I bought the book and it's a delight to read. I couldn't get enough of the introduction when I started and must have read it more than a dozen times before moving on. To get the best out of this book I think it must be read slowly and studied carefully.

Brilliant under rated scholar.

Dr. Armstrong's ideas are so rich and nuanced that I feel reading the book allows one to absorb them better than listening to a speech. I highly recommend the book.

One of the very few scholars who knows what religion is.

I love this video. Dr Karen Armstrong explains it very well and goes deep into the understanding of what God is, or rather what God is not.

I understand what you're saying, and, in part, agree; but I thank Armstrong's value is in her insistence that God is a mysterious reality by definition, and I think that its important to be reminded of that.

Thank you Karen

What a lovely, wise woman...

I want to own this video can I buy this video or as a podcast I love this seriously Karen Armstrong has inspired me and made me realize that every word she said is every single thing that I actually have believed for years but never articulated like this....... I even sent this to my mother... like here you don't have to cry for me anymore....

Exactly,she explains coming from the heart,being in God is indeed an act,a practise, the mystery is there beyond any religion or dogma or description and is indeed infinite.thank God for complexity and mystery, may we step outside of ourselves, feel compassion,imagine ourselves in others shoes and show them respect, may we see the divine in each other and in all.

It's depressing how few views there are of this yet so many for what one might call 'the antagonists'. Spread the good news :)

Certainly her views are like an oasis of calm in a very scary time with alot of people stirring up bad feeling.

REV ARMSTRONG

Thomas Aquinas and all the great theologians would disagree that religion is all about "doing things". There is no doubt that praxis is important- in fact, the most important thing- but belief (orthodoxy) is just as important in a sense. Your beliefs determine your actions. One acts in accordance with ones beliefs.

I like Karen Armstrong's point of view,but the question that arises is whether you can call this a religion or not.Karen Armstrong doesn't believe that the universe has a creator.She believes it is not important whether there is an afterlife or not.

Are there 7 powerful god like figure 777, 666 ect.? Which are the religions out of all religions acknowledge a heaven? Is it possible each religion has a number and divine symbol in each religion has a number and a level? "No other gods before " I believe was a quote in one religion I recall it makes me curious about this that is why I ask. Are there other gods ? What is difference between them and Angels ? If God is 7 devil is 6 who are the other 5 ? Are there more than 7 recognized influences

Cavemen were less confused than both u and me...

liked her merit. it senses. sharing

what a great wise decent muslim woman....god bless her and i wich i could meat her in paradise ...amen

As a respectful agnostic, I think she's a great writer but don't understand her religiosity. Having attended a few Quaker meetings my experiences is that most intelligent people who get 'converted' in adult life are those who were brought up to be religious then lost their faith. Just my experience.

G_d is not mysterious to me. I may not understand His power. He gave us His Laws and in them we can understand His will. If you want to apply mystery because G_d is not tangible to you then you should marvel at mercury(Hg) or magnetism. He allows us to have a relationship with Him. No substance on Earth can we have such a thing with. His creation is mysterious, the creator is not.

Ok. I understand where you're coming from. But you have to agree that God is, by definition, mysterious. If you believe in the Trinity and the Two Natures of Christ then you have to admit that God is utterly incomprehensible to the human mind.

You appear to believe the trinity, yet you just denied it. Jesus now has two natures? That is now 1+1+1+1=1. When man creates dogma to describe G_d they worship a different G_d. The trinity was brought in by the early pagan converts. Most christians acknowledge easter, lint, and xmas. They are all pagan traditions. We know where they came from. There is no mystery that G_d is the creator and everything we can observe is His creation. We can marvel at it.

The audio on this video is awful. It fluctuates incessantly from left to right. Unlistenable.

Or, indeed, Karn Armstrong...

Let us share the Love of the Spirit of God. The Son of God, Immanuel, God with us, will Pray to the Father for us to have the Spirit of God, for a Teacher, and Comforter, Forever, in the bible book of John, chapter 14, verse 26... The book of John, chapters 14, through 17, Teach us how to have the Spirit of Truth, live within us. The Messiah wants us to be Comforted, and Taught, Forever. Please Forgive, and Pray for everyone from the Heart...

الترجمة من فضلكم

You didn't notice the conditional nature of the sentence. "If you believe...". And I never claimed to believe in the Trinity and Two Natures of Christ (I don't). I assumed you were a Nicene Christian, but this is clearly not the case. God is mysterious because we do not know what God is. We know God from his effects (creation) but this knowledge is inherently limited. Its the Creator/creature distinction. God is not a creature by definition, but we only know creatures, so what is God? Otherness

If this is the case for God explained, just one word comes to mind ...Gobbledygook.

It would be interesting to hear what Karen's definition of "revelation" is? I ask because she seems to think that revelation is a human attempt to reach up to God (as it were) instead of God reaching down to us. She says things like "... something the biblical author would never thought of". There is no suggestion here of God inspiring the human author. There are considerable problems with Karen Armstrong's approach.

I think Armstrong misunderstands Thomas Aquinas. Its true that Aquinas said that "we can say what God is not, but not what he is", but Aquinas also thought that we could use such terms as "good" and "exist" for God analogously. This is the "analogia entis": the analogy of being.

Its unfortunate that Karen Armstrong mentions Ibn Sina as representative of the Islamic tradition. He wasn't! In fact, it is somewhat difficult to describe Ibn Sina as a Muslim given the fact that he denied some central Qur'anic teachings. Armstrong should have mentioned Imam al-Ghazali rather than Ibn Sina, as he is regarded as the most normative thinker in Islam, and the greatest.

Who is clinging nervously to orthodoxy? There are so many problems with this. "Clinging" suggests that orthodoxy is something tenuous, something difficult to believe, something on the wane. "nervously" suggests that orthodox believers are anxious about their faith, afraid, fearful, etc. All of this is profoundly disputable. Armstrong is just another liberal "theologian" who wants to dilute all religions by gutting out all particularities, and focus on an apparent "essence".

I think you have radically misunderstood God. The mysteriousness of God doesn't come from his intangibility, but from the fact that we do not know what God is, only what he is not. God is the Creator, which means that he is categorically different from his creation. We know what mercury is: we can analyze it, we can predict how it will behave under certain circumstances, etc., and we know what it is. We can do none of this with God.

She moves exactly the way my Speech Communications Professor taught us when giving a speech. She even rests her hands on the lectern the right way. Hm, I seem to have lost focus.

If that's the case then it is a complete misnomer to describe it as revelation. It was so called because it was God revealing or disclosing something to humankind. You seem to think of revelation in much the same way as Feuerbach did, i.e., it is nothing more than a projection of human consciousness. I think of religion differently: the Prophet is the one who experiences the pure light of God through His grace; and the consciousness of the Prophet refracts this light like a prism;

I guess I'm a little tired of the term 'mystery'. The catholic church throws that term around like water. Usually when this term is applied it is over some pagan ritual that was absorbed when it absorbed the pagans that used it. Everywhere I go churches remove the authority of G_d, replace Him with voodoo science or rewrites scripture. Sometimes worse. Replacing G_d with relativism as what this person has done. Creating new scriptures and new gods is what these people do.

Her speech is difficult to follow-------------------may be her writings will be easier to follow /absorb. Her topic for discussion is deeply theological / theosophical------may be it is difficult to verbalize. Or may be her way of verbalizing fails to catch my attention ,and attention of many others.

OMG, she spit on the cathedral's floor at 36:09. I can't believe she did that. How embarrassing.

She basically said NOTHING! What she did was cherry picked pieces of what someone said, but never stated their view on any subject! This is emerging church at its best! Religion of relativism! So many words and yet NO substance or any insight. Just throw out a bunch of miscellaneous irrelevant pieces of different religious thoughts and you too can speak as she did.

This woman is confusing herself..with dyes hair she tells us " we've become very self conscious"