God of Abraham

In God of Abraham, Lenn Goodman expands on his critically acclaimed Monotheism (1981), rejecting and dichotomy between the God of Abraham and the God of the philosophers. He argues that in fact the two are one, and shows how human values can illuminate our idea of God and how the monotheistic idea of God in turn illuminates our moral, social, cultural, aesthetic, and even ritual understanding. Goodman traces the symbiosis of ideas about God and human values to its conceptual roots in the Biblical account of the binding of Isaac, and Abraham's momentous decision to spare Isaac's life and reject the pagan linkage of violence with the holy. Goodman argues that when Abraham separates horror from the holy he purges evil from the idea of the divine and forges the synthesis that will make possible the revelation of the Torah. Thus it becomes possible to integrate human values and human life in emulation of God's unity and goodness. Throughout this study Goodman draws on traditional, philosophical, historical, and anthropological materials, and particularly on a wealth of Jewish sources. He demonstrates how an adequate understanding of the interplay of values with monotheism dissolves many of the longstanding problems of natural theology and ethics and guides us toward a genuinely humanistic moral and social philosophy.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Philosophy. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.