God Without God – Book Review

God Without God: Western Spirituality Without the Wrathful King
Michael Hampson
United Kingdom: John Hunt Publishing, 2008, 252 pp.,.

God Without God seeks to explore what happens to the Western spiritual tradition when the God of presumptive monotheism is removed. Far from being destroyed or diminished, the tradition flourishes in its liberation. It emerges from its captivity as an egalitarian, humanistic spirituality that challenges and defies all earthly powers in its celebration of the realm of the spirit, and the realm of the divine. In acknowledging God who is the ground of all being, we find ourselves in profound communion with the whole human race, for there is only one humankind, only one creation, and only one ground for all being. God Without God  rejects the God of presumptive monotheism the wrathful, autocratic, vengeful, and demanding King, and acknowledges and seeks the God who is Yahweh Elohim, the ground of all being, and the essence of all that is good. When we speak of God, we are engaged in the same process of creating metaphors to describe a unique mystery. It is limiting to even place God in the category of things that exist even if that category were to be defined in some way, and all the members of that category counted.

God is beyond all earthly or human concepts, and yet, as the ground of all being, He contains all the excellence, goodness, and richness of these categories. When we speak of God in metaphor, as King, Lord, or Protector, we are always on the brink of diminishing God. The moment we confuse the metaphor with the reality, we have created a false idol. The idea of the Trinity is right at the heart of the Western spiritual tradition. The Holy Spirit is the most accessible part of the model. Holy spirit is God everywhere, inhabiting every corner of the universe, present in all that exists. The Holy Spirit is God active in particular people and places. Spirit is the essence of life. Jesus encourages us to rejoice in the simplest goodness of the world around us, let go of our  anxieties, and trust in the ultimate goodness of our Abba Pater, God. God nourishes us, holds us close, lets us go, and welcomes us home without condition. There is a working model or metaphor for understanding human life that casts love or compassion as the central principle. It argues that love is what people seek, and that by finding it, they find their fulfilment. 

Love and compassion is, therefore, the foundation of life it should become our goal and ideal. There is a malevolent streak within our model of God, often expressed as a divine obligation to punish wrongdoing. Such an obligation represents the return of the wrathful King, passing judgment and dealing punishment. Mostly these are demons of our own making, whether they are secrets, lies, or hidden pain. Too many religious people live as though goodness did not exist in its own right, but only as an absence of evil, so that anything touched by any kind of impurity itself becomes tainted and irreparably impure. Much human suffering has its origin in human free will. We seem to bring it on ourselves through our own choices, and we inflict it on each other. The father is usually represented as an authoritarian figure, entirely at odds with the images used by Jesus himself.  This is the wrathful King forced into the role of dysfunctional parent. In that role, he inevitably becomes the dominant aspect of the Trinity, with Jesus and the Spirit demoted to mere helpers or hangers on.

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God Without God: Western Spirituality Without the Wrathful King

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With God understood not as the wrathful king but as Yahweh, the ground of all being, the sum of all divinity, the imagery associated with the mother earth is also a welcome metaphor. Yahweh can be seen as a nurturing, protecting, and upholding ultimate source. It is the concept of Christ that most explicitly joins God to humankind. We need to determine what role this concept might have when the wrathful, autocratic, vengeful, and demanding God is rejected in favour of a ground of all being and sum of all divinity whose nature is infinite compassion. Anger and unforgiveness can destroy the soul. Grace alone is the solution to the problem of sin. The godly life is the best possible life here on earth. The more damaged we are within ourselves, the more we are a burden and danger to ourselves and others. The healthier we are within ourselves, the more positive our influence in our world. To sin is not to break some arbitrary rule, incurring the wrath of an arbitrary God. Rather, to sin is to lose our integrity, to damage the natural created compassion of our human heart. God is not engaged in some struggle to overcome God’s own wrath with a helping of forgiveness. God’s only desire is to heal the damage that we inflict on ourselves and one another. And at no stage does God punish sin, for sin contains its own punishment.

To sin is to go with the flow of disintegration. That is when our lives eventually fall apart. If we aim instead for love and integrity, with heart and soul, mind and strength, there is a profound inner health where life abundant flourishes, whatever superficial difficulties may befall us. To have your heart in the right place and to succeed is good. To have your heart in the right place and to fail is to be truly Christlike. It is a vision of human divinity, a paradoxical human perfection, to which we can all aspire. If only the heart is in the right
place, we achieve true Christlikeness.

Prayer is primarily about relationship. It is the habit of being in the presence of God within which a specific incidence of prayer or prayerfulness is a surge from the heart, a simple look turned toward Heaven, a cry of recognition and love, embracing both trial and joy. It is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God. It might even be the request of good things from God. Authentic prayer is about aligning our will with God’s will, not seeking to align God’s will with others. The central prayer of Jesus, in which he invites us to share, is “thy will be done.” Jesus gives little direct teaching on prayer, beyond the giving of the Lord’s Prayer itself. He advises that prayer should be in secret and with minimal words. Any further advice is gleaned strictly in passing. Despite this, there is a tradition of asking for things. Any true prayer is ultimately a submission to the perfect will of Yahweh.

In conclusion, Hampson’s book will be a joy to read for both academics and lay people. I found myself really appreciating God as a non-wrathful King but as a compassionate and loving God who cares for us deeply. There are some Catholic communities who fail to truly appreciate God’s compassionate nature and instead believe that God is an authoritarian and punishing God. And I believe that is a real shame since in order for us to truly flourish as a human beings, God should be considered our true partner in life, someone who helps us grow spiritually. I found Hampson’s discussion of the different books of the New and Old Testament to be a very useful indeed. It is like a concise mini-Bible course. The different parts of the Bible are clearly presented and outlined, making it highly accessible to everyone. Hampson’s book is also a motivating and encouraging book for Catholics in that it encourages them to strive to live a life of true integrity and compassion. I commend Hampson for writing such a wonderfully engaging and honest book about such a difficult topic.

© Irene S. Roth

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