The professor of philosophy at St John’s University, New York, has compiled this massive tome on the reality of God from a number of theological and philosophical traditions. The purpose of the volume is to probe such issues as the existence of God, his nature and the ways in which God is known. Although many of the authors are Roman Catholics, scholars representing Jewish, Protestant and several Eastern traditions are included in the volume.

The four-part work opens with twelve essays on the concept of God in such ancient systems as African traditional religions, Islam, Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism and Judaism. The informative essays in this section facilitate an understanding of the vision of God in the world’s leading non-Christian religions.

In Part 2 six essays probe aspects of God in the Christian tradition. Studies on the concept of God in the thought of Plato and Aristotle enable the reader to assess the extent to which classical Greek philosophy has contributed to Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox formulations about God. McCool’s essay on ‘God in the Catholic Tradition’ skilfully traces the development of Catholic thought during the classical period, in the era following Vatican I and then beyond Vatican II. MacGregor’s contribution on ‘The Concept of God in the Reformation Tradition’ includes an analysis of the God concept in Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Ritschl and in more recent neology. The evangelical may indeed question whether the aforementioned thinkers fairly represent the Reformation tradition.

Part 3 contains seventeen essays dealing with the concept of God held by selected modern thinkers and by five contemporary schools of thought: process theology, analytic philosophy, death-of-God theology, the Unification movement and Marxist atheism. Full treatment is given to Hume’s destruction of the rational proofs for the existence of God, Whitehead’s vision of God as caught up in the cosmic process, the onto-theology of Heidegger and Tillich, and Gabriel Marcel’s existential ontology of the human condition. Especially insightful is Professor Eric Meyer’s explication of the theistic, panentheistic, pantheistic and atheistic strands which comprise the modern death-of-God theology. Meyer judges that in spite of Bonhoeffer’s intense personal piety, his radical theological system stimulated the atheistic death-of-God theology propounded by the likes of Altizer and Hamilton. Indeed, it is true that the theologian or biblical scholar transmits to posterity not his personal vision of God but his theoretical theological system—a fact which the evangelical student of Scripture would do well to bear in mind.

In this same section Jan Lochman of Basel probes the philosophical, social and anthropological dimensions of Marxian atheism. Lochman recognizes that in many respects the Marxist critique of society’s dehumanizing forces has been more penetrating than that of the church. He concludes that irresponsible political power and the mammonistic form of Christianity practiced by the church have provoked the Marxist revolutionary alternative. The reader must decide the validity of Lochman’s estimate of the positive side of Marxism: ‘Here no “atheism” of despairing negation is offered, as is quite often the case in the history of atheism. This atheism is not concerned with destroying but with constructing, not with renouncing but with healing’ (p. 877).

Part 4, which deals with a hotch-potch of specific theistic problems, proves less valuable than the three previous sections. The elimination of the fourth section together with greater utilization of type-space per page would help reduce the cost of a very expensive tome.

Nevertheless, in this very readable work of encyclopedic proportions the reader will find a thorough treatment of theology proper over a broad range of modern traditions. One suspects that when confronted with questions relating to the reality of God in modern religious thought this particular volume will frequently be taken down from the shelf. Clearly the work will make a valuable addition to any theological library.