Gardner, Martin. The Flight of Peter Fromm. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1994. 280 pp. $9.00.
Introduction
Gardner’s book is a fictional account of a young man, Peter, who was raised in Oklahoma to believe fundamentalist Pentecostal doctrine. Peter leaves the oil industrialized economy of Sand Springs chock full of fiery ambition to take the most liberal seminary in America for Christ. Once at the Chicago School of Divinity, he meets Homer, an atheistic Philosophy of Religion professor. This relationship will endure the breadth of the novel as Homer becomes Peter’s spiritual mentor leading him to not only turn from fundamentalism, but also from the orthodox doctrines of the Christian faith.
The story takes place during the middle of the twentieth century when Stalin and Marxism enjoyed significant American support. Peter, being sympathetic with the tenants of Marxism, gradually realizes that the Russian experiment was a failure. Peter’s political evolution takes place alongside his devolution of Christian faith and seems to serve as a metaphor for the ease in which one can be deceived, implying that Peter was also deceived with Christian indoctrination.
Summary
The story is obviously purposed to make Christian faith appear to be an intellectually inferior position, while those who truly seek answers to hard questions find a more enlightened position void of supernaturalism.
Homer, Peter’s mentor, is reminiscent of the benevolent, all-knowing Yoda. The author portrays him as the wise teacher who has only Peter’s well-being in mind. Homer lovingly holds Peter’s hand throughout his spiritual devolution as only a kind mentor would.
Peter is portrayed as naïve to the point of being grotesque to more enlightened souls. The reader is encouraged to see Peter as an anomaly, a circus freak, one who is obviously the last of a dying breed, a dinosaur locked inside the indoctrination of his childhood, desperately needing set free.
Nonetheless, Peter is praised for having the courage necessary to tackle the controversial questions with an honest, head-on approach. This aggressive desire to be informed leads him to a geology class where he is confronted by the bodacious claims of evolution via the fossil record. Remarkably, Peter buys into evolution hook, line and sinker. This naïve behavior of Peter appears to contradict his character profile as one seeking truth with an eagerness to learn, for if he truly possessed critical thinking skills, he would not have given-in to evolution after only one series of lectures. Nonetheless, we are at the mercy of the author as this episode served as the first fissure in Peter’s theology, and we must therefore continue the make-believe journey to so-called intellectual enlightenment.
Now that a wedge has been driven into Peter’s dogma, Homer begins challenging Peter with the contradictions inherent in the gospels. These topics don’t appear to be seriously considered, but they are presented as obvious truths with little to no effort in seeking possible explanations. It is here that Peter begins his survey of various theologians, sifting through their arguments, looking for the flaws in their approaches to theology. The first seriously discussed is G.K. Chesterton. Peter begins to show interest in the Catholic faith as Catholics had recently shown progressive views toward evolution. This also introduces the first of several romantic interests of Peter, serving to illustrate Peter’s crumbling beliefs as his morality becomes more relaxed.
There is a group of speakers who come to the college to give speeches on points of interest concerning Scripture and its unity. Peter’s friend, Homer is one of the speakers, and his speech is portrayed as being informed, clever and correct as he argues against any supernatural hand in the writing of Holy Writ. He presents arguments which indeed appear significant to any uneducated novice. Nonetheless, Peter is very much taken in by the arguments without even considering other scholarly alternative points of view. The other speakers are portrayed as failing to even correctly represent the Bible’s teaching, and therefore appear to the gullible reader as lacking credibility.
In this speech, Homer also attacked the doctrine of Hell, insinuating that we would expect God to have attributes of mercy that transcend ours, and are therefore better than ours. In other words, surely a superior being would not be bothered by petty annoyances like sin to the point of punishing sinners in Hell for eternity. In all of this, Homer makes moral judgments upon the justice of God in sending sinners to Hell, yet of course, the doctrine of Hell does elevate God’s attributes of mercy above ours when considering the lengths to which God has gone in order to save his created beings from Hell. Homer’s speech plays on the pride of his audience by implying that mankind deserves more from its God.
One entire chapter is titled “Karl Barth” as Barth provides some possible help as Peter clings to orthodoxy while simultaneously abandoning fundamentalism. Barth asserts that the Bible contains the Word of God, but was not in its entirety the Word of God, of course begging the question, “How does one know what is God’s Word and what is not?” Much is said about the theology of Barth, as Peter is looking for some firmer ground on which to build his beliefs. Barth embraced science and higher criticism, and therefore seemed attractive to Peter. Yet, Barth, along with some other theologians, continued dragging Peter toward doctrinal and moral confusion.
Perhaps the higher criticism of Scripture enjoyed a heyday during the timeframe in which this story takes place, yet of course, higher criticism as well as evolution have been measured, weighed, and found wanting in recent years. Nonetheless, the author continues asserting these presumptions as clear-cut truth with no possibility of refutation. As Peter’s convictions continue to waver, so does his strict morality as he begins smoking cigarettes, drinking martinis, and experimenting with sex.
Another chapter is named after a girl that had entered Peter’s life. Peter makes the startling statement that he not only hoped he and this new girl would have sex, but he prayed to the Lord that they would. At this time the war in Europe had escalated and Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and Peter began wondering what he should do, resulting in his courageous enlistment into the Navy, and thus begins the second part of Gardner’s novel.
Peter did not receive a commission from the Navy, mostly due to his previous interest in Communism. These chapters consist mostly of Peter’s letters written to Homer chronicling his exploits from boot-camp, to his training as a radioman, and to his sea duty. It is in these letters where the reader gets a glimpse of Peter’s racism as “Negroes” are possibly coming to join them at the base in Great Lakes, Michigan. This repressed racism doesn’t do much to promote Peter’s previous fundamentalist orthodox convictions, and serves as another step in Peter’s intellectual and moral enlightenment as he turns from bigotry, illustrated in his defending the relationship between a black sailor with a white girl. Peter is roundly praised for his actions as parting ways with his faith was appearing to make him a better person.
There is another episode in which Peter got into a fight, but he restrained himself because he understood the other young man only be the victim of his upbringing, and was not to be blamed or held personally responsible. This got Peter to wondering about free will, since everyone’s morality was formed by years of conditioning and training by the moral and religious environment in which they grew up.
The next chapter is where Peter experiences some kind of existential bonding with nature, particularly with the ship on which he rode. He stood on the weather deck and took in the majesty of creation and felt the emotional high of beholding its beauty. The language of this episode implies a bit of pantheism entering Peter’s thinking as he even seems to commune with the porpoises. He takes another step away from orthodoxy, as this experience appears to reveal to him that all religions were right.
As Peter is discharged from the Navy, he insists that ending racism should be a priority of every Christian, and that a world government should be achieved, while believing that most people are basically good. And this begins the novel’s third section.
Peter comes back to the Chicago School of Divinity and immediately jumps back into Barthianism with a particular interest in the theology of all theologies, being Christology. Peter observes that Barth appears to affirm the bodily resurrection of Christ, while in other places appears to treat the importance of the empty tomb as trivial. Regardless of how Barth truly felt about the historical reliability of the resurrection, Peter feels Barth is being evasive concerning this all-important doctrine.
Barth apparently fails to provide a convincing argument concerning what is historically accurate and what is merely myth with spiritual meaning. Peter believes this also applies to Barth’s understanding of the resurrection. Peter is further irritated by Barth’s somewhat reformed views, but mostly by Barth’s denunciation of other religions. The view that all religions are equally valid is the view that Peter embraced on the weather deck of the USS Montgomery in some kind of mystical experience with nature, which seems to be a major departure from what began as Peter’s search for honest truth. The fact that this weird emotional experience serves to form Peter’s theology illustrates just how ridiculous and deceptively clever the author is.
Peter turns to Kierkegaard who asserts that faith in the Jesus of Scripture is strictly a leap of faith and need not be bothered with reason or historical evidence. This would be a logical step for Peter as he has abandoned any notion of absolute truth. It is about this time that Homer offers some asinine insights into the creation story and the fall of Adam and Eve, and somehow in the midst of this brouhaha Peter comes to the unbelievable conclusion that miracles actually contaminate faith.
Peter's descent into imbecility continues as he contemplates the molecules of Jesus and what happened to those molecules in the resurrection account. It appears at this point, Peter is merely playing pin-the-tail on the theologian, desperately looking for a theology on which to hang his hat. Yet since the Bible can no longer be trusted as inerrant, what theologian can truly be trusted?
Now the final episodes of the novel are introduced with the person of Martha Middleton. Martha was the daughter of a pastor who so clearly illustrates the demise of biblical preaching, and who, like Peter, believed in a completely human Christ. Peter had accepted the fallacy of a mistaken Jesus and began to realize that there was basically no truth in Christianity at all, yet he continues his study. He considers the possibility that Jesus was perhaps deranged, for He must have been to predict that He would return with power before the first century generation passed away. The author continues portraying difficult passages of Scripture as hopeless contradictions, stating that most scholars considered the Gospel of John to be the less reliable account of Jesus’ life among the four gospels. Yet, Peter concludes that Jesus was not mad, only mistaken.
Peter was understandably beginning to lose his enthusiasm for ministry, and this was exacerbated by the materialism of his new fiancé, and the futility of the Russian experiment. By this time, Russian Marxism was losing its luster, and the red Russian flag began to repulse Peter as much as the red blood of Christ, both representing pointless sacrifice.
Peter takes a trip home to see his mother in the hospital and has a peculiar experience in which he prays, per the request of his mother, and while praying he genuinely misses the faith he once had. But then things get crazy as he breaks out in tongues. This is implicitly explained later by some kind of spot that shows up on his brain scan, further implying that glossolalia is likely explained by brain defects.
Peter begins to show signs of a coming psychotic break, followed by an awkward confrontation with his future father-in-law, which ended with a blow from Peter. Nonetheless, his friend Homer asks him to come and deliver the Easter message at his Unitarian church. It is here that Peter’s cheese slides off his cracker as he preaches an empty message. The episode concludes with him urinating on the church organ before being knocked unconscious.
This of course ends his future in the ministry, his engagement to Martha, and any last vestige of orthodoxy. The book ends with Peter and Homer taking some time off in Arizona, where Peter can finish recovering and breathe some air. Homer is still an atheist, yet Peter is not. He still believes in God, but he has broken free of any biblical Christian orthodoxy. Peter is breathing in a new-found freedom to worship whatever god may exist in whatever way seems best to him. This conclusion brings Peter full circle, giving the reader a strong sense that Peter is finally and completely fulfilled with his arrival.
Critical Evaluation
Though this review contains some critical remarks, I will briefly summarize my critical evaluation. Though this book is advertised as a novel, the immense amount of mundane exposition almost creates a new genre, perhaps a hybrid of novel and systematic theology of Karl Barth. The foreword proclaims that this story is an accurate reproduction of actual events, yet the afterword admits that the foreword was indeed fake. This seems to accurately summarize the novel as a whole. Christianity is mischaracterized as anti-intellectual on every single front. Evolution is misapplied as fact, the reliability of Scripture is sacrificed on the make-believe altar of higher criticism, and mystical experiences on the weather decks of navy ships are portrayed as authoritative. The truth is that the average Christian may be shaken by such a novel, and in that respect, the author likely achieved his goal. But by and large, the author’s tactics are simplistic at best, and knowingly deceptive at worst.
To the author’s credit, he does allow Peter to wrestle with many difficult questions faced by intellectual Christians, but difficult is not a synonym for unanswered. The theory of evolution has been answered, higher criticism has been answered, and authoritative mystical experiences are just irresponsible.
Conclusion
This so-called novel is no doubt one that a secular humanist would enjoy, and it is one that would serve to shake the faith of naïve Christians. The author makes a big deal out of many popular theologians of the time, while exploiting the weaknesses in their arguments. Many pages are given to the effort of deconstructing these theologies, yet the true weakness lies at the foundation of the book, and that is the presupposition that evolution is true. Yet very little attention is given to the challenges against natural selection as the mechanism for the emergence of life; knock down this pillar and the rest of the book crumbles.
Peter is mis-portrayed as one seeking intellectual truth, and he is put in a favorable light for his so-called honest pilgrimage. Yet, his journey falls somewhat short of being truly intellectual, for if it were, he would have done a better job of seeking answers to difficult questions rather than buying into secular arguments without so much as seeking an alternate opinion.
If this book is indeed required reading at the Chicago School of Divinity, then this speaks volumes as to the quality of education one might receive at such an institution.
