God Under the Microscope
Robert Winston's "The Story of God"
Dave Crofts, 18th December 2005
The Story of God is, you have to say, a fairly ambitious label for a book - or indeed a TV series. Yet Robert Winston's latest project, recently published in book form and currently showing on BBC1 on Sunday nights, takes just that title. The moustachioed professor of clinical fertility, made famous by groundbreaking series such as The Human Body, has now turned his microscope on religion. He describes his intentions thus (p.127-128):
...this book is not an enquiry into the existence of God: that is a territory best left to the theologians and the theoretical physicists...My central purpose, however, is to tell the story of an idea, the story of how humans have approached that idea, and the story of how that idea has shaped human life. It does not matter whether you believe there lurks a real God or gods behind the idea. The idea is real; and, as a scientist who studies 'real things', I believe it deserves to be examined.
Already then, Winston's title looks slightly inaccurate. The main character in The Story of God is not God or gods - it is mankind. This is the story of man's perception of the divine - of how it may have originated, of how it has changed and developed through history, of how it has been challenged in recent centuries by the rise of science. This is not a book about God - it is a book about men.
Indeed, it is clear from the opening chapters that Winston is dealing in anthropology rather than theology - and 'pop anthropology' at that. This isn't meant to be an academic thesis - in any case, it lacks the research credentials to qualify as such. It is meant to be anthropology made accessible, although it sometimes verges on being too intellectual for the layperson.
However, when we have accepted that limitation, Winston's chapters on the origins of what he calls "the Divine Idea" are quite interesting. He considers a number of options that could have sparked mankind's religiosity (p.127-8):
Some anthropologists tell us every ritual servies a purpose in bonding communities together. Marxists tell us that the Divine Idea is a way for one group to dominate another. Psychologists tell us that religious ideas merely 'squat' on top of other unconscious mental systems developed for survival. In this light, religion seems inherently 'sensible'.
Yet Winston does not seem to be persuaded by any of these explanations. He continues (p.128):
"But when we return to the accounts of people who actually lived in these belief systems, we see a different picture. The Divine Idea can cause pain and misery. It can impose demands that run contrary to peaceful existence. And yet it endures."
Disappointingly, whilst he considers many possible explanations for the emergence of the Divine Idea, Winston overlooks the simplest and most obvious - that mankind is the creation of a divine being. Surely the most straightforward explanation for belief in God is the existence of God? Just as our human appetites for food and drink correspond to something real that can fill those appetites, might our appetite for the divine not be similarly indicative that there is a divine being out there who can satisfy our longing?
Decision or revelation?
From these anthropological beginnings, Winston moves into what occupies the heart of his book - an analysis of the development of the world's major religions. Hinduism and Buddhism get a brief look-in, as do rarer faiths such as Zoroastrianism, but Winston's main focus is on the three monotheistic monoliths of Judaism (his own faith), Christianity and Islam. And it is here that Winston's book really starts to lose its way. To quote John Cornwell, reviewing The Story of God in The Sunday Times:
"Mostly, [Winston] buzzes about like an intoxicated bee in the great gardens of science and religion, his arguments lacking coherence and logical connection."
John Cornwell, "Winston should stick to what he knows"
The
Sunday Times, 30 October 2005
Winston's own Jewish background, whilst arguably of greater importance culturally than spiritually to him, means he is reasonably well-placed to give an informed overview of the Old Testament - which he competently proceeds to do. Yet his narrative appears to have no grasp of 'gradual revelation', whereby God reveals himself to people by stages, never being inconsistent but adding to what he reveals of his character at each occasion. Reading The Story of God, you'd think the Jews were gradually deciding to go down the route of monotheism, rather than learning over time what their God was like.
This assumption of religion by decision rather than revelation permeates the book from here on in, and is particularly telling in Winston's chapter on Christianity. His basic understanding of the gospel is reasonably sound - that Jesus is "the Son of God, whose death invites all men into everlasting life" (p.174-5) - but he sees this central truth as a decision taken by the apostle Paul, ratified 300 years later at the Council of Nicea (p.152-3):
In Paul's letters Jesus was turned into a divine figure, because this would have been more appealing to his Greek audience, who had no pre-existing ideas about what a Messiah was.
Surely anything more than a cursory reading of the gospels would give the lie to this conclusion? Nor does Winston seriously engage with the ways in which Jesus fulfils the Old Testament and his use of the 'Son of Man' title to indicate not "his humanity and frailty" (p.152-3), but his identity as the eternal and universal ruler described in those words in Daniel 7.
Sadly, Winston's analysis of the New Testament is little more than a jumbled reproduction of arguments found in the libraries of liberal theological colleges in the West. His view of Christianity as essentially Paul's revisionist interpretation of Jesus' ministry is old territory and has been dealt with extremely well by many conservative theologians - who are disappointingly absent from Winston's analysis. The one evangelical scholar who does get a look in is CS Lewis, whose famous quote that Jesus must logically be either mad, bad or God, is dismissed off hand (p.174):
Believing in Jesus as a mortal makes him mildly interesting at best, and at worst a lunatic, though surely not 'the devil of hell'.
For the Christian reader, therefore, this section of the book is immensely frustrating. Winston presents some of the truths at the heart of Christianity with relative accuracy, but by making Jesus Christ a shadowy figure about whom we can, at best, speculate, he robs those truths of their power. After explaining the Christian belief in a Jesus who is the Son of God, he goes on (p.175):
Whether that rendition is based entirely on fact or partly on myth perhaps, in the end, does not really matter.
Compare that rather patronising statement with the stark and challenging conclusion of the apostle Paul:
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
1 Corinthians 15:17, English Standard Version
Winston's apparent ambivalence towards the truth is not what you would expect from such an eminent scientist - and it clouds the remainder of his book. His history of Islam is interesting and relatively engaging, but you can't help wonder if he's got his facts wrong here as well. Moreover, his assessment of Islam contains none of the rhetoric of vagueness and doubt that pervades his work on Christianity. It may be a driven by political correctness; it may just be personal preference; but to have a Jew opt for the Qur'an as his book of choice on Desert Island Discs is certainly surprising.
The Silence of Science
As Winston describes the rise of science he seems (understandably) to be on more confident ground. Yet even here he only tells part of the story. Yes, science has marginalised religion in certain parts of society and certain countries of the world, but the last two centuries have also seen an unprecedented growth in religious belief worldwide - especially (though by no means exclusively) Christianity. As Winston concedes, the Divine Idea is a very resilient one (p.4):
...human history is not a process of ever better, clearer ideas replacing the nonsense and superstitions of our forefathers. Some ideas endure, whatever revolutions are taking place in the realms of culture, politics, economics or medicine; and the most enduring idea of all is the idea of a supernatural dimension to our existence.
But because Winston's analysis of this idea is from the perspective of decision rather than revelation, he never really gets the reader to consider which of the radically different religions he has considered might be true and which might be false. This would have made his book exciting, challenging and refreshing in a climate of overbearing political correctness. It would have left people having to make personal and life-changing decisions about God, and without having the cop-out of dismissing all religions as basically the same. Winston almost gets to this point in his final paragraph, but he sees the danger of being forced to decide himself, and backs down (p.336):
Man's knowledge is incomplete. It is not that his science is unimportant - indeed, it is the most essential tool he has. But he must remember that it is limited. To forget about those limits is dangerous. Science will never quite explain his personal existence, or the far-flung universe beyond his grasp. His search for the point of life must continue; but perhaps the search itself is sufficient meaning for his existence.
The Bible agrees - man's knowledge is incomplete. But it is not insufficient:
For what can be known about God is plain to them [all humanity], because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Romans 1:19-20, English Standard Version
And the Bible provides an endpoint to the search for meaning - a search which, if it does not come to this conclusion, is useless:
Jesus said to him [Thomas], "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
John 14:6, English Standard Version
Whilst no one would begrudge Robert Winston the chance to write a book of his thoughts about God, he ultimately isn't qualified to write The Story of God. John Cornwell's review of the book condemned it as "what happens when a garrulous media scientist writes a book about religion, assuming that it is not just so much fantasy but fantasy unworthy of even cursory fact-checking." (John Cornwell, "Winston should stick to what he knows", The Sunday Times, 30 October 2005). Which is true, but kind of misses the point.
The point is that no one is really qualified to write The Story of God except God himself. Yet, mindblowingly, he has done so. The Christian conviction is that the Bible is God's book about God. The story of God, by God. For all his presentational charm, Robert Winston simply can't compete. Perhaps, therefore, the most positive thing to come out of his project is the opportunity to highlight man's inadequacy to tell this story, and to point people to the definitive version.