Michael Novak, 1994 Templeton Prize winner, has taught at Harvard, Stanford, Syracuse, Notre Dame and now holds the Jewett Chair in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

From his Preface: “This book is for people who, like me, have spent long years in the dark and windswept open spaces between unbelief and belief. It is a fairly common voyage through the dark, not only in our age, but in every age.”…“First, I must at least briefly describe the darkness…”…”Next, I must try to explain what reason has led me to discover about the presence of god and His nature (darkly, by the ‘via negativa,’ by way of what He cannot be).”…”So we must inquire awhile about God, within the bounds of our intellect alone, before looking behind the veils that Judaism and Christianity pull back before our straining eyes.” He especially emphasizes that “My underlying thesis is a simple one: that unbelievers and believers need to learn a new habit of reasoned and mutually respectful conversation.”

In his Introduction he discusses ‘darkness.’ “As my studies of philosophy and the history of the spirit proceeded, I came to learn that, while one can come to know that God is present, our minds are unable to an adequate conception of Him, or to grasp Him with any of our five senses, or to imagine Him. His mode of drawing us into His presence is necessarily by way of absence, silence, nothingness.” Later he says “What we do wit the experience of nothingness depends on our prove reserves of practical wisdom, community, courage, honesty. By the end of our lives, learning from experience, we ought to be wiser tan we were in the beginning.”

After the Introduction, there are four parts and the very detailed (5 pp) Contents is excellent. Part One is False Starts (2 chapters, where he discusses the atheists Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens). Part Two is The Common Darkness (2 capters,consisting if a letter to and a reply from an atheist friend). Part Three is Who Are We, Under These Stars? (4 chapters, of which Ch 7 – Thinking About God – contains what I found most insightful in this book). Part Four – The New Conversation – discusses and contrasts “Secular” and “Secularist”, with the last chapter, Ch 10, being The End of the Secularist Age. Appendix One – Reflections in Westminster Abbey: Up from Nihilism – is “a lightly edited version of my Templeton lecture presented on May 4, 1994. It provides a superb summary of the lessons he learned, and in just 9 pp – thus one may wish to read this first. Appendix Two – Favorite “Dark” Biblical Passages – helps one understand what the “dark” means. I found this book by Michael Novak to be stimulating and insightful in an unusual way (the ‘via negativa’) and recommend it very highly.