4. The religions of Abraham

‘The religions of Abraham: Christian understandings of God’ looks at Christianity beginning with its development from its Jewish Bible roots. Christianity began as one interpretation among many at that time of what it should mean to live in the Covenant relationship with God. Jesus' followers believed that Jesus, with whom they had lived and knew so well, was God in their midst. The Jewish understanding of God as One, the Creator of all things and of all people, did not change, but what did was their understanding of who God is and of how God is related to the world. The questions of Christology, Atonement, and the Trinity are then discussed.

2. Why believe in God?

‘Why believe in God?’ provides some examples of the many different answers that have been given to that question. Change and reliability in understanding God and the universe are considered. There are many hypotheses about God and many different characterisations of God in the different religions, even among those that are based on what is believed to be Revelation—as, for example, in Bible, Quran or Veda. What is important for many believers is the consequence of God in life and in experience. What that experience means and how it is related to recent research in the neurosciences is then explored.

7. On knowing and not knowing God

How can God be known? ‘On knowing and not knowing God’ proposes that it could only be if God creates the means of that knowing, and of that being known. What are the effects through which God becomes known? They are gathered in three groups: the first is ‘the apparel of creation’, the beauty, order, reliability, vastness of the universe. The second is through the interactive enterprise with humans that is referred to as ‘inspiration’. The third set are ways in which God is believed to have become manifest in human form and through which God continues to reach into the world. But what God is cannot be known.

1. Does God exist?

‘Does God exist?’ looks at ways in which philosophers and theologians have tried to answer that question in careful and precise language. In contrast, poets and believers use far more vivid and descriptive language to speak of God and to speak to God in prayer and worship. How are the two ‘languages’ related to each other? And do they tell us the truth? That question leads to a consideration of some of the major arguments for and against God, and to the reason why the arguments often lead to judgements of probability and not to conclusive demonstration.

6. Religions of India

‘Religions of India’ shows that Indian understandings and characterisations of God are extremely diverse and are expressed in the vivid proliferation of worship, rituals, meditation, music, art, and architecture. But they are held together in the context, not just of certain fundamental beliefs, in the wide acceptance of common practice and social organisation known collectively as Dharma. Indian religion can be seen as a ‘family of religions’ with a common ancestor. The epiphanies of ‘God’ go back to the Vedas, the earliest surviving texts of Indian religion from about 1500 bce. The great characterisations of God are Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva (which make up the ‘Hindu Trinity’) and Mahadevi.

5. The religions of Abraham

‘The religions of Abraham: Muslim understandings of God’ looks at Islam, which began historically with the life and work of Muhammad (570–632). From the Muslim point of view Islam began long before that with the purpose of God in Creation that people should live according to Din. In Muslim belief the Quran is the uncorrupted, complete, and final revelation transmitted from God through Muhammad into the world. But the Quran has to be interpreted and applied. Of decisive authority in doing this were the many Traditions, known collectively as Hadith, recording the things that Muhammad said and did. On the basis of Quran and Hadith, different schools of Sharia emerged.

3. The religions of Abraham

‘The religions of Abraham: Jewish understandings of God’ looks at Judaism in detail and the foundations in the Biblical period in order to show how the distinctive Jewish understandings of God came to be established, and how also those early characterisations of God were already beginning to be changed and developed within the Biblical period itself. The ways in which the first and foundational characterisations began to be, from the earliest days, developed and transformed are considered. The most obvious are the developments of the rabbis, of Kabbalah, of Maimonides, of the Hasidim, and of liturgy and prayer.