God: A New Biography

by Philip C. Almond

The story of God is the story of a paradox. It is the drama of a transcendent, timeless being who, throughout history, has supposedly engaged with immanent and mortal creatures on a fallen and broken world of his own making.

In this book, the sequel to his earlier, much praised treatment of the Devil, Philip Almond reveals that – whether in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam – God is seen to be at once utterly beyond our world yet at the same earnestly desiring to be at one with it.

In the Christian chapter of this story, the paradox arguably reaches its improbable in the fragile form of a human being the infinite became finite, the eternal temporal. The way these and other metaphysical tensions have been understood is, the author demonstrates, the key to unlocking the entire history of religion in the West. Expertly placing the narrative of divine presence within the wider history of ideas, Almond suggests that the notion of a deity has been the single greatest conundrum of medieval and modern civilization.

In this rich, nuanced appraisal, God is shown to be more complex and fascinating than ever before.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction

264 pages, Hardcover

Published September 27, 2018

Reviews

[Nick Imrie]

It's no fault of Almond's that I couldn't finish this book. When we got to the part discussing the early Christian church fathers and their arguments over the nature of God, I just had to give up out of embarrassment for them all. Perhaps it was me, perhaps it was the way Almond described it, or perhaps it really is the case that the church fathers expended a vast amount of energy infighting like a bunch of fanfiction writers about the 'true' or 'real' nature of things that they couldn't possibly know (eg. is God made of the same substance as Jesus?). Everyone was transparently reasoning backwards from their prefered conclusion. I struggled to stick with them and see their point of view, but my inner Dawkins won the day.