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“Anyone doing serious study of the Phenomenology of Spirit or Hegel’s philosophy of religion should find this work useful…. Jamros argues (convincingly, in this reviewer’s mind) that Hegel’s philosophy is neither atheistic nor traditionally theistic.”—Stephen Rocker, Wadhams Hall Seminary-College, The Owl of Minerva

“Religion for Hegel is grounded in human thinking and not in revelation, if by revelation is meant an extraordinary intervention of God into the ordinary course of human life. As a form of thinking, however, religion is a legitimate revelation of God, for God is the logical ground of all that can be thought. Furthermore, humanity’s religious thinking leads to a more specific concept that is peculiarly Hegelian. This is the concept that Hegel deals with in the Phenomenology of Spirit and that Christianity decisively reveals, namely the concept of spirit as divine humanunity, which thinking itself discovers.”—from The Human Shape of God

Was Hegel a humanistic atheist or a serious Christian thinker? Both positions have been maintained over the years, but neither is true posits the author, who calls Hegel a philosophical theist. Jamros has explicated all of the religious passages in the Phenomenology in more detail than has ever been done before.

Divided into three sections on orientation, faith, and morality, the book offers serious readers a new understanding of a major philosophical mind. The Human Shape of God makes a major contribution to the study of Hegel, the philosophy of religion, and German thought.

DANIEL P. JAMROS, S.J. is professor of religious studies at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York.