Synopsis
This erudite and thought-provoking book is an excellent introduction to three major religious faiths--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--and their differing views of God, as well as the way these views have shaped the world. Karen Armstrong's personal history includes time spent as a nun in her homeland of England; this fact makes her comparative religious study resonate with a passion that testifies to her own quest for understanding. Far from being a dry, academic tome, A HISTORY OF GOD is written in a lucid conversational style that engages readers and takes them on a ride through humanity's often convoluted relationship with the divine. Armstrong's basic idea is that successful religions and sects have always relied on effectiveness and pragmatism rather than philosophy or historical tradition. This is key to her theory that, while the major religions are in sharp contrast to each other in ritual and practice, they collaborate in their mystical traditions--traditions, she asserts, that have developed from an abstract, collective unconscious that does not rely on symbols and liturgy. A HISTORY OF GOD is a fascinating book that reverently questions the existence of God while championing the existence of the soul.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2004-03-01 | | Edition Description: | Abridged |
| Size | | Height: | 5.8 in | | Width: | 4.8 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 9.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
"Strange as it may seem, the idea of 'God' developed in a market economy in a spirit of aggressive capitalism," Karen Armstrong asserts in her fascinating work A History of God. Armstrong considers herself a "historian of ideas," and with this broad view she gives a compelling account of the correspondences among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the historical, philosophical, intellectual, and social developments through the ages that both shaped them and were shaped by them. Religion is "highly pragmatic," Armstrong finds. Any particular idea of God must work for the people who develop it. Consequently, as the times have changed, so have our ideas about God. "Understanding the ever-changing ideas of God in the past and their relevance and usefulness in their time," she says, "will help us to develop a new concept for the future." Today an increasing number of people have difficulty with the idea of a God that behaves as a larger version of themselves. Armstrong sees this as inevitable, and welcomes believers to a notion of God that "works for us in the empirical age."
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