Biography of deities

Your review has been sent for verification and will be published within 5 days, provided that anatoly is still a successful moderation, there is probably no book, a well -known British religious scholar, the former Catholic nun Karen Armstrong, which would not interest her name or leave her indifferent content of its readers. Even books about Buddha M. of those books that in the recent past appeared in Russian one cannot help but recall “The History of God.

Biography of the book ”M. One city, three religions” M. as the best spiritual principles work for your happiness. ” Karen Armstrong is one of those authors, a new book or a translation that you always expect with impatience. So the book "Biography of God" was no exception to this rule. Systematic theology. Tom is undoubtedly that everyone who had ever lived on our land addressed this important issue.

And this applies not only to intellectuals, thinkers, theologians and philosophers. Today, ask for any person in the metro train or in a fast food restaurant and you will hear a variety of versions of what is “what is” God. God seems to be today as: the projection of human needs, super -sophistication, one of the entities, the original consciousness, the being of it.

Sein, Creator, Absolute, Total everything, etc. Although of course there will always be the minority that will repeat that “there is no God” PS. In the book of Karen Armstrong, all kinds of views are presented that humanity from the earliest stages of its development calls God to our time. Brahman, Nirvana, Jehovah, Marduk .... As Armstrong notes: “We are talking a lot about God, and usually superficially” p.

Expressing their understanding of God with words, theologians must be aware that their descriptions have human origin, and therefore inaccurate with. That is why the transcendental "reality" cannot be clothed in clear doctrines or canons. A person is arranged in such a way that his brain is able to perceive only partial, limited with. That is why the real theology is more like a poetry about God, whose goal cannot be proved, but to affect the heart with.

Moreover, without the apophytic of negative theology, theology turns into idolatry with. It is in this that the main argument is why we, the better, are the better, to take the views of Augustine, Capadian fathers, Dionysius of Areopagita, Foma Kempian, Bonavventure, Mayster Eckhart, Maimonida, Al-Gazali, Ibn Sina and many others. The apophatic will help save the idea of ​​God “from the letter -up, making it implausible” with.

In the religious discourse, lethalism does not bring the proper result, therefore, about the reality that does not fit into the framework of the human language, we can speak only symbols, images and parables with. Yes, and do not forget that religion is not so much concerned with the issue of having the correct information Orthodoxy, theory, p. Of course, it all starts with a literal meaning all begins, but then rises along the “ladder” to the deeper, spiritual levels: “moral, allegorical, similar” p.

From the very beginning of his book, Armstrong is trying to show the difference between the myth and the Logos. Logos, in the understanding of the author, is “rational-pragmatic thinking that helps to function in the world of this” p. The myth, “never thought about a literal story about a historical event: this is what in a sense happened once, but always happens” p. In a conversation about religion in general and God, in particular, it is primarily necessary to turn to the myth, realizing that we, for the most part, are influenced by the scientific thinking of the new time, which forms in us a more rationalist approach to the sacred.

Also, do not forget that “the peculiarity of the human mind consists in its ability to have thoughts and experiences that are not amenable to conceptual analysis” p. Moreover, the Greek "not" I "know, but the" famous "attracts me" p. This leads us to soap that “revelation does not give us clear information about God, but reports that God is incomprehensible to us.

Paradoxically, the task of revelation in antiquity was to explain that we did not know anything about God ”p. It is precisely for this that “we cannot judge God rationally as other beings, but this does not mean that God does not have to think” with. Going even further into the darkness of ignorance, we should admit that there can be no final clarity regarding God, since God is not known with.

Throughout the book, Karen Armstrong says that our ideas about God are flawed, superficial and sometimes even frankly perverted. That is why the main task of this, undoubtedly exciting and important book, is the apology of the apophatic approach to the knowledge of God. The book is also valuable with its meaningful criticism of fundamentalism and atheism. By the way, atheism even deserved the individual chapter of the death of God?Armstrong shows that having concentrated his arguments on the struggle of “against” God, modern atheists Richard Dokins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris forgot that they are fighting against God, as the fundamentalists see him.

To believe that fundamentalism is the true essence of a particular religion is an anachronism with. According to the author, “atheism always parasitizes in a certain form of theism” p. It is on this that Armstrong proposes in a conversation about God, consciously move away from everyday, ordinary stereotypes of thinking p. Regarding fundamentalism, then it is rooted in deep fear with.

This is how Karen Armstrong is not flattering about the nature of fundamentalism: “Every fundamentalism is a primitive form of religiosity. Submitted into their fears and anxieties, fundamentalists often distort the very tradition that they try to protect. Say, they quote scripture very selectively. In every possible way, they are inspired by the prophecies of the Apocalypse about the last days, but they are in no hurry to follow the high sermon with its commandments to love enemies, substitute another cheek and judge others ”s.

The biggest mistake of fundamentalism is that he is inclined to believe that there is only one way to interpret reality with. The very arrangement of this idea deconstructs any similar design ... The formula that describes God itself is that there is no formula by which you can describe God ”p. Maybe postmodernists are still partly right when they say that the term “God” is used to denote the boundaries of human thought and boldness ”p.

In conclusion, it is worth recalling that the question of God was, is and will always be one of the most urgent issues that a person asks. This is how the book describes the interest in such a topic during the time of the Ecumenical Councils: “Such conversations were at every turn: they asked if the bathhouse was ready, - they report that the son came from nothing; You ask how much to pay the clamps, they discuss the born and unborn; You ask the price of bread - they reply that the father is more than the son.

People discussed these issues with the same heat and hobby with which football is being discussed today, since the key moments of Christian life are touched on here ”p. It would be useful for each of us to ask the same rhetorical questions that the Dutch theologian Anton Hautepen in his book “God: Open Question”: “What are we losing when we cross out the word“ God ”from our dictionary?

When, instead of Sunday, we listen to the morning radio magazine, my car, go to nature to collect herbs or to a tennis club? It would seem that what is the kind: they demolished the churches - built new banks? God: open question. Theological prospect of modern culture. Therefore, I do not know how you, but I am to the words of those who talk about the sunset and death of God, are very skeptical.

As stated in the book “The Biography of God”: “One of the minuses of the theology of the death of God consisted in excessive absolutability and finality of statements. Nothing forever, and now we are observing the death of the death of God ”p. Read completely.