The result is a challenging but engaging treatise preoccupied with issues of divinity, holy sovereignty, and a covenantal relationship between God and humanity. These topics, for Lavi, are intimately bound: “It is therefore by investigating both the structural origin and aspiration of human consciousness that we may come close to perceiving the existence of a personal God,” Lavi writes, with personal referring to his contention that “God has a relationship with a being according to the unique nature of that being.” From that he concludes that our very capacity to experience awe at the sublime or divine is itself evidence that “our spiritual soul is divine in itself, for that is the entity that directly interacts with or perceives the divine.”

Despite the complexity and thoroughness of Lavi’s nested arguments, a sense of the ecstatic—a sense of the author reveling in the glory of God--pulses throughout the book, even in appendices dedicated to further examining the nature of freedom and consciousness or the relationship between law and holiness. Lavi employs reason to apprehend God, reason that, as the author argues, has the power to “reveal the beauty and goodness of God’s glory.” Believers eager for a heady, philosophical faith, stripped of all cant, will find much here to contemplate.

Takeaway: This impassioned treatise aims to prove God’s existence and humanity's sovereignty through the power of inspired reason.

Great for fans of: Lawrence Keleman’s Permission To Believe: Four Rational Approaches to God's Existence, Brian Davies’s The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A