Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Man Thinks; God Laughs
3. Awe and the Religious Life
4. Terra Firma
5. Theological Impressionism
6. Against Theology
7. The Significance of Religious Experience
8. Against Theodicy
9. God's Struggles
10. Coming to Terms with Exile
11. Forgiveness and Moral Reckoning
12. Ritual
13. Concluding Remarks: Religion without Metaphysics

About the Author

Howard Wettstein has been Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside since 1989. He held previous positions at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Minnesota, Morris. He held visiting professorships at Stanford University and the University of Iowa. At the University of California, Riverside, Wettstein was Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Director of the University Honors Program. He is the author of
two previous books on philosophy of language, and has edited many collections.

Reviews

"This book is unique in writings in philosophy of religion. In it Wettstein presents a sensitive, philosophically sophisticated, first-person account of his understanding of the religion he practices, traditional Judaism, and uses that understanding to make observations about religion in general. The book is an exceptionally good example of a neo-Wittgenstein type of approach to 'God-talk.' With its autobiographical form it goes further than most to show the
reader how such an approach can be lived with spiritual depth."--Jerome Gellman, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"This book represents, as far as I can tell, the first single-authored manuscript addressing
contemporary issues in the relatively new and steadily growing field of analytic philosophy of Judaism, a field within which Wettstein has been identified as one of earliest and exemplary practitioners."--Sol Goldberg, University of Toronto