Karen Armstrong discusses how these religions perceived and experienced God, from Abraham’s time to the present. She shows how they shaped and altered their conception of God and how they influenced each other. This was a NYT Bestseller. (For her books I've read, click on her name.)

Since she omits the Indian and Asian religions that John Bowker, John Renard and Huston Smith (books 10, 12, and 17, respectively) cover, she goes into much more detail than they did on Judaism, Christianity and Islam. She shows how social and political forces affected these religions. She also carefully traces the history of their concepts of God, from classical philosophy and theology, medieval mysticism, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, to the modern age with its skepticism, mysticism and current faiths. Her chapter “Trinity: the Christian God” is so full of facts and insights that I read it four times. I focused most on Christianity, whose God-thought was always dominated by orthodoxy (correct belief), than on Judaism and Islam, which are dominated more by orthopraxy (correct practice).

Both the theological and the mystical aspects are discussed in all three faiths. For the first time I understand the thinking behind the “via negativa” (negative way) of trying to comprehend the incomprehensibility of God. For instance, one meditates on “God is wise” and on “God is not wise,” resolving this conundrum only with “God is more than wise,” meaning we can never understand the high degree of wisdom of God. This book is not light reading by any means, as Karen Armstrong is very thorough, but with no bias towards a particular religion. If you want to learn how and why monotheists’ ideas of God developed and changed with time, this is a great book. It describes the many ways people viewed, with awe, wonder, and joy, the marvelous mystery we call God. I give it my very highest recommendation. Think six stars!