Review and Response to “What Do We Mean by ‘God’?”

I recently read the booklet “What do we mean by ‘God’?” by Keith Ward. It’s a short booklet — 56 pages. Meaning you can sit down in one sitting and get through it. Who would have thought there could be a whole conversation about God in only 56 small pages, but Keith Ward was able to do that.

Ward deals with some age-old questions like Who or what is God?, why must God be infinite?, and how do we speak with God?. To answer these questions, he looks to theologians and philosophers of the past to give us a history of what people have said before.

In a sense, this little book, is a quick shot of theology and philosophy all wrapped up in a small package.

Here’s a sample of Ward’s dealing with who God is:

“The most that human concepts can do is to point, very inadequately, towards God. If we can remember that, it will be a great religious gain. For it will stop a lot of intolerance in our religious lives. Intolerance begins when people think they have the one absolute final truth, and that people who disagree with them must be perverse or corrupt.” (Pg. 15).

That’s music to my ears. The essence is the God is complex and unknowable, yet God has made Godself known. God is a mystery by the very essence of being God, yet God put limits on Godself to be known by us.