Pressestimmen
Praise for Karen Armstrong's The Case for God
"The time is ripe for a book like The Case for God, which wraps a rebuke to the more militant sort of atheism in an engaging survey of Western religious thought."
—Ross Douthat, The New York Times Book Review
"Armstrong's argument is prescient, for it reflects the most important shifts occurring in the religious landscape."
—Lisa Miller, Newsweek
"A thoughtful explanation, well-sourced and impressively rooted in the writings of theologians, philosophers, scholars and religious figures through the ages. . . . If Armstrong is out to bring respect to both reason and faith in the search of that transcendent meaning, she has done well."
—Repps Hudson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"The Case for God is Armstrong's most concise and practical-minded book yet: a historical survey of hwo rather than what we believe, where we lost the "knack" of religion and what we need to do to get it back."
—Michael Brunton, Ode
"In over a dozen books [Armstrong] has delivered something people badly want: a way to acknowledge that faith can be taken seriously as a response to deep human yearnings without needing to subscribe to the formality of organized belief."
—The Economist
"The Case for God should be read slowly, and savored."
—Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Armstrong's thesis is provocative, and her book illuminates a side of Christianity that has recently been overshadowed."
—Margaret Quamme, Columbus Dispatch
"Armstrong is ambitious. The Case for God is an entire semester at college packed into a single book—a voluminous, dizzying intellectual history. . . . Reading The Case for God, I felt smarter. . . . A stimulating, hopeful work. After I finished it, I felt inspired, I stopped, and I looked up at the stars again. And I wondered what could be."
—Susan Jane Gilman, NPR's "All Things Considered"
"Karen Armstrong's book is simply superb. Wide-ranging, detailed, well researched meticulously argued and beautifully written, it is a definitive analysis of the role of religious belief and transcendence in our history and our life."
—Dr Robert Buckman, author of Can We Be Good without God?
"Karen Armstrong, in writing The Case for God, provides the reader with one of the very best theological works of our time. It brings a new understanding to the complex relationship between human existence and the transcendent nature of God. This is a book that is so well researched and so deep with insight and soaring scholarship that only Karen Armstrong could have written it. The Case for God should be required reading for anyone who claims to be a believer, an agnostic or an atheist."
—The Right Reverend John Bryson Chane, D.D., Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Washington, D.C.
"No one is better qualified or more needed than Karen Armstrong to enter the hot public debate between believers and non-believers over the existence of God. Her latest book, eagerly awaited and received, rings out with the qualities she brings to all of her work—The Case for God is lucid, learned, provocative, and illuminating. Indeed, Armstrong once again does what she always does best by shining a clear light on the deepest mysteries of the religious imagination."
—Jonathan Kirsch, author of The Harlot by the Side of the Road
"Challenging, intelligent, and illuminating—especially for anyone reflecting on current discussions of atheism, often characterized as conflict between religion and science."
—Elaine Pagels, co-author of Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity
"With characteristic command of subject and crispness, the prolific and redoubtable independent British scholar and former nun takes yet another run at the world's religious history. . . . She's conceptual, humanistic and exceedingly well-read. . . . [An] articulate and accessible sweep through intellectual history. The "unknowing" of the mystics has its virtues and its place, but being well-read and knowledgeable makes one powerful and persuasive book.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Celebrated religion scholar Armstrong creates more than a history of religion; she effectively demonstrates how the West (broadly speaking) has grappled with the existence of deity and captured the concept in words, art and ideas. . . . A brilliant examination. . . . [An] accessible, intriguing study of how we see God."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The new book by premier contemporary historian of religion is a history of God. . . . Presenting difficult ideas with utter lucidity, this registers at once as a classic of religious and world history."
—Ray Olson, Booklist (starred review)
"Armstrong offers a tour de force. . . . Highly recommended for readers willing to grapple with difficult but clearly articulated concepts and challenges to the 'received' ways of perceiving religion. A classic."
—Carolyn M. Craft, Library Journal
"One of our best living writers on religion. . . . Prodigiously sourced, passionately written."
—John Cornwell, Financial Times
"Karen Armstrong is one of [a] handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion. . . . As in so much of the rest of her hugely impressive body of work, Karen Armstrong invites us on a journey through religion that helps us to rescue what remains wise from so much that to so many . . . no longer seems true."
—Alain de Botton, The Observer
Critical Acclaim for Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation
"Armstrong at her best—translating and distilling complex history into lucid prose that will delight scholars and armchair historians alike."
—Lauren F. Winner, The Washington Post Book World
"Her conviction, passion and intelligence radiate throughout the book, making us feel the urgency of the ideas it seeks to convey."
—Charles Matthews, Baltimore Sun
"A tour de force. . . . She has dedicated herself to understanding the most prominent world faiths and explaining them to a secular/postsecular society."
—Jane Lampman, The Christian Science Monitor
"Perhaps her most ambitious work. . . . Without overlooking the differences between religions, Armstrong emphasizes their common call for compassion."
—Lisa Montanarelli, San Francisco Chronicle
"A lucid, highly readable account of complex developments occurring over many centuries. . . . A splendid book."
—William Grimes, The New York Times
"An utterly enthralling reading experience. . . . It ranks with A History of God as one of her finest achievements.
—Booklist
"In her typical magisterial fashion, she chronicles these tales in dazzling prose with remarkable depth and judicious breadth."
—Publishers Weekly
"Armstrong's erudition is truly impressive. . . . Few people are better qualified to explain that what so often divides us ought to unite us instead."
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Broad, eloquent storytelling."
—The Wall Street Journal
"Her conviction, passion and intelligence radiate throughout the book, making us feel the urgency of the ideas it seeks to convey."
—New York Sun
"This could very possibly be one of the greatest intellectual histories ever written."
—Library Journal (starred review)
"On prominent display in this book are Armstrong's usual virtues—wide knowledge, meticulous research, a superb appreciation for the beauty and power of religious and philosophical ideasls, and general readability."
—Shambhala Sun
"This magisterial work, continuing Karen Armstrong's mission to explore the place and purposes of religions in the modern world, follows in the stream of her books on Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddaism."
—Spirituality & Health
Critical Acclaim for Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase
"Enjoyable and deeply interesting. . . . Very rewarding." –San Francisco Chronicle
"A story about becoming human, being recognized, finally recognizing oneself. . . . It fills the reader with hope." –The Washington Post Book World
"Riveting. . . . It's a pleasure to read simply because it's honest and hopeful. . . . Armstrong is such an evocative writer." –Newsday
"I loved this powerful and moving account, and read it nonstop." –Elaine Pagels, author of Beyond Belief
"In . . . Armstrong's memoir there lurks wisdom about the making and remaking of a life . . . from which all of us could learn." –The New York Times Book Review
"A powerful memoir. . . . Buoyed by keen intelligence and unflinching self-awareness and honesty. . . . Armstrong is an engaging, energetic writer." –The Christian Science Monitor
"A minor masterpiece." –Elle
"Exceptionally impressive. . . . Karen Armstrong's account of her spiralling journey provokes thought and inspires respect." –Daily Telegraph
"The story of the making of a writer. . . . It manages to dramatize the writer's process of intellectual development and to find in it genuine interest, and, indeed, suspense. . . . As an account of the intellectual journey of an intelligent and unique individual, the book is often gripping." –Sa...
"The time is ripe for a book like The Case for God, which wraps a rebuke to the more militant sort of atheism in an engaging survey of Western religious thought."
—Ross Douthat, The New York Times Book Review
"Armstrong's argument is prescient, for it reflects the most important shifts occurring in the religious landscape."
—Lisa Miller, Newsweek
"A thoughtful explanation, well-sourced and impressively rooted in the writings of theologians, philosophers, scholars and religious figures through the ages. . . . If Armstrong is out to bring respect to both reason and faith in the search of that transcendent meaning, she has done well."
—Repps Hudson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"The Case for God is Armstrong's most concise and practical-minded book yet: a historical survey of hwo rather than what we believe, where we lost the "knack" of religion and what we need to do to get it back."
—Michael Brunton, Ode
"In over a dozen books [Armstrong] has delivered something people badly want: a way to acknowledge that faith can be taken seriously as a response to deep human yearnings without needing to subscribe to the formality of organized belief."
—The Economist
"The Case for God should be read slowly, and savored."
—Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Armstrong's thesis is provocative, and her book illuminates a side of Christianity that has recently been overshadowed."
—Margaret Quamme, Columbus Dispatch
"Armstrong is ambitious. The Case for God is an entire semester at college packed into a single book—a voluminous, dizzying intellectual history. . . . Reading The Case for God, I felt smarter. . . . A stimulating, hopeful work. After I finished it, I felt inspired, I stopped, and I looked up at the stars again. And I wondered what could be."
—Susan Jane Gilman, NPR's "All Things Considered"
"Karen Armstrong's book is simply superb. Wide-ranging, detailed, well researched meticulously argued and beautifully written, it is a definitive analysis of the role of religious belief and transcendence in our history and our life."
—Dr Robert Buckman, author of Can We Be Good without God?
"Karen Armstrong, in writing The Case for God, provides the reader with one of the very best theological works of our time. It brings a new understanding to the complex relationship between human existence and the transcendent nature of God. This is a book that is so well researched and so deep with insight and soaring scholarship that only Karen Armstrong could have written it. The Case for God should be required reading for anyone who claims to be a believer, an agnostic or an atheist."
—The Right Reverend John Bryson Chane, D.D., Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Washington, D.C.
"No one is better qualified or more needed than Karen Armstrong to enter the hot public debate between believers and non-believers over the existence of God. Her latest book, eagerly awaited and received, rings out with the qualities she brings to all of her work—The Case for God is lucid, learned, provocative, and illuminating. Indeed, Armstrong once again does what she always does best by shining a clear light on the deepest mysteries of the religious imagination."
—Jonathan Kirsch, author of The Harlot by the Side of the Road
"Challenging, intelligent, and illuminating—especially for anyone reflecting on current discussions of atheism, often characterized as conflict between religion and science."
—Elaine Pagels, co-author of Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity
"With characteristic command of subject and crispness, the prolific and redoubtable independent British scholar and former nun takes yet another run at the world's religious history. . . . She's conceptual, humanistic and exceedingly well-read. . . . [An] articulate and accessible sweep through intellectual history. The "unknowing" of the mystics has its virtues and its place, but being well-read and knowledgeable makes one powerful and persuasive book.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Celebrated religion scholar Armstrong creates more than a history of religion; she effectively demonstrates how the West (broadly speaking) has grappled with the existence of deity and captured the concept in words, art and ideas. . . . A brilliant examination. . . . [An] accessible, intriguing study of how we see God."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The new book by premier contemporary historian of religion is a history of God. . . . Presenting difficult ideas with utter lucidity, this registers at once as a classic of religious and world history."
—Ray Olson, Booklist (starred review)
"Armstrong offers a tour de force. . . . Highly recommended for readers willing to grapple with difficult but clearly articulated concepts and challenges to the 'received' ways of perceiving religion. A classic."
—Carolyn M. Craft, Library Journal
"One of our best living writers on religion. . . . Prodigiously sourced, passionately written."
—John Cornwell, Financial Times
"Karen Armstrong is one of [a] handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion. . . . As in so much of the rest of her hugely impressive body of work, Karen Armstrong invites us on a journey through religion that helps us to rescue what remains wise from so much that to so many . . . no longer seems true."
—Alain de Botton, The Observer
Critical Acclaim for Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation
"Armstrong at her best—translating and distilling complex history into lucid prose that will delight scholars and armchair historians alike."
—Lauren F. Winner, The Washington Post Book World
"Her conviction, passion and intelligence radiate throughout the book, making us feel the urgency of the ideas it seeks to convey."
—Charles Matthews, Baltimore Sun
"A tour de force. . . . She has dedicated herself to understanding the most prominent world faiths and explaining them to a secular/postsecular society."
—Jane Lampman, The Christian Science Monitor
"Perhaps her most ambitious work. . . . Without overlooking the differences between religions, Armstrong emphasizes their common call for compassion."
—Lisa Montanarelli, San Francisco Chronicle
"A lucid, highly readable account of complex developments occurring over many centuries. . . . A splendid book."
—William Grimes, The New York Times
"An utterly enthralling reading experience. . . . It ranks with A History of God as one of her finest achievements.
—Booklist
"In her typical magisterial fashion, she chronicles these tales in dazzling prose with remarkable depth and judicious breadth."
—Publishers Weekly
"Armstrong's erudition is truly impressive. . . . Few people are better qualified to explain that what so often divides us ought to unite us instead."
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Broad, eloquent storytelling."
—The Wall Street Journal
"Her conviction, passion and intelligence radiate throughout the book, making us feel the urgency of the ideas it seeks to convey."
—New York Sun
"This could very possibly be one of the greatest intellectual histories ever written."
—Library Journal (starred review)
"On prominent display in this book are Armstrong's usual virtues—wide knowledge, meticulous research, a superb appreciation for the beauty and power of religious and philosophical ideasls, and general readability."
—Shambhala Sun
"This magisterial work, continuing Karen Armstrong's mission to explore the place and purposes of religions in the modern world, follows in the stream of her books on Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddaism."
—Spirituality & Health
Critical Acclaim for Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase
"Enjoyable and deeply interesting. . . . Very rewarding." –San Francisco Chronicle
"A story about becoming human, being recognized, finally recognizing oneself. . . . It fills the reader with hope." –The Washington Post Book World
"Riveting. . . . It's a pleasure to read simply because it's honest and hopeful. . . . Armstrong is such an evocative writer." –Newsday
"I loved this powerful and moving account, and read it nonstop." –Elaine Pagels, author of Beyond Belief
"In . . . Armstrong's memoir there lurks wisdom about the making and remaking of a life . . . from which all of us could learn." –The New York Times Book Review
"A powerful memoir. . . . Buoyed by keen intelligence and unflinching self-awareness and honesty. . . . Armstrong is an engaging, energetic writer." –The Christian Science Monitor
"A minor masterpiece." –Elle
"Exceptionally impressive. . . . Karen Armstrong's account of her spiralling journey provokes thought and inspires respect." –Daily Telegraph
"The story of the making of a writer. . . . It manages to dramatize the writer's process of intellectual development and to find in it genuine interest, and, indeed, suspense. . . . As an account of the intellectual journey of an intelligent and unique individual, the book is often gripping." –Sa...
Kurzbeschreibung
Moving from the Paleolithic age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred reality that it called by many names, such as God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. Focusing especially on Christianity but including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese spiritualities, Armstrong examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time, when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. Why has God become unbelievable? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that veers so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors?
Answering these questions with the same depth of knowledge and profound insight that have marked all her acclaimed books, Armstrong makes clear how the changing face of the world has necessarily changed the importance of religion at both the societal and the individual level. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for drawing on the insights of the past in order to build a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age. Yet she cautions us that religion was never supposed to provide answers that lie within the competence of human reason; that, she says, is the role of logos. The task of religion is “to help us live creatively, peacefully, and even joyously with realities for which there are no easy explanations.” She emphasizes, too, that religion will not work automatically. It is, she says, a practical discipline: its insights are derived not from abstract speculation but from “dedicated intellectual endeavor” and a “compassionate lifestyle that enables us to break out of the prism of selfhood.”
Answering these questions with the same depth of knowledge and profound insight that have marked all her acclaimed books, Armstrong makes clear how the changing face of the world has necessarily changed the importance of religion at both the societal and the individual level. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for drawing on the insights of the past in order to build a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age. Yet she cautions us that religion was never supposed to provide answers that lie within the competence of human reason; that, she says, is the role of logos. The task of religion is “to help us live creatively, peacefully, and even joyously with realities for which there are no easy explanations.” She emphasizes, too, that religion will not work automatically. It is, she says, a practical discipline: its insights are derived not from abstract speculation but from “dedicated intellectual endeavor” and a “compassionate lifestyle that enables us to break out of the prism of selfhood.”
Über den Autor
Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous other books on religious affairs—including A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and The Great Transformation—and two memoirs, Through the Narrow Gate and The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into forty-five languages. She has addressed members of the U.S. Congress on three occasions; lectured to policy makers at the U.S. State Department; participated in the World Economic Forum in New York, Jordan, and Davos; addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and New York; is increasingly invited to speak in Muslim countries; and is now an ambassador for the UN Alliance of Civilizations. In February 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and is currently working with TED on a major international project to launch and propagate a Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, to be signed in the fall of 2009 by a thousand religious and secular leaders. She lives in London.
Leseprobe. Abdruck erfolgt mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Introduction
We are talking far too much about God these days, and what we say is often facile. In our democratic society, we think that the concept of God should be easy and that religion ought to be readily accessible to anybody. "That book was really hard!" readers have told me reproachfully, shaking their heads in faint reproof. "Of course it was!" I want to reply. "It was about
God." But many find this puzzling. Surely everybody knows what God is: the Supreme Being, a divine Personality, who created the world and everything in it. They look perplexed if you point out that it is inaccurate to call God the Supreme Being because God is not a being at all, and that we really don't understand what we mean when we say that he is "good," "wise," or "intelligent." People of faith admit in theory that God is utterly transcendent, but they seem sometimes to assume that they know exactly who "he" is and what he thinks, loves, and expects. We tend to tame and domesticate God's "otherness." We regularly ask God to bless our nation, save our queen, cure our sickness, or give us a fine day for the picnic. We remind God that he has created the world and that we are miserable sinners, as though this may have slipped his mind. Politicians quote God to justify their policies, teachers use him to keep order in the classroom, and terrorists
commit atrocities in his name. We beg God to support "our" side in an election or a war, even though our opponents are, presumably, also God's children and the object of his love and care.
There is also a tendency to assume that, even though we now live in a totally transformed world and have an entirely different worldview,people have always thought about God in exactly the same way as we do today. But despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our religious thinking is sometimes remarkably undeveloped, even primitive. In some ways the modern God resembles the High God of remote antiquity, a theology that was unanimously either jettisoned or radically reinterpreted because it was found to be inept. Many people in the premodern world went out of their way to show that it was very difficult indeed to speak about God.
Theology is, of course, a very wordy discipline. People have written reams and talked unstoppably about God. But some of the greatest Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians made it clear that while it was important to put our ideas about the divine into words, these doctrines were man- made, and therefore were bound to be inadequate. They devised spiritual exercises that deliberately subverted normal patterns of thought and speech to help the faithful understand that the words we use to describe mundane things were simply not suitable for God. "He" was not good, divine, powerful, or
intelligent in any way that we could understand. We could not even say that God "existed," because our concept of existence was too limited. Some of the sages preferred to say that God was "Nothing" because God was not another being. You certainly could not read your scriptures literally, as if they referred to divine facts. To these theologians some of our modern ideas about God would have seemed idolatrous.
It was not just a few radical theologians who took this line. Symbolism came more naturally to people in the premodern world than it does to us today. In medieval Europe, for example, Christians were taught to see the Mass as a symbolic reenactment of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection. The fact that they could not follow the Latin added to its mystique. Much of the Mass was recited by the priest in an undertone, and the solemn silence and liturgical drama, with its music and stylized gestures, put the congregation into a mental "space" that was separate from ordinary life. Today many are able to
own a copy of the Bible or the Qur'an and have the literacy to read them, but in the past most people had an entirely different relationship with their scriptures. They listened to them, recited piecemeal, often in a foreign language and always in a heightened liturgical context. Preachers instructed them not to understand these texts in a purely literal way and suggested figurative interpretations. In the "mystery plays" performed annually on the feast of Corpus Christi,
medievals felt free to change the biblical stories, add new characters, and transpose them into a modern setting. These stories were not historical in our sense, because they were more than history.
In most premodern cultures, there were two recognized ways of thinking, speaking, and acquiring knowledge. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was considered superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary. Each had its own sphere of competence, and it was considered unwise to mix the two. Logos ("reason") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled people to function effectively in the world. It had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality. People have always needed logos to make an efficient weapon, organize their
societies, or plan an expedition. Logos was forward- looking, continually on the lookout for new ways of controlling the environment, improving old insights, or inventing something fresh. Logos was essential to the survival of our species. But it had its limitations: it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggles. For that people turned to mythos or "myth."
Today we live in a society of scientific logos, and myth has fallen into disrepute. In popular parlance, a "myth" is something that is not true. But in the past, myth was not self- indulgent fantasy; rather, like logos, it helped people to live effectively in our confusing world, though in a different way. Myths may have told stories about the gods, but they were really focused on the more elusive, puzzling, and tragic aspects of the human predicament that lay outside the remit of logos. Myth has been called a primitive form of psychology. When a myth described heroes threading their way through labyrinths, descending into the underworld, or fighting monsters, these were not understood as primarily factual stories. They were designed to help people negotiate the obscure regions of the psyche, which are difficult to access but which profoundly influence our thought and behavior. People had to enter the warren of their own minds and fight their personal demons. When Freud and Jung began to chart their scientific search for the soul, they instinctively turned to these ancient myths. A myth was never intended as an accurate account of a historical event; it was something that had in some sense happened once but that
also happens all the time.
But a myth would not be effective if people simply "believed" in it. It was essentially a program of action. It could put you in the correct spiritual or psychological posture, but it was up to you to take the next step and make the "truth" of the myth a reality in your own life. The only way to assess the value and truth of any myth was to act upon it. The myth of the hero, for example, which takes the same form in nearly all cultural traditions, taught people how to unlock their own heroic potential.4 Later the stories of historical figures such as the Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammad were made to conform to this paradigm so that their followers could imitate them in the same way. Put into practice, a myth could tell us something profoundly true about our humanity. It showed us how to live more richly and intensely, how to cope with our mortality, and how creatively to endure the suffering that flesh is heir to. But if we failed to apply it to our situation, a myth would remain abstract and incredible. From a very early date, people reenacted their myths in stylized ceremonies that worked...
We are talking far too much about God these days, and what we say is often facile. In our democratic society, we think that the concept of God should be easy and that religion ought to be readily accessible to anybody. "That book was really hard!" readers have told me reproachfully, shaking their heads in faint reproof. "Of course it was!" I want to reply. "It was about
God." But many find this puzzling. Surely everybody knows what God is: the Supreme Being, a divine Personality, who created the world and everything in it. They look perplexed if you point out that it is inaccurate to call God the Supreme Being because God is not a being at all, and that we really don't understand what we mean when we say that he is "good," "wise," or "intelligent." People of faith admit in theory that God is utterly transcendent, but they seem sometimes to assume that they know exactly who "he" is and what he thinks, loves, and expects. We tend to tame and domesticate God's "otherness." We regularly ask God to bless our nation, save our queen, cure our sickness, or give us a fine day for the picnic. We remind God that he has created the world and that we are miserable sinners, as though this may have slipped his mind. Politicians quote God to justify their policies, teachers use him to keep order in the classroom, and terrorists
commit atrocities in his name. We beg God to support "our" side in an election or a war, even though our opponents are, presumably, also God's children and the object of his love and care.
There is also a tendency to assume that, even though we now live in a totally transformed world and have an entirely different worldview,people have always thought about God in exactly the same way as we do today. But despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our religious thinking is sometimes remarkably undeveloped, even primitive. In some ways the modern God resembles the High God of remote antiquity, a theology that was unanimously either jettisoned or radically reinterpreted because it was found to be inept. Many people in the premodern world went out of their way to show that it was very difficult indeed to speak about God.
Theology is, of course, a very wordy discipline. People have written reams and talked unstoppably about God. But some of the greatest Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians made it clear that while it was important to put our ideas about the divine into words, these doctrines were man- made, and therefore were bound to be inadequate. They devised spiritual exercises that deliberately subverted normal patterns of thought and speech to help the faithful understand that the words we use to describe mundane things were simply not suitable for God. "He" was not good, divine, powerful, or
intelligent in any way that we could understand. We could not even say that God "existed," because our concept of existence was too limited. Some of the sages preferred to say that God was "Nothing" because God was not another being. You certainly could not read your scriptures literally, as if they referred to divine facts. To these theologians some of our modern ideas about God would have seemed idolatrous.
It was not just a few radical theologians who took this line. Symbolism came more naturally to people in the premodern world than it does to us today. In medieval Europe, for example, Christians were taught to see the Mass as a symbolic reenactment of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection. The fact that they could not follow the Latin added to its mystique. Much of the Mass was recited by the priest in an undertone, and the solemn silence and liturgical drama, with its music and stylized gestures, put the congregation into a mental "space" that was separate from ordinary life. Today many are able to
own a copy of the Bible or the Qur'an and have the literacy to read them, but in the past most people had an entirely different relationship with their scriptures. They listened to them, recited piecemeal, often in a foreign language and always in a heightened liturgical context. Preachers instructed them not to understand these texts in a purely literal way and suggested figurative interpretations. In the "mystery plays" performed annually on the feast of Corpus Christi,
medievals felt free to change the biblical stories, add new characters, and transpose them into a modern setting. These stories were not historical in our sense, because they were more than history.
In most premodern cultures, there were two recognized ways of thinking, speaking, and acquiring knowledge. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was considered superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary. Each had its own sphere of competence, and it was considered unwise to mix the two. Logos ("reason") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled people to function effectively in the world. It had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality. People have always needed logos to make an efficient weapon, organize their
societies, or plan an expedition. Logos was forward- looking, continually on the lookout for new ways of controlling the environment, improving old insights, or inventing something fresh. Logos was essential to the survival of our species. But it had its limitations: it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggles. For that people turned to mythos or "myth."
Today we live in a society of scientific logos, and myth has fallen into disrepute. In popular parlance, a "myth" is something that is not true. But in the past, myth was not self- indulgent fantasy; rather, like logos, it helped people to live effectively in our confusing world, though in a different way. Myths may have told stories about the gods, but they were really focused on the more elusive, puzzling, and tragic aspects of the human predicament that lay outside the remit of logos. Myth has been called a primitive form of psychology. When a myth described heroes threading their way through labyrinths, descending into the underworld, or fighting monsters, these were not understood as primarily factual stories. They were designed to help people negotiate the obscure regions of the psyche, which are difficult to access but which profoundly influence our thought and behavior. People had to enter the warren of their own minds and fight their personal demons. When Freud and Jung began to chart their scientific search for the soul, they instinctively turned to these ancient myths. A myth was never intended as an accurate account of a historical event; it was something that had in some sense happened once but that
also happens all the time.
But a myth would not be effective if people simply "believed" in it. It was essentially a program of action. It could put you in the correct spiritual or psychological posture, but it was up to you to take the next step and make the "truth" of the myth a reality in your own life. The only way to assess the value and truth of any myth was to act upon it. The myth of the hero, for example, which takes the same form in nearly all cultural traditions, taught people how to unlock their own heroic potential.4 Later the stories of historical figures such as the Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammad were made to conform to this paradigm so that their followers could imitate them in the same way. Put into practice, a myth could tell us something profoundly true about our humanity. It showed us how to live more richly and intensely, how to cope with our mortality, and how creatively to endure the suffering that flesh is heir to. But if we failed to apply it to our situation, a myth would remain abstract and incredible. From a very early date, people reenacted their myths in stylized ceremonies that worked...
