About the Author

Phillip Griffin, a native of Greensboro, North Carolina, has an A.B. degree from Bob Jones University as well as a Ph.D. from Boston University.  This extreme difference in academic cultures reflects the personal and intellectual journey he has made from religious fundamentalism to philosophical humanism.  The structure of fundamentalist Christianity offered an alluring certainty and finality.  It seemed to be a sure answer to the issue of God’s will.  Events of life and the challenge of critical learning made that certainty and finality unbelievable. A more modest confidence in human rationality replaced the illusion of divine guidance.

Dr. Griffin came to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 1967 as Chair of the recently inaugurated Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies.   He recruited a strong and diverse faculty and guided the development of the curriculum in general and advanced studies.  Many graduates of the program have done graduate work in a variety of fields.  Dr. Griffin offered an upper level ‘cap stone’ course, which attracted a host of students from across the university community.

He spent a sabbatical semester as Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Bioethics Program at the University of Tennessee, and subsequently became an adjunct member of the faculty of the Family Medicine Residency Clinic of the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Eau Claire.  In this capacity, he provided consultation and research in Ethics of Health Care.  He also expanded the offerings in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies to include courses in medical and health care ethics.

Since leaving Eau Claire, he has been adjunct professor at Mt. Scenario College in Ladysmith, Wis., The Barron County Center of the University of Wisconsin in Rice Lake, Wis., and the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie, Wis.  In retirement he resides in Golden Valley, MN.,  sharing with his wife the pleasure afforded in the companionship of a blended conglomeration  of five sons and two daughters and eleven grandchildren.

How I Discovered a Human Jesus

While in high school, I was a convert to fundamentalist Protestant Christianity.  I took the whole scheme of triumphalism as a valid structure of reality.  This naïve view of the world was reinforced when I attended Bob Jones College, later known as Bob Jones University.  It was the policy of the college to tell students that it offered us an education so thorough that we needed no more formal theological education than we received at Bob Jones College.  We were led to believe that if we knew the basics of the true and only Gospel, and continued to be submissive to the will of God, avoided carnal temptations and continued the practices of “soul winning” that we had learned there, then we were fully prepared for Christian life and ministry.  This was The Plan that God had for us.  After taking all this in, and supposedly receiving a “Christian education,” I went directly into the pastoral ministry, believing that I was following the “Will of God.”

However, as events of life and my reflection on those events continued through the years, I realized how misguided and tragic this illusory expectation could be.  In one such instance, I was confronted with a question from a parishioner with an extremely painful case of arthritis.  She asked, “If Oral Roberts can get so many other people healed, why can’t God heal me?  Doesn’t God care about me?” I had no answer for her, but rather I had a stinging sense of my own inadequacy to help her.  I was faintly aware of the painful contradiction between the experiences that this real world gave me and the system of belief that I had absorbed at Bob Jones College, thinking that it was true and adequate.  In the light of such contradictions, I began the long and slow process of shedding the triumphalistic beliefs and searching for a better way of bringing into a credible understanding those things that life gave me together with my beliefs about life.

This book is the result of many years of working out a humanistic philosophy of religion.  It contains what I believe to be a creative integration of experience and reflection as I have lived with the responsibilities of parent, teacher and citizen.  When I dissent from the traditional world-view of Christianity it is with deep gratitude for many loving people who have accepted it and have earnestly tried to live it.  For much of my life, I shared that perspective, which I now believe to be misguided.  My good faith with those who disagree with me requires that I say what I believe.  It also requires that I do not skip the hard questions. I do not claim to have the last word.  I am committed to listening to whatever points of view are expressed in good faith.  My problem has been to integrate life’s tragedies and successes into a credible complete conception that makes sense.  My belief in the reality of Jesus as a human brother rather than as a superhuman Christ has been worked out in the practice of a humanistic philosophy of religion.  This book is addressed to others who, like myself, wish to find an integrated and credible view of life.