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The Trial of God: A challenge to conventional thinking
228 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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July 8, 2017
Rothfield approaches two of the major issues in theology from an atheistic perspective, whether we can accept the different 'faces' of God as the Bible describes them and whether the loving God can be reconciled with the Holocaust, the slaughter of Israel's enemies, and the evil we see in the world today and through history. He makes a brave attempt but in the end doesn't succeed in making his argument. Partly it's because, as an atheist, he finds it hard to come up with the answers theologians have been struggling with for centuries but primarily he is so fixed in his ideas that he finds it impossible to approach the issues with an open mind.
Thee are problems which bedevil Rothfield's book. First he makes much of how Christians. Muslims, and Jews cherry pick parts of the Bible and the Quran and ignore what they don't agree with while doing the same thing. It makes for a weaker argument when he takes verses and suras out of context in order to push his own agenda. This is the second problem in the book and a problem for many people of faith. Being so keen to push his own ideas, even refusing to listen to the answers he is given on occasions, it reduces what could have been a major work on the issue into mere polemic. This is a pity.
The third problem is he pays far less attention to a path few people have gone down and which was glaringly ignored as he pushed his own barrow. He asked toward the end of the book why God didn't speak before He spoke to Moses, to Jesus and, through Gabriel, to Muhammad. The question he missed was perhaps he did. Rothfield pays lip service to more ancient religious traditions but ignores the possibility that God did speak to and through their traditions. It's a pity it wasn't followed through.
The Trial of God is a missed opportunity, less a book we can learn from as much as a book written to push an ideological viewpoint. It is flawed, misses opportunities, and falls short of its objective. It could have been so much more.
Thee are problems which bedevil Rothfield's book. First he makes much of how Christians. Muslims, and Jews cherry pick parts of the Bible and the Quran and ignore what they don't agree with while doing the same thing. It makes for a weaker argument when he takes verses and suras out of context in order to push his own agenda. This is the second problem in the book and a problem for many people of faith. Being so keen to push his own ideas, even refusing to listen to the answers he is given on occasions, it reduces what could have been a major work on the issue into mere polemic. This is a pity.
The third problem is he pays far less attention to a path few people have gone down and which was glaringly ignored as he pushed his own barrow. He asked toward the end of the book why God didn't speak before He spoke to Moses, to Jesus and, through Gabriel, to Muhammad. The question he missed was perhaps he did. Rothfield pays lip service to more ancient religious traditions but ignores the possibility that God did speak to and through their traditions. It's a pity it wasn't followed through.
The Trial of God is a missed opportunity, less a book we can learn from as much as a book written to push an ideological viewpoint. It is flawed, misses opportunities, and falls short of its objective. It could have been so much more.
Displaying 1 of 1 review