God in a World at War

Abstract

THE object of this little book is not to argue, “but only to state a belief in God in terms which any man can understand”. In this it has certainly succeeded, though a belief in God which is understandable is not necessarily credible. Still, unless a belief in God is put in intelligible terms, it is not likely to be effective, even if true. As Mr. Hadham says, “God cannot be made real by the irrelevant accuracies of metaphysics”; and this is all the more the case when these irrelevancies are inaccurate. One of the things from which we are suffering to-day is “that all the conventional descriptions of God were written by men who held totally different views of the world, of human society, and of the nature of the individual, from that which we now hold. “These descriptions were valid enough at the time they were written, but the permanence of such validity was dependent on the permanence of the views in terms of which they were made; and the terms are now quite obsolete and not so much incredible as meaningless.

God in a World at War

By John Hadham. Pp. 96. (Penguin Special S.73.) (Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1940.) 6d. net.