Abraham: Sign of Hope for Jews, Christians and Muslims

by Karl-Josef Kuschel

"Scholarly, but understandable for the educated lay reader as well as the specialist..". -- Library Journal"A thorough and enlightening discussion, a collection of hope-filled possibilities". -- Booklist

Genres: Theology

286 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 2 out of 5]

A well-intentioned but ultimately unremarkable polemic which falls too much into the trap of appealing to too many orthodoxies at a time and with no appeal to a secular, catholic (not Catholic) reader, whatever their spiritual stripe.
Abraham you might remember was the guy willing to murder his son for no reason other than because God asked him to. From the get-go, this most salient part of his legend doesn't seem to bode well for Kuschel's universalist well-wishing. But he tries and he does an okay job with what he has. Moving through Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, he dissects how the three faiths interpreted and co-opted Abraham in various guises. Abraham is a kind of early, post-diluvian locus of faith, I suppose, and has some inherent value as a kind of wandering pagan dude who wasn't Jewish, Christian, or Muslim at all, which is his appeal.
Again, Kuschel's intentions are noble and we certainly need as much pan-faith love-ins as we can muster, but this one didn't quite hook my thumbs.