Treatise on Love of God [Paperback]

Miguel de Unamuno, perhaps the most influential author of modern Spain, wrote hisTreatise on Love of Godat the height of his career after suffering a crisis of religious faith. Like Saint Augustine’sConfessionsand much of Kierkegaard, theTreatiseis a study of religious inwardness and proposes to analyze how God can be found within as a beloved person.

 

Not content with simple introspection, Unamuno considers Church fathers such as Athanasius, Origen, and Tertullian as well as modern religious scholars including Albrecht Ritschl, Auguste Sabatier, and Ernest Renan. Although Unamuno abandoned plans to publish theTreatiseafter Pope Pius X issued an encyclical against modernist theology, it deserves serious study as a prelude to his immensely successfulTragic Sense of Lifeand the concentrated work of a great thinker on a deeply serious subject.

"Gracefully translated from the manuscript with Unamuno's notations, and lucidly annotated by Orringer. . . . The notes contain such a wealth of learning and information to elucidate this seminal work that one can only thank Orringer for his heroic effort. Essential."--Choice

"TheTreatiseremained unknown to the reading public, its manuscript in the author's archives, until Nelson R. Orringer prepared it for publication, with a careful introduction and ample annotation. . . . [Orringer's] version is reliable and clear, his erudition informative. He situates the work in the context of Unamuno's unfolding religious thought, and relates it to historical context."--Times Literary Supplement

"We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Nelson Orringer for bringing to lightTreatise on Love of God, a little gem of an essay by Miguel de Unamuno. . . . Orringer’s translation is fluid, accurate, and eminently readable; his meaty notes are a book untlC-