A RUMOR OF ANGELS

by Peter L. Berger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 3, 1968

Professor Berger (Invitation to Sociology, Solemn Assemblies, etc.) writes like one of those angels the rumor of whose existence this book records and examines. The ""angels"" of the title, however, are not those supernatural entities whose quantities occupied the Scholastics of yore, but symbols of a supernatural order, centered in a transcendent Being whose existence the author discovers in the ""signals of transcendence"" that surround mankind. Berger is not a theologian but a social scientist (The New School of Social Research), and he employs the tools of his trade first to undercut the position of the God-is-dead school and then to demonstrate the existence and continuity of those ""signals"" which communicate to mankind the existence of a supernatural order and a Supreme Being. The thesis is convincingly and cleverly expounded, enhanced by wit and by the author's keen sense of the incongruous in human affairs. It is, nonetheless, subject to the limitations inherent in the tools of social sciences, which are the same as those which circumscribe the efforts of the ""Christian atheists""; and therefore the book does not so much disprove the position of the latter as offer a reasonable alternative.

Pub Date: Jan. 3, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1968

Categories: NONFICTION