Weaving a multicoloured fabric of historical, philosophical, intellectual and social developments and insights, Armstrong shows how, at various times through the centuries, each of the monotheistic religions has held a subtly different concept of God. At the same time she draws attention to the basic and profound similarities among them, making it clear that in all of them God has been and is experienced intensely, passionately and often—especially in the West—traumatically. Some monotheists have seen darkness, desolation and terror, where others have seen light and transfiguration; the reasons for these inherent differences are examined, and the people behind them are brought to life. A History of God, surprisingly, made it to the New York Times bestseller list! Perhaps that says something about our need to get to the bottom of all this.

All talk about God staggers under impossible difficulties. Yet monotheists have all been very positive about language at the same time as they have denied its capacity to express the transcendent reality. The God of Jews, Christians and Muslims is a God who—in some sense—speaks. His Word is crucial in all three faiths. The Word of God has shaped the history of our culture. We have to decide whether the word “God” has any meaning for us today.

There is no one unchanging idea contained in the word “God”; instead, the word contains a whole spectrum of meanings, some of which are contradictory or even mutually exclusive. Had the notion of God not had this flexibility, it would not have survived to becomes one of the great human ideas. . . .

Atheism has often been a transitional state; thus Jews, Christian and Muslims were all called “atheists” by their pagan contemporaries because they had adopted a revolutionary notion of divinity and transcendence. Is modern atheism a similiar denial of a “God” which is no longer adequate to the problems of our time?