Key themes
- Four thousand years of religious thought — how humanity has conceived of God
- The evolution of monotheism across Judaism, Christianity and Islam
- How the concept of God changes as societies change
About this book
Four thousand years of how Jews, Christians and Muslims have imagined God; lucid and even-handed.
Published in 1993, A History of God was a major international bestseller. Armstrong is a former nun who left her order after eight years. She has written extensively on comparative religion and is a founding signatory of the Charter for Compassion.
Discussion questions
- Armstrong's central argument is that the idea of God has never been static — that each generation has reformulated it in response to new circumstances. What are the implications of this for religious believers who hold that God is eternal and unchanging?
- The book covers Judaism, Christianity and Islam as three expressions of a shared Abrahamic tradition. How does Armstrong develop the relationships between them — and what does the comparative approach reveal that a single-tradition study couldn't?
- Armstrong distinguishes between the personal God (who hears prayers and intervenes in history) and more mystical conceptions of God as Being itself or the ground of existence. How does she trace this tension?
- The book ends with the suggestion that the concept of God may be becoming less compelling in the modern world. What does Armstrong think is at stake in this — and does she see this as a loss?
- A History of God is a work of scholarship written for a general audience. What does it demand of the reader — and what does it offer that reading primary religious texts would not?
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