Knowing the Heart of God

Rating:
Summary: Knowing the Heart of God
Review: George, MacDonald's "Knowing the Heart of God" assumes whom ever picks up this book is a Christian or is even incline to believe in (the Christian) god in the first place. I don't feel the writer did a very good job of taking into account the fact that in theism there are many concepts of God not to mention those who recognize more than one god. Knowing the Heart of God did not explain why George MacDonald is any more qualified than the next Christian to "know" the heart of God. Its interesting to note that if faith is all it takes then ALL religions are equally justified as Dan Barker so rightfully pointed out in his book "Losing Faith in Faith, if faith. Woefully lacking in any critical analysis and mostly based the appeal to faith Knowing the Heart of God is the stuff of good reading for the Courier.

Rating:
Summary: Too much of a good thing
Review: So George MacDonald is the only named person -- well, forget Napoleon -- to appear in CS Lewis' *The Great Divorce* and with Jack's recommendation and clear respect, I finally found some MacDonald stuff -- supposedly -- only to find out that it's a compilation. Too bad Mr MacDonald wasn't clever enough to put this compilation together. I'm sure his work would have been much better. And that's the beef I have with this book: after all the hoopla about MacDonald's greatness as a writer/thinker, Phillips thinks he can improve on his work? Phillips' claims, "The fictional readings ... are not mere additions to the meaty sections of the text; they are equally vital to the reader who would learn ... ." ("Introduction", pg 13) Excuse me. Is Mr Phillips so inexpert that he doesn't know that even a merely good work has its own flow that is seriously disrupted by insertions? And that's the problem with Phillips' compilation: the insertions are merely distracting. They might be good, even great, but why do they have to interrupt? Put them in an Appendix so that I can just read MacDonald. But then I turn to the back of the book to see what else I can get of MacDonald's work from Bethany House, and I find that there's a bunch of stuff. All "edited for today's reader," and renamed; again, presumably, for "today's reader." Let's see. Macdonald wrote about 100 years ago, but must be brought up do date. Somebody has a fat head. Pulleeeeese, just give me MacDonald.

So I give MacDonald a 5+, Phillips gets a zero. Averages 3.

Rating:
Summary: Where to get UNEDITED George MacDonald Books
Review: This is for anyone (jacko97 especially) who likes to read the original author. I'm glad other's liked these edited books. The more that like GM the better. The original works can be found at: http://www.johannesen.com/ for hardback. Unabridged audio www.blackstoneaudio.com.

:)