Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan

In this passionate and searching book, Anthony Kronman offers a third way—beyond atheism and religion—to the God of the modern world

We live in an age of disenchantment. The number of self-professed “atheists” continues to grow. Yet many still feel an intense spiritual longing for a connection to what Aristotle called the “eternal and divine.” For those who do, but demand a God that is compatible with their modern ideals, a new theology is required. This is what Anthony Kronman offers here, in a book that leads its readers away from the inscrutable Creator of the Abrahamic religions toward a God whose inexhaustible and everlasting presence is that of the world itself. Kronman defends an ancient conception of God, deepened and transformed by Christian belief—the born-again paganism on which modern science, art, and politics all vitally depend. Brilliantly surveying centuries of Western thought—from Plato to Augustine, Aquinas, and Kant, from Spinoza to Nietzsche, Darwin, and Freud—Kronman recovers and reclaims the God we need today.

• The Assault on American Excellence
• Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life
• Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion)
• Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
• Permanent Record
• The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading
• The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal
• Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian