A Human-Shaped God approaches the humanlike accounts of God in the Old Testament as the starting places for theology and uses them to build a picture of the divine. This understanding of God is then brought into conversation with traditional conceptions that depict God as a being who knows everything that happens, is at every place at the same time, is constant and unchanging, and does not ultimately have material form. But instead of pitting the Old Testament's humanlike view of God against traditional theology and assuming that only one of these understandings is correct, A Human-Shaped God posits that theologians should embrace both of these constructions simultaneously. This is a new way of theological inquiry that embraces both the humanlike characteristics of God and the transcendence of God in traditional theology. By seeing and understanding the humanlike depictions of God in the Old Testament and by using the rich language of traditional theology together in tandem, the reader acquires a much deeper and meaningful understanding of God.

A clear-eyed view of the conflict in Afghanistan and its century-deep roots. The war in Afghanistan has consumed vast amounts of blood and treasure, causing the Western powers to seek an exit without achieving victory. Seemingly never-ending, the conflict has become synonymous with a number of issues — global jihad, rampant tribalism, and the narcotics trade — but even though they are cited as the causes of the conflict, they are in fact symptoms. Rather than beginning after 9/11 or with the Soviet “invasion” in 1979, the current conflict in Afghanistan began with the social reforms imposed by Amanullah Amir in 1919. Western powers have failed to recognize that legitimate grievances are driving the local population to turn to insurgency in Afghanistan. The issues they are willing to fight for have deep roots, forming a hundred-year-long social conflict over questions of secularism, modernity, and centralized power. The first step toward achieving a “solution” to the Afghanistan “problem” is to have a clear-eyed view of what is really driving it.

We must, he argues, frame our questions in a way which encompasses both enchantment and critical reason, and he offers an outline here for doing so. A passionate plea for a fundamental reexamination of the entrenched assumptions of the modern era, this book deals with issues of vital concern to modern societies and should be read by scholars across disciplines.