The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage

by Paul Johnson

In this probing, challenging and personal account of his feelings about God and religion, Paul Johnson shares with others the strength and comfort of his own faith. Informed by his great knowledge of history, The Quest for God is written with force, lucidity and eloquence by the author of Intellectuals, Modern Times, A History of the Jews and other works.

Genres: Religion, Christianity, Biography, Christian, History, Nonfiction, Theology

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Paul Johnson works as a historian, journalist and author. He was educated at Stonyhurst School in Clitheroe, Lancashire and Magdalen College, Oxford, and first came to prominence in the 1950s as a journalist writing for, and later editing, the New Statesman magazine. He has also written for leading newspapers and magazines in Britain, the US and Europe.

Paul Johnson has published over 40 books including A History of Christianity (1979), A History of the English People (1987), Intellectuals (1988), The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815—1830 (1991), Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the Year 2000 (1999), A History of the American People (2000), A History of the Jews (2001) and Art: A New History (2003) as well as biographies of Elizabeth I (1974), Napoleon (2002), George Washington (2005) and Pope John Paul II (1982).

Reviews

[Skylar Burris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book if you happened to be a fan of the Catholic historian who wrote it, or if you like to read the reflections of others' on religion. It's personal rather than apologetic. It can occasionally be dull in parts, but Johnson's unique opinionated style usually keeps this spiritual autobiography interesting. It may be of particular interest to Protestants who don't understand (or are disturbed by) historical corruption within the Catholic Church, the required celibacy of the priesthood, the granting of indulgences, the practice of praying to saints, and belief in Papal infallibility.

[Leib Mitchell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book Review
2/5 stars
The Quest for Gd
Paul Johnson
"Give this one a miss; profound-thought-to-noise ratio WAY too low."

"A little philosophy makes men atheists; A great deal reconciles them to religion."

Francis Bacon

"When we debunk a fanatical faith or prejudice, we do not strike at the root of fanaticism. We merely prevent its leaking out at a certain point, with the likely result that it will leak out at some other point."

Eric Hoffer

"Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed."

Karen Armstrong

“Those who think religion is about “belief” don't understand religion, and don't understand belief.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

*******
Johnson is a great historian and I have read several of his books.

And because I'm so impressed with his reasoning with respect to analyzing historical things.... I thought that it would be good to see what he had to say about religious things.

There were some interesting terms of phrase/lines of reasoning, but honestly nothing that I have not read before. (Hence the quotes that I gave from classic books about the same topic.)

After I read the book, what I conclude is that:

1. A person's religious experience may be composed of 1,001 different facets, and just fortuitously some people will have similar experiences. But, since it's never quite the same experience twice it's almost not worth trying to abstract the religious experience.

It is what it is, and it's different for some.

Johnson did say that the book was "written to resolve many doubts in his own mind and to clarify his thoughts and define what Gd meant to him and his life."

But if he has found that resolution.... now what?

(And this is the answer that I give to anybody who says that they are "trying to find the meaning of life"; okay, now that you have found it.... What are you going to do with it?)

2. A lot of his discussions were "angels dancing on the head of a needle type" things.

I can't imagine what benefit it is to write an entire 19 page essay speculating about the nature of hell and who may / may not be there.

3. There are a number of other books that I would recommend in preference to this one.

-Devil's Delusion, Berlinski
-A History of Gd, Armstrong
-True Believer, Hoffer
-Apocalypse never (specifically the chapter on "False Gds for Lost Souls"), Shellenberger
-Jewish Mystique, vanDenHaag

4. Yes, Johnson is a Catholic, but a lot of his frameworks of reference are completely irrelevant for the other 4/5 of humanity that is not Catholic. (Purgatory. Saints. Cathedrals. Pontiff.)

He does mention Judaism several times in this book, and the entire Jewish notion of prayer / belief in Gd is 0.4% about belief, and the other 99.6% about the doxastic commitment that is demonstrated by following all of the rituals. (You lose 4 days of pay to be off work on Pesach and another six on the High Holidays and that speaks infinitely more strongly than a bunch of whooping and hollering about belief.)

*******

The author of this book is a lifelong Catholic, and he is proof positive of the staying power of the first quote.

Johnson is a historian, and a very well-read one at that.

Essentially, he notes that with the fall of traditional religions, secular religions just took their place.

According to the Christian doctrine, mankind is theoretically perfectible. (20 centuries later, we still haven't gotten there.)

According to the secular religions - - Marxism / communism/environmentalism/ Critical Race Theory, mankind can be perfected if you just believe us.

Interesting quote. (p.38): "This helps to explain why Christianity spread so rapidly across the world and is still a living thing for a billion human beings, while Judaism remained the religion of an austere elite who can get by without anthropomorphic props."

*******
Of the book

203 pps of prose
16 chapters
≈13 pps/chapter

Verdict: Not recommended.

Ultimately, there just was not enough value-added for me to recommend the book to anyone else, nor keep it.

Acquired vocabulary:

empyrean
Indiarubber
gimcrack
meretricious
Urbi et orbi
Magisterium
kyrie eleison
lubricious
cortège (British word for procession)
catafalque
timpanum
empyrean
Imprecatory Psalm
Synonymous parallelism
antithetical parallelism
synthetic parallelism
climactic parallelism
introverted parallelism
stairlike parallelism
emblematic parallelism
psalter
eccliastic
antiphonal
polyphonal

[Scot Bellavia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Catholic brother gave me lots to think about. His Catholicism did not distract or hinder my reading.

I had thought this book was a personal testimony, based on the title, but in it he covers all the aspects of the Christian walk: a form of personal testimony that was more comprehensive and interesting than the facts of conversion. Plenty in there to revisit at some point.

“In contrast to architects, painters and composers, writers have a mixed record in God's service. They are so numerous and varied that it is risky to generalise in any way, but it is remarkable how many writers, in all civilisations, have tended to take a critical view of established order and sought to subvert it. It is probably the single most striking characteristic of the mind which wishes to express itself through the written word. Now, of course, in subverting order they may be carrying out God's purpose, and there are plenty of instances in the Old Testament where that is exactly what its more passionate writers are doing. But I have spent my entire working life among writers and I know very well that the cast of mind which they habitually possess, and which harbours huge resentments of the world as it exists, is not necessarily motivated by selfless altruism. To praise God is not usually the writer's intention in picking up a pen or sitting down in front of a word-processor. More likely it is to express a grievance or work off a resentment or articulate a personal longing or simply to rage - in addition to making money, of course. Writers are sinful and fallen and unsatisfactory man writ large. It will be, for me at least, one of the great points of interest of the next world to see how God, in his justice, sorts out all the giants and pygmies of the pen. How will Voltaire fare? Some Christian polemicists write as if he were already in Hell, but I am not so sure. A man's writings have to be judged in their effects, if any, over many generations, and these may be contradictory and, in aggregate, difficult to assess. We may be sure God will do them justice, however, and this may often in the end surprise us. Where will he place Tolstoy, that astonishing combination of humility and arrogance, wisdom and madness, piety and destruction? He will have difficulty with Milton, too, who sought - so he said - to justify the ways of God to men and ended by writing a masterpiece whose hero was Satan. I do not know how Shelley will fare, he who professed atheism and practised a kind of exalted pantheism, who preached socialism and was a monster of personal selfishness. The fact is, nevertheless, that men and women have been uplifted and inspired by Shelleys poetry and become better people in consequence.”

“There are a number of beliefs to do with behaviour and civilisation which are so self-evident that the request to prove them creates uneasiness.”

“Jewish moral theology is often superior to the Christian equivalent, in my judgment. Jewish teachers have been at it twice as long, to begin with, and they have not been burdened, as Christian theologians and teachers have been, by the immensely complicated dogmatic theology of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Eucharist, which has led to so many controversies and splits and schisms within Christianity. The Jews have escaped all that, and they have in consequence been able to devote more time and thought to moral behaviour. Indeed, that is what Judaism is really about - what a Jew should do or not do."

“Nevertheless, when all this is admitted, the awkward fact remains that the Jewish and Christian religions are, or at any rate appear to be, mutually incompatible. They teach things which are in violent and seemingly irreconcilable conflict. If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, as Christians must and do believe, then the Jews, in refusing to acknowledge the fact, reject the truth, and God's plan for humanity, and cut themselves off from the process of religious development which the Old Testament records before it lapses into a significant silence. The warnings about the Messiah, the foreshadowings of Christ's coming in the prophecies, are ignored, and the Jewish self-criticism which is so prominent in the second half of the Old Testament is seen to be abundantly justified. If Christ is God, then the Jews forfeit their claim to be a Chosen People, a priestly elect, a light to the Gentiles, and become the stiff-necked reprobates so roundly denounced by the prophets for their blindness and disobedience and defiance of God's word. Alternatively, if the Jews are right and Jesus, far from being the Son of God, is merely a false-Messiah, one of many, then the whole of Christianity is a delusion and the two millenniums of the church are a gigantic sham. Put thus bluntly, the quarrel between the religions is awesome. There appears to be no possible basis for compromise, no overlap at all. The two teachings, at their central point - Almighty God's programme for humanity - are as incompatible as it is possible for such things to be, and reconciliation is logically ruled out.”

“We could see no obvious way out of the dilemma. But then, as we observed, human intelligence is limited and human ignorance is great. By contrast, the power and scope of the divine wisdom is limitless. In Chapter 11 of his great Epistle to the Romans, St Paul, Jew of the Jews and Christian of the Christians, speaks eloquently on this point: 'O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor?' Who are we, then, to say there is no bringing together in truth and harmony the beliefs of his Chosen People and those of the Children of Christ? It is not beyond the power of God to find a way and in his own good time to reveal it to us, Jew and Christian both, and then a deep and painful schism in the story of the spiritual development of humankind will finally be healed. It will surely be worth waiting for, this squaring by God of the Jewish-Christian circle.”

“No one ever lost his or her faith by rejecting the idea of Hell. And Hell is still, albeit to a more limited extent than in the old days, a deterrent to sinners. I know of one beautiful and fashionable lady who is prevented from deceiving her husband and taking lovers almost entirely because she fears she will be sent to Hell if she does.
“No; it is far more likely, in my opinion, that faith is eroded or diminished - perhaps even fatally undermined - by our lamentable failure to make the rewards of Heaven seem real and worth having. Heaven, as presented by the Judeo-Christian tradition, lacks genuine incentive. Indeed, it lacks definition of any kind. It is the great hole in theology.“

“[Prayer] does not be solve problems, but it always makes them easier to bear. It rarely dispels the darkness, but it creates a small corner of light on the gloomiest occasions. It is the one thing I have found in life which never fails completely,”

"It is an amazing thought that, of all the powerful people in the universe, protected by banks of security guards and secretaries and personal assistants and scrambler telephones and ex-directory numbers and protocol, the one who is master of the all is totally, instantly and invariable accessible [through prayer]."

[Edoardo Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Johnson is one of the outstanding historians of our time. His History of Christianity is both illuminating and, for the Christian, excruciatingly honest. There is no whitewashing of the sins of church or Christians in his history, quite the opposite. So it's fascinating to learn that he wrote his history even while being, and remaining, a Catholic. In the introduction to his history, he excoriates those who would whitewash the past, or suppress it, are doing mortal damage to Christianity while thinking to protect it. The religion depends, fundamentally, on the truth. It makes claims, historical claims, upon which it rests. Jesus was a man, who lived and died in a particular place and time. Johnson subjects them to the most rigorous historical investigation, for as a believing Christian he can do nothing else, for if Christians are not committed to the truth, wherever it leads, then they are not Christians. In his meditation on the existence of God, Johnson does something similar. This book is more personal and, as such, is not likely to change anyone's mind. But it's a beautiful insight into the working of grace in the life a scholar and it finishes with its most valuable section: some of the prayers Johnson has composed during the course of his life. These are quite lovely, and deserve to be more widely known (and, dare I say, prayed).

[Aaron Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Toleration of “all forms of religious devotion or practices which seem to come from God or are acceptable to Him…. people find their own way to worship and their own aids in praying.”

“God does not want a uniform spiritual personality. He wants the mystics and the activists, the crusaders and the praying monks and nuns, those whose mission is in the world and those whose work is contemplation.”

Sexual love as rival to the love of God. “It is far more likely that [men] will love God with some of the intensity with which he loves us if God is without a competitor in their hearts and they can concentrate fully on Him.”

Alternatives to God—politics.

[John Teske · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read!

I picked up a copy on the advice of a good friend about a decade ago on Kindle. I never did finish it.

So then I picked up a physical copy within the past 2 years.

It's number came up recently - in other words, it worked its way to the top of the pile - and I read it.

Just delightful, with many provocative insights, and many tangents from many diverse fields. A renaissance man, Paul Johnson brings many disciplines to the table in his discussion of theology and philosophy. it is much appreciated and highly recommended!

[Stanley Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not exactly what I was thinking the book was going to be about from the title. Johnson gives an excellent history of the beginnings of Christianity and some of its detractors. From the title I thought the book would be more about what brought Johnson to God and Christianity. Overall a good book...

[Derick Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

More a defence of Catholic doctrine and dogma than the title suggests.

The book starts with some standard musings on God's existence and then swings straight into assuming the Immaculate Conception is true and homosexual people are reprobates.

However, I did enjoy the historical and literary references and the book is an easy read.

[Matthew C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have lately come to adore Johnson's historical work. When I saw this title, I was hoping for some insight into the man himself. I was not disappointed. I feel myself greatly enriched by reading his meditations and reminiscences.

[Joseph D. Walch · Rating 3 out of 5]

The great historian of Modernity, America, of the History of Christianity and the Jews, of Intellectuals meditates on ultimate meaning, God, and the limits of reason.

[Gerardo Herrera · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy to read, accessible book that promotes Catholicism. It is not an attempt to prove God's existence, rather it is an attempt to explain why belief in God is essential to human life.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Johnson is almost certainly my favorite historian, and I truly enjoy his analysis of the philosophical roots of the events of the last two centuries in book such as The Birth of the Modern and Modern Times and Intellectuals. So, I was quite curious to find out more about his personal beliefs through this book, which really is simply a set of theological musings. He is a devout Catholic and a little bit liberal, however, the book was still interesting and enlightening. I found the chapter on prayer to be the most significant and effecting. If you enjoy his other writings, I would recommend it.

[Michael Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book on Johnson's spiritual journey as a professional historian. A great read if you're into an intellectual faith and the inherent problems of faith and reason. I particularly enjoyed Johnson's interaction with prominent philosophers that he personally knew and how their own ideas did not "work" in the end. Very good read.

[Evandro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good book for what it is: the testimony of a personal journey. Johnson has some pretty liberal views of Catholicism in some points, but he is a very honest and sincere person - and is a very good writer. It was very pleasing to read.

[Mano Chil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even though I'm an Evangelical, after reading Johnson's book, I came to appreciate the faith of the Catholics more.

[Ti Bryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can't believe that he is a historian.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first five or six chapters were good but then I lost interest. I liked his personal stories and I think more of those would have made it even better.

[Patricio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Completely recommendable, for believers (christians or not), atheist, agnostics and skeptics