So naive and unacceptable

Press, 25 May 1984, Page 13

So naive and unacceptable

Ray Le Couteur: Thank-you for your discussion with Professor Geering, including his views on Christianity. Hopefully it will lead to much furious thinking. Some aspects of the discussions that may be considered are: 1. Lloyd Geering reduces Christianity to a certain desirable form of authentic lifestyle. He deduces this from the Bible. However, he dismisses everything in the Bible that does not agree with his philosophical and theological outlook. How then can this life-style be so authentic when the substance from which it emerges is so naive and unacceptable? 2. Lloyd Geering bases his whole viewpoint upon the belief that the only form of reality is that which can be ascertained through the five senses. Therefore, he accepts only the thinking of those New Testament scholars who think likewise. He is quite free to do so, and I respect that right. There is, however, a large school of New Testament scholars which, because of open and not closed minds to other forms of reality, has come out with quite different conclusions. One of these is the late Bishop John Robinson, who wrote a provocative little book in the early 1960 s entitled “Honest to God.” Noone could put him in the category of a “Fundamentalist,” but in a later book entitled “Can The New Testament be Trusted?” he comes to the conclusion that substantially it can be trusted. This means that what it records concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ is from eye-witness reporters. “So far,” said the Bishop, in a lecture given in Napier a year or two ago, “noone has suggested I should have my head examined!”