Alternative reading | 6 October 2007

A Journey into God is one of four books by Delia Smith on the subject of Christian spirituality, the others being A Journey into Prayer, A Feast for Lent and A Feast for Advent. Delia journeys into God painfully aware of her own lack of recipes. She takes the apophatic approach, describing God as what he is not: he is not ‘the Life-Stifler God’, nor ‘the God of Fear and Anxiety’ nor ‘the Cuddly-Bear God’ nor ‘the God of the Well-Informed’. He lies outside human rationality, including human theological enquiry (which is useful, since it means you don’t have to read Barth, Bultmann or Strauss). Delia, while a patient student of the Bible, is seduced, ultimately, by mysticism of no particular denomination. All the same A Journey into God is a reflective read and contains no name-dropping or any hint that she is a celebrity and national institution: about the only time she mentions cookery is when she attacks microwave ovens for their unspiritual rapidity.