A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Karen Armstrong’s background as a former nun turned scholar of comparative religion gives her a unique lens through which she examines the concept of God. Her personal spiritual journey, marked by both faith and skepticism, infuses her academic analysis. Armstrong’s experiences within the Catholic Church inform her portrayal of believers’ emotional and sometimes volatile relationship with their understanding of God. The religiosity of her youth, followed by questioning and an eventual exit from the convent, shapes her personal narrative and influences her examination of the Western tradition’s fraught relationship with the divine.

While her approach has garnered acclaim, some have criticized her emphasis on the more mystical aspects of religious experience, arguing that she oversimplifies complex theological concepts or undermines traditional religious doctrines. The drive to seek unity among religious concepts makes her writing sometimes prone to generalizations, for example, “[I]t is not difficult to see that this bhakti (devotion) to the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas was similar to the Christian devotion to Jesus. It also made the faith accessible to more people, rather as Paul had wished to make Judaism available to the goyim” (137). By equating the practice and belief of devotion across various traditions, she can occasionally neglect the nuances of theological difference.