Read online "God's story". Read History of God Online by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong

History of God

Foreword

As a child, I had persistent religious beliefs and a rather weak faith in God. There is a difference between beliefs (when we take certain statements on faith) and true faith (when we rely on them completely) there is a difference. Of course, I believed that God exists. I believed in the actual presence of Christ in communion, in the effectiveness of the sacraments, and in eternal torment for sinners. I believed that purgatory was a very real place. However, I cannot say that these beliefs in religious dogmas about the nature of higher reality gave me a genuine sense of the grace of earthly existence. When I was a child, Catholicism was mostly a bullying creed. James Joyce accurately described it in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; I, too, listened to my course of sermons on fiery hell. In truth, the torments of hell looked much more convincing than God. The underworld was easily comprehended by the imagination, but God remained an obscure figure and was determined not so much by visual images as by speculative reasoning. At the age of eight, I had to memorize the answer to the question "Who is God?" from the catechism: "God is the Supreme Spirit, the one Self-existent and infinite in all perfections." Of course, I did not understand the meaning of these words. I must admit that they still leave me indifferent: such a definition has always seemed to me too dry, pompous and arrogant. And while working on this book, I came to the conclusion that it is also wrong.

Growing up, I realized that religion is not only fear. I have read the lives of the saints, the metaphysical poets, the poems of Thomas Eliot, and some of the simpler mystics. The Liturgy began to captivate me with its beauty. God still remained far away, but I felt that I could still reach Him and that touching Him would instantly transform the entire universe. For the sake of this, I joined one of the spiritual orders. Becoming a nun, I learned a lot more about faith. I immersed myself in apologetics, theological research, and Church history. I studied the history of monastic life and embarked on the most detailed discussions about the charter of our order, which we all had to know by heart. Oddly enough, in all this God did not occupy such a large place. The main attention was paid to minor details, particulars of faith. During prayer, I desperately forced myself to focus all my thoughts on meeting with God, but He either remained a stern taskmaster, vigilantly watching for any violation of the charter, or - which was even more painful - generally slipped away. The more I read about the mystical raptures of the righteous, the more distressed I was by my own failures. I bitterly admitted to myself that even the rare religious experiences I had might well have been the product of my own fantasy, the result of a burning desire to experience them. Religious feeling is often an aesthetic response to the charm of the liturgy and Gregorian chant. Anyway, nothing happened to me that came from outside. I have never felt those glimpses of God's presence that mystics and prophets told about. Jesus Christ, about whom we spoke much more often than about God himself, seemed to be a purely historical figure, inseparable from the era of late antiquity. Worse, some of the Church's doctrines were causing me more and more doubts. How can one be sure, for example, that Jesus was the Incarnation of God? What does this idea even mean? And the doctrine of the Trinity? Is this complex - and highly controversial - concept really found in the New Testament? Perhaps, like many other theological constructions, the Trinity was simply invented by the clergy centuries after the execution of Jesus in Jerusalem?

Eventually, though not without regret, I withdrew from the religious life, and this step immediately freed me from the burden of failure and feelings of inferiority. I felt my faith in God weaken. To tell the truth, He never left a significant mark in my life, although I tried with all my might to do so. And I felt no guilt, no regrets - God became too far away to seem something real. However, I have retained my interest in religion itself. I have produced a number of television shows on the early history of Christianity and religious experiences. As I studied the history of religion, I became more and more convinced that my earlier fears were well founded. Doctrines, which in youth were accepted without reasoning, were indeed invented by people and honed over many centuries. Science has clearly rid itself of the need for a Creator, and Bible scholars have proven that Jesus never claimed divinity. I had visions during my epileptic seizures, but I knew that these were only symptoms of neuropathology; perhaps the mystical delight of saints and prophets should also be attributed to the whims of the psyche? God began to seem to me some kind of insanity, which the human race has long outgrown.

Despite my years in the monastery, I do not consider my religious experiences to be anything out of the ordinary. My ideas about God were formed in early childhood, but later they could not get along with knowledge in other areas. I revised the naive children's beliefs in Santa Claus; I grew out of diapers and came to a more mature understanding of complexity human life. But my early confused ideas about God never changed. Yes, my religious upbringing was rather unusual, but many other people may find that their concept of God was formed in infancy. Since then, much water has flowed under the bridge, we have abandoned simple-minded views - and with them the God of our childhood.

Nevertheless, my research in the field of the history of religion confirmed that man is a spiritual animal. There is every reason to believe that Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. People have believed in gods ever since they took on human features. Religions arose along with the first works of art. And this was not just because people wanted to appease the powerful higher power. Already in the most ancient beliefs, that feeling of miracle and mystery is manifested, which still remains an integral part of the human perception of our beauty and beauty. scary world. Like art, religion is an attempt to find the meaning of life, to reveal its values - in spite of the suffering to which the flesh is doomed. In the religious realm, as in any other area of human activity, abuses occur, but we simply cannot seem to behave differently. To abuse is a natural human trait, and it is by no means limited to the eternal earthiness of powerful kings and priests. Truly, the modern secularized society is an unprecedented experiment that has no analogues in the history of mankind. And we have yet to find out how it will turn out. It is also true that the liberal humanism of the West does not arise by itself - it needs to be taught, as one is taught to understand painting or poetry. Humanism is also a religion, only without God, because God is not in all religions. Our worldly ethical ideal is also based on some concepts of the mind and soul and, like more traditional religions, provides grounds for the same belief in higher meaning human life.

When I began to study the history of ideal and experiential conceptions of God in the three closely related religions of monotheism - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - I deliberately assumed that God would turn out to be simply a projection of human needs and desires. I considered "Him" to be a reflection of the fears and aspirations of society in its various stages of growth. It cannot be said that these assumptions were completely refuted, but some discoveries came as a complete surprise to me, and I regretted that I did not know all this thirty years ago, when my religious life was just beginning. I would have saved myself from long torments if even then I had heard from prominent representatives of each of the three religions that you should not wait until God descends on you - you should, on the contrary, consciously cultivate the feeling of His unchanging presence in your soul. If I knew then wise rabbis, monks or Sufis, they would have severely reprimanded me for suggesting that God is some kind of “external” reality. They would have warned me not to hope to take God as an objective fact, amenable to ordinary rational thought. They would certainly say that in a certain very important way God is indeed a figment of the creative imagination, like the music and poetry that inspire me so much. And some of the most respected monotheists would whisper to me in secret that there is no God, but at the same time "He" is the most important reality in the world.

This book is not about the history of the inexpressible existence of God Himself, not subject to time or change; this is the history of the ideas of the human race about God - from Abraham to the present day. The human idea of God has its own history, because in different eras different nations perceived it differently. The concept of God held by one generation may be completely meaningless to another. The words "I believe in God" are devoid of objective content. Like any other statement, they are filled with meaning only in the context when they are pronounced by a member of a certain society. Thus, behind the concept of "God" is not at all hidden some unchanging idea. On the contrary, it contains the widest range of meanings, and some of them can completely negate each other and even turn out to be internally contradictory. Without such flexibility, the idea of God would never have taken one of the main places in the history of human thought. And when some ideas about God lost their meaning or became obsolete, they were simply imperceptibly forgotten and replaced by new theologies. Fundamentalists, of course, will not agree with this, because fundamentalism itself is anti-historical and is based on the belief that Abraham, Moses and the ancient prophets perceived God exactly as modern people. But if you take a closer look at our three religions, it becomes clear that there is no objective opinion about “God” in them: each generation creates such an image of Him that corresponds to its historical tasks. By the way, the same applies to atheism, since the phrase "I do not believe in God" in different historical eras also meant something. The so-called "godless" always deny some concrete idea of the divine. But who is that "God" that atheists do not believe in today, the God of the patriarchs, prophets, philosophers, mystics or deists of the eighteenth century? Jews, Christians and Muslims in different historical eras worshiped all these gods, each calling it God - the Bible or the Koran. We will see later that in fact these gods were not at all similar to each other. Moreover, atheism often became a kind of transitional stage. There was a time when the pagans called "godless" the Jews, Christians and Muslims themselves, who came to completely revolutionary ideas of the Deity and the Transcendent. Perhaps modern atheism is a similar denial of "God", which has ceased to correspond to the needs of our era?

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

Project manager I. Seryogina

Translator K. Semenov

Technical editor N. Lisitsyna

Correctors V. Muratkhanov, O. Ilinskaya

Computer layout M. Potashkin

Cover artist Y. Gulitov

Armstrong K.

The Story of God: 4,000 Years of Quest in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam / Karen Armstrong; Per. from English. - 3rd ed. – M.: Alpina non-fiction, 2011.

ISBN 978-5-9614-2695-3

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic copy of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Foreword

As a child, I had strong religious beliefs and a rather weak faith in God. Between beliefs(when we take certain statements for granted) and the present faith(when we completely rely on them) there is a difference. Of course, I believed that God exists. I believed in the actual presence of Christ in communion, in the effectiveness of the sacraments, and in eternal torment for sinners. I believed that purgatory was a very real place. However, I cannot say that these beliefs in religious dogmas about the nature of higher reality gave me a genuine sense of the grace of earthly existence. When I was a child, Catholicism was mostly an intimidating creed. James Joyce accurately described it in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; I, too, listened to my course of sermons on fiery hell. In truth, the torments of hell looked much more convincing than God. The underworld was easily comprehended by the imagination, but God remained an obscure figure and was determined not so much by visual images as by speculative reasoning. At the age of eight, I had to memorize the answer to the question "Who is God?" from the catechism: "God is the Supreme Spirit, the one Self-existent and infinite in all perfections." Of course, I did not understand the meaning of these words. I must admit that they still leave me indifferent: such a definition has always seemed to me too dry, pompous and arrogant. And while working on this book, I came to the conclusion that it is also wrong.

Growing up, I realized that religion is not only fear. I have read the lives of the saints, the metaphysical poets, the poems of Thomas Eliot, and some of the simpler mystics. The Liturgy began to captivate me with its beauty. God still remained far away, but I felt that I could still reach Him and that touching Him would instantly transform the entire universe. For the sake of this, I joined one of the spiritual orders. Becoming a nun, I learned a lot more about faith. I immersed myself in apologetics, theological research, and Church history. I studied the history of monastic life and launched into the most detailed discussions about the rules of our order, which we all had to know by heart. Oddly enough, in all this God did not occupy such a large place. The main attention was paid to minor details, particulars of faith. During prayer, I desperately forced myself to focus all my thoughts on a meeting with God, but He either remained a stern taskmaster, vigilantly watching for any violation of the rule, or - which was even more painful - generally slipped away. The more I read about the mystical raptures of the righteous, the more distressed I was by my own failures. I bitterly admitted to myself that even the rare religious experiences I had might well have been the product of my own fantasy, the result of a burning desire to experience them. Religious feeling is often an aesthetic response to the charm of the liturgy and Gregorian chant. One way or another, with me didn't happen nothing that comes from outside. I have never felt those glimpses of God's presence that mystics and prophets told about. Jesus Christ, about whom we spoke much more often than about God himself, seemed to be a purely historical figure, inseparable from the era of late antiquity. Worse, some of the Church's doctrines were causing me more and more doubts. How can one be sure, for example, that Jesus was the Incarnation of God? What does this idea even mean? And the doctrine of the Trinity? Is this complex – and highly controversial – concept really found in the New Testament? Perhaps, like many other theological constructions, the Trinity was simply invented by the clergy centuries after the execution of Jesus in Jerusalem?

Eventually, though not without regret, I withdrew from the religious life, and this step immediately freed me from the burden of failure and feelings of inferiority. I felt my weakness belief into God. To tell the truth, He never left a significant mark in my life, although I tried with all my might to do so. And I felt no guilt, no regrets - God became too distant to seem something real. However, I have retained my interest in religion itself. I have produced a number of television shows on the early history of Christianity and religious experiences. As I studied the history of religion, I became more and more convinced that my earlier fears were well founded. Doctrines, which in youth were accepted without reasoning, were indeed invented by people and honed over many centuries. Science has clearly rid itself of the need for a Creator, and Bible scholars have proven that Jesus never claimed divinity. I had visions during my epileptic seizures, but I knew that these were only symptoms of neuropathology; perhaps the mystical delight of saints and prophets should also be attributed to the whims of the psyche? God began to seem to me some kind of insanity, which the human race has long outgrown.

Despite my years in the monastery, I do not consider my religious experiences to be anything out of the ordinary. My ideas about God were formed in early childhood, but later they could not get along with knowledge in other areas. I revised the naive children's beliefs in Santa Claus; I grew out of diapers and came to a more mature understanding of the complexity of human life. But my early confused ideas about God never changed. Yes, my religious upbringing was rather unusual, but many other people may find that their concept of God was formed in infancy. Since then, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, we have abandoned simple-minded views - and with them the God of our childhood.

Nevertheless, my research in the field of the history of religion confirmed that man is a spiritual animal. There is every reason to believe that Homo sapiens- this and Homo religiosus. People have believed in gods ever since they took on human features. Religions arose along with the first works of art. And this happened not just because people wanted to pacify powerful higher powers. Already in the most ancient beliefs, that feeling of miracle and mystery is manifested, which still remains an integral part of the human perception of our beautiful and terrible world. Like art, religion is an attempt to find the meaning of life, to reveal its values - in spite of the suffering that the flesh is doomed to. In the religious realm, as in any other area of human activity, abuses occur, but we simply cannot seem to behave differently. To abuse is a natural human trait, and it is by no means limited to the eternal earthiness of powerful kings and priests. Truly, the modern secularized society is an unprecedented experiment that has no analogues in the history of mankind. And we have yet to find out how it will turn out. It is also true that the liberal humanism of the West does not arise by itself - it needs to be taught, as one is taught to understand painting or poetry. Humanism is also a religion, only without God, because God is not in all religions. Our worldly ethical ideal is also based on certain concepts of the mind and soul and, like more traditional religions, provides grounds for the same belief in the higher meaning of human life.

This book is not about the history of the inexpressible existence of God Himself, not subject to time or change; it is the history of the ideas of the human race about God - from Abraham to the present day.

Karen Armstrong - A History of God - A Thousand-Year Quest in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Publisher: Sofia, 2004

The human idea of God has its own history, because in different epochs different peoples perceived Him differently. The concept of God held by one generation may be completely meaningless to another. The words "I believe in God" are devoid of objective content. Like any other statement, they are filled with meaning only in the context when they are pronounced by a member of a certain society.

The famous historian of religion, the Englishwoman Karen Armstrong is endowed with rare virtues: an enviable scholarship and a brilliant gift for speaking simply about complex things. She created a real miracle, covering in one book the entire history of monotheism - from Abraham to the present day, from ancient philosophy, medieval mysticism, the spiritual quest of the Renaissance and the Reformation up to the skepticism of the modern era.

Karen Armstrong - A History of God - A Thousand-Year Quest in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - Table of Contents

1. IN THE BEGINNING…
2. ONE GOD
3. LIGHT TO THE GENTIANS
4. TRINITY: THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIANS
5. UNITY: THE GOD OF THE MUSLIM
6. GOD OF PHILOSOPHERS
7. GOD OF MYSTICS
8. GOD OF REFORMERS
9. ENLIGHTENMENT
10. GOD IS DEAD?
11. LONG LIVE GOD?

Karen Armstrong - History of God - Foreword

As a child, I had strong religious beliefs and a rather weak faith in God. There is a difference between beliefs (when we take certain statements on faith) and true faith (when we rely on them completely) there is a difference. Of course, I believed that God exists. I believed in the actual presence of Christ in communion, in the effectiveness of the sacraments, and in eternal torment for sinners. I believed that purgatory was a very real place. However, I cannot say that these beliefs in religious dogmas about the nature of higher reality gave me a genuine sense of the grace of earthly existence. When I was a child, Catholicism was mostly a bullying creed. James Joyce accurately described it in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; I, too, listened to my course of sermons on fiery hell. In truth, the torments of hell looked much more convincing than God.

The underworld was easily comprehended by the imagination, but God remained an obscure figure and was determined not so much by visual images as by speculative reasoning. At the age of eight, I had to memorize the answer to the question "Who is God?" from the catechism: "God is the Supreme Spirit, the one Self-existent and infinite in all perfections." Of course, I did not understand the meaning of these words. I must admit that they still leave me indifferent: such a definition has always seemed to me too dry, pompous and arrogant. And while working on this book, I came to the conclusion that it is also wrong.

Growing up, I realized that religion is not only fear. I have read the lives of the saints, the metaphysical poets, the poems of Thomas Eliot, and some of the lesser mystics. The Liturgy began to captivate me with its beauty. God still remained far away, but I felt that I could still reach Him and that touching Him would instantly transform the entire universe. For the sake of this, I joined one of the spiritual orders. Becoming a nun, I learned a lot more about faith.

I immersed myself in apologetics, theological research, and Church history. I studied the history of monastic life and launched into the most detailed discussions about the rules of our order, which we all had to know by heart. Oddly enough, in all this God did not occupy such a large place. The main attention was paid to minor details, particulars of faith. During prayer, I desperately forced myself to focus all my thoughts on meeting with God, but He either remained a stern taskmaster, vigilantly watching for any violation of the charter, or - which was even more painful - generally slipped away. The more I read about the mystical raptures of the righteous, the more distressed I was by my own failures. I bitterly admitted to myself that even the rare religious experiences I had might well have been the product of my own fantasy, the result of a burning desire to experience them.

Religious feeling is often an aesthetic response to the charm of the liturgy and Gregorian chant. Anyway, nothing happened to me that came from outside. I have never felt those glimpses of God's presence that mystics and prophets told about. Jesus Christ, about whom we spoke much more often than about God himself, seemed to be a purely historical figure, inseparable from the era of late antiquity. Worse, some of the Church's doctrines were causing me more and more doubts. How can one be sure, for example, that Jesus was the Incarnation of God? What does this idea even mean? And the doctrine of the Trinity? Is this complex - and highly controversial - concept really found in the New Testament? Perhaps, like many other theological constructions, the Trinity was simply invented by the clergy centuries after the execution of Jesus in Jerusalem?

Doctrines, which in youth were accepted without reasoning, were indeed invented by people and honed over many centuries. Science has clearly rid itself of the need for a Creator, and Bible scholars have proven that Jesus never claimed divinity. I had visions during my epileptic seizures, but I knew that these were only symptoms of neuropathology; perhaps the mystical delight of saints and prophets should also be attributed to the whims of the psyche? God began to seem to me some kind of insanity, which the human race has long outgrown.

It's time to write a review of a book that was published in 1993, and in Russian, it seems, in 2004. However, The History of God regularly goes through one reprint after another. The last one came out just in 2014 and is now sold in many stores (but the text of the book is also on the Internet, so spending money is not necessary). This is not an academic work, but you can’t call it chewing gum for the mass consumer either. Therefore, such a long life of the book (by the standards of the current information society) is already remarkable. This work deserves attention.

So, full name- History of God. 4000 years of searching in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The author is Karen Armstrong, a former nun who left the convent because of doubts about religion. The biting title of the book is probably a tribute to commercial hits. Armstrong herself clarifies in the preface: This book is not about the history of the inexpressible existence of God himself, not subject to time or change; it is the history of the ideas of the human race about God - from Abraham to the present day. The approach itself is indicative: the historicity, the evolutionary nature of the idea of God is already unbearable for religious consciousness and turns it from an ontological absolute into a socio-psychological fact, making the divine derived from the human.

However, Armstrong is not so consistent in her conclusions, but, although she is not a materialist, her method of research is dialectical; The "History of God" is not just a chronology of religious teachings, but the dynamics of their development, united by internal logic, quite natural and in its own way tragic for the main character of the story. Although the author's concept is not new for historians and religious scholars, it is useful for us, ordinary people, to remember that for thousands of years people believed not only in different things, but also differently:

“The words “I believe in God” are devoid of objective content. Like any other statement, they are filled with meaning only in the context when they are pronounced by a member of a certain society. Thus, behind the concept of "God" is not at all hidden some unchanging idea. On the contrary, it contains the widest range of meanings, and some of them can completely negate each other and even turn out to be internally contradictory.

The subject of the book is almost exclusively the history of the Abrahamic religions. It is regrettable that Armstrong devotes less than ten pages to the era “before Abraham”, starting the story with the theory of “primitive monotheism” (or pre-monotheism), which today is considered, to put it mildly, controversial and unproven. Of course, the author is free to choose the scope of the study. But such an approach somewhat distorts the perspective, especially for the unprepared reader: religion appears on the scene almost out of nowhere, for no reason, and, accordingly, without due consideration of the primary sources of religious feeling. The "History of God" is like a picture, where the temple is scrupulously and realistically depicted - but not standing on the ground, but suspended in the air. The reader will learn a lot What thought about God in different eras, but much less - why.

And this is not just a chosen angle, but a worldview position. Armstrong addresses religious concepts from within, touching little (and rather superficially) on their material and social conditionality. The very question of the origin of religion is removed by the assertion that the religious feeling naturally inherent to a person. However, using her own method, we are entitled to object that this original religious feeling, even in its basis, bears little resemblance to the present one. Having said that religious faith has accompanied man throughout his history, it must be clarified that at the same time it has changed its character more than once, so much so that the faith that Armstrong herself adheres to is a little like the faith of a medieval person, and in no way resembles a religious feeling. archaic man.

The author, however, objects, but too ad hominem: Already in the most ancient beliefs, that feeling of miracle and mystery is manifested, which still remains an integral part of the human perception of our beautiful and terrible world.

Even so, "miracle and mystery" is not enough to establish the identity of the subject. This feeling lives in art, and - in part - in scientific research. However, it seems to us that to impose excessive mystery on archaic beliefs is no small sin against the historical approach. Yes, they are mysterious to us today, thousands of years later, when we collect their mosaic from scattered fragments. But how did they feel living carriers? After all, the archaic myth was not a means of clouding, but, on the contrary, of structuring and interpreting the world for the primary coordination of the collective. Moreover, the myth was the only a picture of the world that was possible in the conditions of a primitive society, wholly and completely dependent on the elemental forces of nature.

Strictly speaking, to call such a worldview "religious" would be wrong. The main feature of the archaic consciousness was its totality, indivisibility: the dichotomy of the material and the ideal in the sense classical philosophy the primitive world did not know. The image (verbal or pictorial) did not simply mean an object, it also was object. Divine and demonic forces were thought of as quite material (yes, in fact, they were personified), and the ritual was part of the practical support Everyday life. The gods of early antiquity were completely devoid of sublimity, shocking the modern reader with extreme naturalism, rudeness and immorality. Accordingly, they were perceived not as a “miracle and mystery”, but as powerful figures with whom certain mutually beneficial relations were created through ritual, imposing obligations on both sides. So, a statue of a god who did not fulfill its functions could be put on a starvation ration as a punishment, depriving it of sacrifices, or even carved. The archaic consciousness did not remove the gods to transcendent distances, the divine lived Here and now.

Such a picture of the world was, of course, conditional to a certain extent, but the point is precisely that at that time human thought had not yet developed the means for expressing and defining this conditionality; and what is inexpressible through language cannot be realized.

This stage in the development of religion is recorded as early as the written sources of the 3rd millennium BC. Ritual is inseparable from practical activity, and such activity itself often takes the form of a ritual. However, by the beginning of the 2nd millennium, as the first civilizations of the Fertile Crescent accumulate knowledge and provide themselves with relative independence from the forces of the elements, a corresponding ideological turn is also brewing. The practical expediency of the cult rite is questioned (which is exemplified by, say, the poems "Babylonian Theodicy" and "The Innocent Sufferer", prototypes of the biblical "Book of Job"). God urgently needed to find a new place for himself in the universe - and such a place for the next three millennia became human soul. The starting point of the new relationship between man and God is the Jewish myth about Abraham, the events of which date back to about the 20th-18th centuries. BC e. From this moment begins the story of Karen Armstrong.

Analyzing multi-temporal strata old testament, she proves that the essence of this myth is not at all in the birth of monotheism. It is quite possible that the god of Abraham is not even identical to the Old Testament god, but was just one of the Near Eastern deities who later merged into a single image of Yahweh. The novelty lies elsewhere. The archaic heavens are organized horizontally: the gods, of course, are at enmity with each other, but do not deny each other, religious strife is unknown to antiquity - here God declares himself not as the only one, but as exceptional. It can be said that through the myth of Abraham, for the first time, God directly establishes a connection with the personality of man, tames his. Now it is not enough to reckon with it as an abstract fact; he should become value.

It is clear that this became necessary precisely when the divine took the first step away from material world. Ritual as a form of communication with the deity still dominates; only in the eighth century. BC e., through the mouth of the prophet Hosea, the Jewish god will proclaim: “I want mercy, not sacrifice!” - that is, having finally renounced earthly materiality, he will assume the exclusive right to sanction morality.

But we will not retell the text of the book. Wishing - yes read. She scrupulously analyzes the formation of the three great Abrahamic religions, seriously and fascinatingly talks about theological concepts within each of them, drawing parallels proving that the emergence of certain religious beliefs is not an accidental (and even less "divinely inspired") phenomenon, but the product of "human , too human" sociocultural realities.

Armstrong is extremely skeptical about religious philosophy, that is, fruitless attempts to rationally, rationalistically comprehend and justify the existence of God. She repeats many times: we know absolutely nothing about God, his existence is unprovable, and his essence is unknowable. Finally, she recognizes the very idea of "anthropomorphic" (not physically, of course, but mentally), i.e., personal god unacceptable, unsatisfactory, moreover - harmful. (Strictly speaking, it is not the idea itself that is harmful, but its application in social practice. This is the whole point: people have been killing and oppressing each other for thousands of years under a variety of slogans, not embarrassed if necessary to invent them from scratch: trifling discrepancies that just yesterday coexisted peacefully with each other, turn into an occasion for a bloodbath - ideology is important, it affects social relations, but not creates their.)

Here we must acknowledge another indisputable merit of the author: Armstrong has enough honesty not to hide the problems facing the religious consciousness. In fact, the whole history of God is the history of these problems. We see how, from century to century, God inexorably dematerializes, abstracts, hides in the transcendent. Finally, by the beginning of the 20th century, the author has to state the “death of God”, albeit with a question mark (although today, in the era of ISIS and “spiritual bonds”, such a statement seems, alas, less justified than in 1993, when the book was written) . For all its academic correctness, it is far from impassive in its assessments, and the recognition of the irrelevance of religious consciousness in modern world who lost his god, is clearly saturated with the pain of what he experienced. In front of her sincerity, one does not even want to be ironic about the unsightly results of 4,000 years of searching. It finds no way out either in fundamentalism (which resolutely condemns without regard to outward vestments - Islamic, Christian, Jewish), or in dogmatic scholasticism. But, it must be said, not in atheism either - although in many respects he recognizes the correctness of atheistic criticism of traditional religious views and leaves open the question of the results of the “experiment” to create a secularized society: “if in our empirical age the former ideas about God cease to be useful, they will, of course, be rejected.

And besides, the sad story of God for Armstrong does not mean a break with religious faith, albeit in a very peculiar way. But then what remains of God - a non-personal god, devoid of any anthropomorphism, ineffable and ineffable by definition, melted away without a trace in a transcendental fog, about which one cannot even say whether he exists or not? And should I be worried about this shadow? Following the above words, she continues:

“On the other hand, until now, people have always created new symbols, which have become the focus of their spirituality. At all times, man himself created what he believed in, since he absolutely needs a sense of a miracle and an inexpressible fulfillment of being. All the characteristic signs of modernity - the loss of meaning and purpose, alienation, the collapse of foundations, violence - testify, judging by everything, that now, when we are no longer trying to deliberately create for ourselves neither faith in "God", nor anything else (whatever, in fact, the difference is, what to believe?), all more people fall into despair.

One cannot but agree with this diagnosis. But what is the cure? According to Karen Armstrong, the path between the Scylla of despair and the Charybdis of fanaticism can run through "mystical agnosticism" - that is, the extra-rational experience of a divine miracle through the medium of imagination: a religious feeling must turn into a fact of the believer's individual psyche - in other words, a person must himself create a god within yourself. Indeed, the psychic fact of religious experience cannot be refuted. As Bertrand Russell said, it is possible to have sincere feelings for a fictional hero, but from this follows only the authenticity of the feeling, and not the authenticity of the hero. The trouble, however, is that religion as a social phenomenon is created precisely by the sum of individual faiths, and it is not clear how successful "mystical agnosticism" will differ from other religious teachings. Armstrong herself admits that such an exit is unlikely to become widespread: the path to mystical enlightenment is long and difficult ...

And is it necessary? Few, negligible arguments are given by Armstrong to substantiate his "residual religiosity": the notorious "sense of wonder and mystery", the fear of emptiness and loneliness, the divine nature of inspiration ... But in none of these points are religious or mystical experiences indispensable condition. It is wrong to identify a secularized society with wingless pragmatism: although today we have just such a model, we know other examples when creative impulses, self-sacrifice and the highest ideals rose to heights never seen before in the history of mankind. If anyone wants to call it the nauseating word "spirituality" - it's not scary, by and large it is in place: after all, we are talking about liberating a person from a dull slump of utilitarian values.

By the end of the second millennium, the feeling that the familiar world is fading into the past has intensified - with these words the last chapter of the "History of God" begins. This is true. Over the past 20 years, the feeling has grown into the most weighty expectation, penetrating even solid political forecasts. This frightens some, but reassures someone, because the death of the old is always the birth of the new. But the "death of a god" is more a symptom than a cause of the turmoil of today's world, and the resolution of these problems lies beyond its 4,000-year history...