A history of God

Yahweh, Jesus, Allah. Where did God get started? How has the idea changed over time? What is the meaning of the famous statement “God is dead”? This unit explores the way God has been imagined in a variety of religious and mystical traditions in different times and places. Focusing on the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and comparing and contrasting them with the Eastern traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, it analyses the historical development of theological, philosophical and mystical conceptions of the divine. Tracing the story of God from Antiquity through the Middle Ages and into Modernity, the unit considers how understandings of God have transformed, and been transformed by, society. Closing with contemporary critical approaches to the relationship between science and faith, we examine recent challenges posed by the Enlightenment, secularism, feminism, and the Holocaust.