Küng's Case for God

Extract

People would like to have reasons for believing that God exists. With its appearance in attractive paperback format Hans Küng’s Does God Exist? certainly looks like the most thorough and scholarly treatment of the subject. For one thing, at seventeen ounces, clearly printed on decent paper, and sturdily enough bound to survive several readings, it is a fine example of modern book-production. The translation by Edward Quinn, is, needless to say, almost faultless. Some of the reviews which the hardback version received were very destructive—Alasdair MacIntyre’s page-long diatribe in The London Review of Books (5—18 February, 1981) comes to mind: “Whenever in future I try to imagine what Purgatory will be like, the thought of having to read Dr. Küng’s book will recur”. Judgements in some of the theological periodicals were rather more respectful. To give only two examples: in Theology (September 1981), after some gently expressed but actually quite devastating criticisms, Brian Hebblethwaite concludes as follows: “So it can hardly be said that this is a great book. But as an attempt to set the scene for a serious engagement with atheism, it serves a very useful purpose”. In The Month (March 1981), while describing Hans Küng as “a sort of Dale Carnegie of modern theology, building confidence, edifying in the best sense of the word”, Paul Lakeland’s judgment of the book runs thus: “He has two ostensible purposes, to present the history of thinking about the problem of God since the time of Descartes, and to define a new concept of God.