Neale Donald Walsch's "Conversations with God"

I never reviewed this one when it was popular because I figured it was no scholarly tome, and I was right. Now that I have been asked to, let me sum it up:

I don't think Walsch is demonized (as a preterist, I wouldn't be able to accept that anyway), and I don't think he's talking to God. I think he is talking to his own imagination. This book is nothing but a running conversation in which God is what Walsch needs and wants most.

Who is his God? Let's say that Wayne Dyer was walking down the street one day and ended up possessed by the "good" side of the force from David Eddings' Belgariad, and you'll get some idea.

The jist of this is that God inspired anyone and everyone Walsch liked (including A Course in Miracles) but not other people he didn't like. I can only guess how this became a best-seller since I became bored after 10 pages. There's nothing in the way of real argument for any position (which fits in, since "feelings" are regarded as our most reliable way of knowing things, while words -- which Walsch is writing a lot of -- are said to be the most ineffective means to communicate).

I found poor Biblical exegesis here and there, but nothing solid or worth reporting.

That's all that really needs saying in sum. Indeed, I could just as aptly dispense with this book by saying God told me it was false. By Walsch's own epistemology, that would be all that is necessary.

-JPH