The God Particle: God-talk in a Big Bang World

The God Particle: God-talk in a “Big Bang” World,
by R Kirby Godsey,
Mercer University Press, 2016, 100pp.

Reviewed by Morris Murray, Jr.

   Taco Bell may be the best location in which to read this book, metaphorically speaking, for it is there that “thinking outside the box” is advertised.  After all, many of the cardinal convictions of historic mainstream, orthodox, conservative evangelical thinking are clearly and eerily missing from these pages. Godsey writes, for example, as “a thoroughgoing universalist” (p. 73) who believes “that every life will be redeemed” (p. 88), that “there is no hell except the ones we create” (p. 88), and “that transcendent love is not to be captured finally within anyone’s religion” (p. 82). Even God is viewed more as “the transcendent mystery” (p. 4) than a person which “means that the traditional way of conceiving of God no longer works” (p. 25). In fact, Godsey maintains that “every speaking of God is a myth” (p. 33) and that “God is not a separate being up there – wherever “up there” is. God is right here within us and among us” and “should not be conceived as a divine object”(p. 45). If you are still conscious, you might be persuaded to continue exploring his ideations “outside the box.” If so, welcome to Taco Bell.

   Then again, you may think you are in a Christian Science Reading Room when wading through these pages, due to the metaphysical interpretations of both God and man. The personhood of both are seemingly sacrificed on the altar of New Thought

CET