrace the dominant religion of their
surroundings, the deficiencies in character and temperament of the God
of the Old Testament, and Old Testament laws that marginalize or are
unfair towards women. I suppose that even someone who has already
interacted with these issues can learn something new from Templeton’s
discussion: I, for one, never thought about the problem of ventilation
on Noah’s Ark!
The book is about more than Templeton poking holes in the Bible and
Christianity, though. Templeton also reflects on the decline of
Christianity (except for fundamentalist Christianity) in the West, the
humble Christians he knew and admired, and technological advancement
that is accompanied by emptiness and moral corruption. While Templeton
does not believe that Jesus was God and thinks that the Sermon on the
Mount is rather unrealistic, he admires Jesus for his moral insights and
courage. He contrasts Jesus with mainline pastors whose messages do
not rock the boat!
Templeton says that he is not an atheist but an agnostic. He
believes that something started the universe but that it was an
impersonal force rather than a personal being. For Templeton, the
universe is indifferent to human beings. Templeton still maintains,
however, that there are natural and moral laws, and that obeying them
can result in positive consequences. Society works better when people
are kind to each other. If people treat nature well, then nature will
treat them well. (Templeton asks why God does not send rain to areas
plagued by drought, yet he also blames drought on human beings.)
Does Templeton regret leaving Christianity? He acknowledges that
church can bring people comfort, community, and solidarity, and he
misses that. At the same time, he says that he was plagued by doubts
when he was a Christian, as a result of what he was reading. Now, he is
free to explore different things, without fear that what he learns
might contradict Christian orthodoxy.
I enjoyed his telling of his own conversion story, how he became a
Christian, perhaps because it is somewhat similar to my own. Templeton
felt guilty and unclean but felt peace, warmth, and light after he asked
God to come into his life. In my case, I felt guilty and aimless, and I
was looking for comfort and a moral compass. I felt peaceful and
grounded when I committed myself to Christ.
My favorite passage in Templeton’s book was what he said on page 233
about loving his neighbor: “I believe that you cannot love your
neighbour as yourself but that you should care about your neighbour,
whoever he is and wherever he lives, help him when you can and
co-operate with him to make the world a better place.”
I myself question whether I am called to love my neighbor in the
exact same proportion that I love myself, or to love my neighbor more
than I love myself. I doubt that is possible or that even many
evangelical Christians attain to that. I do believe, however, that I
should love my neighbor, and that there are times when I may need to put
others first for the sake of peace, or because it is the right thing to
do.
In terms of criticisms of the book, I have three. First of all,
Templeton did not really interact with Christian voices that were not
fundamentalist. In a movie about Billy Graham’s early years, the
Templeton character praised an academic for his dissertation on
theologian Karl Barth. I wonder where Templeton would find Barth’s
thought to be inadequate. My understanding is that Barth tended to
dodge modernist criticisms of Christianity and the Bible by focusing on
how God can use the Bible to challenge Christians in church. In my
opinion, even if the Bible has problems, God can still use it to bring
people into relationship with God, and to challenge them about their sin
and need for redemption.
Second, Templeton did not have much of a critical methodology in
determining what in the New Testament was historical and un-historical.
He dismissed the Temptation story of Jesus because that sounded to him
like a legend serving to highlight Jesus’ humanity. He rejected the
stories of Jesus’ resurrection because they were contradictory. Yet, he
largely accepted the parts of the Gospels about Jesus’ ministry and
crucifixion, even though he had just said that the Gospels were written
after the time of Jesus by people who did not even know him, casting
doubt on their historical reliability. Templeton seemed to accept those
parts because he found them plausible and did not think that they
contradicted each other, even though they arguably do. Interestingly,
Templeton even found Jesus’ miracles to be plausible, but that was
because he thought that Jesus may have been curing psychosomatic
illnesses, or people’s symptoms manifested themselves again after Jesus
left (as occurs with a number of faith healers). Templeton’s discussion
of the historical Jesus was interesting, but he should have offered a
better methodology of why he was deeming parts of the Gospels to be
historical, especially after arguing that there is reason to doubt the
Gospels’ historicity.
Third, Templeton should have explained how the stories about the
resurrection of Jesus originated. He said that Jesus’ followers made
them up because they were disappointed about Jesus’ death, but Christian
apologists can then ask questions: Does that mean that Jesus’
disciples were lying? Would they be willing to suffer or even die for
something they made up? Templeton should have interacted with such
issues. I will say, though, that Templeton did raise an interesting
consideration: If Jesus’ tomb was empty, would not Jesus’ disciples be
able to point all of the Jews to the empty tomb, resulting in mass
conversions to Jesus? The Gospel of Matthew has an answer to that,
though: Many Jews believed that the disciples stole Jesus’ body while
the Roman guards were asleep.
This was a worthwhile book for me to read. It is important for me to
read books like this so that I can clarify to myself what I believe,
and why. I think that Templeton asks good questions and raises valid
points. I personally do not dismiss the existence of God or a higher
power, but I struggle with questions about God’s existence and activity
(or lack thereof) in the world.