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Martin Gardner

The Flight of Peter Fromm Paperback – October 1, 1994

by Martin Gardner (Author)

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The Flight of Peter Fromm is a novel of ideas disguised as the biography of a young man from a Pentecostal fundamentalist background in Oklahoma, who loses his faith while a student at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His spiritual odyssey is narrated by his mentor, a professor at the divinity school - who is actually a humanist who believes neither in God nor in an afterlife. Although Peter never abandons his theism or his admiration for Jesus, he reaches a point where he feels it would be hypocritical to remain within the church and to become the evangelist he had hoped to be.The counterpoint between Peter and the narrator reflects the eternal conflict between theism and atheism. In following the changes of Peter's beliefs, almost every aspect of Protestant theology and ethics is explored. The evolution of Peter's faith parallels the evolution of Christian theology, from the day of Pentecost to contemporary liberal theology.

Print length

280 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Prometheus
Publication date

October 1, 1994
Dimensions

5.4 x 0.62 x 8.3 inches
ISBN-10

0879759119
ISBN-13

978-0879759117
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Martin Gardner (1914 - 2010), the creator of Scientific American’s "Mathematical Games" column, which he wrote for more than twenty-five years, was the author of almost one hundred books, including The Annotated Night Before Christmas, The Annotated Snark, Martin Gardner’s Favorite Poetic Parodies, From the Wandering Jew to William F. Buckley Jr., and Science: Good, Bad and Bogus. For many years he was also a contributing editor to the Skeptical Inquirer.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Prometheus; Reprint edition (October 1, 1994)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 280 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0879759119
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0879759117
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.4 x 0.62 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #602,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13,636 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #21,536 in Christian Literature & Fiction
- #72,258 in American Literature (Books)

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Kenneth R. Mabry

Out from Fundamentalism

Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2011

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This is a compelling drama of theological ideas written in 1973 by Martin Gardner (1914 - 2010) who was primarily a mathematics and science writer.

The novel unfolds as a retrospective by Homer Wilson, a Unitarian minister and teacher at the University of Chicago's theology school, after a breakdown during an Easter sermon by Wilson's fiery fundamentalist student, Peter Fromm.

Fromm, raised in a fundamentalist Pentecostal church, chooses to attend the University of Chicago for the express purpose of defeating the ideas emanating from one of the country's most liberal seminaries. While they have diametrically opposed views, Wilson, who does not beleive in God, remains involved with Fromm and tells his story.

This scaffolding is a set up for contrasts between Fromm's vise-like grasp on fundamentalism and Wilson's unbelief, and includes discussions of the ideas of prominent theologians such as Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. We see how a liberal education and the unfolding of life itself eventually dismantle Fromm's fundamentalism and lead to his breakdown.

For many, reading theology is a dry exersice in abstraction. As with writers such as Iris Murdoch, Gardner dramatizes such ideas in the form of a novel which draws them down into the human struggle and makes them much more accessible and compelling.

11 people found this helpful

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Kaho'olohe

Accurate View of Christian Unbelief

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2012

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This novel reads so realistically that I occasionally forgot that it was fiction. It provides an accurate view of the struggle into which many Christians have fallen when they're exposed to convincing modernism or liberal theology. Tension is sustained throughout the novel by the reader's uncertainty about whether theology student Peter Fromm's old literal faith will prevail as it's attacked by the sophisticated views of his liberal professors and mentor. Nowhere does this novel present possibility beyond knowledge derived from the rational-empirical scientific model, i.e., the logical possibility of sheer revelation, but its does an excellent job of presenting an engrossing, human tale of a young man doing the best he can with his reason and his faith in common, non-revelatory knowledge.

5 people found this helpful

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Paul A. Spengler

The Flight of the Pious

Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2013

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The Flight of Peter Fromm was the only novel ever written by Martin Gardner, a science writer best known for his mathematical column in Scientific American. This book is partly a roman a clef, partly a Bildungsoman in which the theological career of Peter (for the apostle) Fromm (the German word for pious) is narrated by an older man, Homer Wilson, a Unitarian minister and teacher at a thinly disguised version of the University of Chicago Divinity School.

At the beginning of the novel, Peter Fromm is an ethusiastic Pentecostal Christian from Oklahoma, who decides to enter the ministry and to study at the Chicago Divinity School because he wants to prove that his evangelical faith can withstand the assaults of liberal Protestant theology. His chief mentor is a Unitarian minister, Homer (for the Greek poet?) Wilson, who no longer believes in God, but who wants to perpetuate the church as a vehicle for promoting liberal social and political causes. To accomplish that goal, Wilson believes that one can and should use religious language ambiguously so that traditional church goers will think they are hearing a traditional religous message, while the minister is carefully introducing a new, more liberal meaning. Wilson tells Peter that, in the ministry, one can either be a "truthful traitor" (i.e., publicly proclaim a liberal theology and risk having the church disintegrate as traditional believers bolt) or a "loyal liar" (i.e. camoflague one's liberal views in order to perpetuate the church while slowly changing its belief structure). There is a fascinating scene in which Wilson, by the careful use of ambiguous language, convinces Peter's religiously conservative mother that his beliefs are consistent with hers, when of course they are not.

As Peter's studies progress, he is introduced to the whole gamut of 19th and 20th century Protestant biblical scholarship and theology. Gradually, he sheds his traditional beliefs and adopts most of the liberal beliefs of Wilson and his other divinity school professors. Nevertheless, he is morally troubled at the thought of becoming a "loyal liar." He comes see liberal Protestantism as a gigantic humbug or charade, in which liberal theologians and clergy manipulate people through the equivocal use of language. Increasingly, he tries to get his professors to state their real beliefs unambiguously, but he cannot shake them from their equivocations. At the end of the novel, Peter finally concludes that he cannot stomach the thought of entering the ministry and participating in what he regards as a program of deception. In the penultimate scene, Peter suffers a kind of nervous breakdown and, out of pure frustration at one minister's double talk, punches the man. (The minister in question is a thinly veiled version of Norman Vincent Peale.)

This book is well well written and provides a nice overview of liberal Protestant thinking at the time Gardner wrote. Since, howevr, Gardner's purpose is to describe what he sees as a culture of widespread intellectual evasiveness in liberal Protestantism, the characters are a bit stereotyped. Nevertheless, the book is still very much worth reading. Although this book was written more than half a century ago, if anything, the trends described by Gardner have become even more pronounced than they were then. Reading the Flight of Peter Fromm may help Protestant lay men and women who experience cognitive dissonance between the traditional words of their church liturgies or the Bible and what they hear from the pulpit or in adult Sunday School classes. It may also be a good book for liberal Protestant ministers and divinity students, possibly shaking up some of their complacency. ("Would some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as other see us. Would from many a blunder free us and foolish notion." Robert Burns)

At the end of the book, Peter Fromm believes in God but no longer in the Christian church, which seems to have been Martin Gardner's own position. (Readers may also want to consult Gardner's Notes of a Philosophical Scrivener, in which he explains why he thinks it is still possible, on a philosophical basis, to believe in God and in an afterlife.)

3 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

A religous journey

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2017

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A very good story of a young college student's journey from a belief in Christian fundamentalism to a belief in humanism.

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2016

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Really good conditions, looked new :)

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AS

A wonderful novel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 28, 2011

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It turns out that the late Martin Gardner, a polymath who could discourse on subjects as wide as math, science, literature, philosophy and skepticism, was also a rather good writer of fiction, too. It is a pity, therefore, that he didn't write more fiction, since this autobiographical account of a young man's journey as he wrestles with questions of religion and God's existence is a fluid, touching and often humourous book.

Gardner here propounds and defends the religious or philosophical doctrine known as 'philosophical theism', which holds that belief in a benevolent deity ultimately rests on faith and nothing more - something that the hero of the book, as he gradually grows disillusioned with organized religion and discovers Miguel de Unamuno, etc. ultimately realizes.

Although an atheist myself, and therefore someone incapable of making that 'leap of faith' across to philosophical theism, I synpathise with Gardner's stance. If I could bring myself to believe in a benevolent God, then it would be within the tradition of philosophical theism. Moreover, I have always felt that it is a position that has not been addressed by the advocates of the new atheism. Gardner shows that, if one can make the leap in one's heart, then having a belief in, and a yearning for, an all-loving, all-merciful God, is both tenable and acceptable.

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