Customer Reviews

God: A Brief History (Facets)

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This is an excellent example of historical theology. It ranges from the ancient Old Testament to contemporary theology and identifies with precision the twists and turns that make up the Christian theological traditions. Capetz covers an amazing sweep of history in this brief book and he make complex thought accessible to academics and lay people, alike. This would be a great text for a church book study. And, it makes a great refresher course for those of us whose Divinity School theology courses are slipping from memory.

This is, simply put, an excellent book, historical theology at its best. The scope is very wide, yet not at the cost of useful or thought-provoking depth on this topic - all the more remarkable in a book of 192 pages. If only more authors would think so clearly before beginning to write and remember the virtue of brevity!

Capetz has a way of re-explaining or re-examining the familiar ideas and putting them into a fresh perspective grounded in history. He clearly shows how some tenets of Christianity about God began and evolved, and does so with a fine and subtle economy of language.

A fine book, a pleasure to read and reflect on. I look forward to more from this talented author and thinker.

It can be exceedingly difficult to translate complex beliefs and structures into a few brief, easily digested paragraphs without stripping them of significance and deeper meaning. It is harder, still, to do this and keep the book easy to read and accessible to a broad audience. Yet, Paul Capetz has done just that in this small book. The section on process theology comes to mind, here. I highly recommend it to those new to such studies and, equally so, to those who are well versed in the subject and can appreciate a concise survey. I have given away several copies of this great little book.

Especially for people just beginning to study the history of Christian thought, this is a pretty good historical overview. Capetz is usually clear and easy to understand, and he seems to have a fairly impressive knowledge of key philosophical and theological thinkers in Christian history. He's definitely working from a specific theological viewpoint, and sometimes his interpretive efforts can get in the way (his interpretation of Luther and Julian of Norwich seems a little less orthodox than these two thinkers would admit). Also, his strengths are not in biblical studies, as the brief chapters on the biblical tradition indicate. However, this is a short, concise, fairly useful rendering of Christian intellectual expression from the early church to the twentieth century.