The first of the three parts, In Herod's Keep, introduces the characters Herod Antipas and John the Baptist during the brief period of John's incarceration by Herod. Herod, an atheist or, at best, a deeply skeptical agnostic, asks John to resolve the problem of theodicy; that is, how evil is possible in the world if God is all-good and all-powerful. After all, if God is all-powerful, then the evil in this world is His responsibility and He cannot therefore be all-good. If God is all-good then He cannot be all-powerful, for He allows evil to exist in the world.
It is this question that preoccupies In Herod's Keep and John attempts to address it through analogical reasoning specifically through didactic stories derived primarily from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scripture, apocrypha, and legend. John's use of analogical reasoning buttresses belief in the face of the contradictions inherent in monotheistic faith.
The second of three parts, The Madness of God, is the conversation between a 5th century monk and Iblis (the Devil). Iblis' fall, and his subsequent indictment of God for “leading me astray,” become the foundation upon which the work asks, and answers, questions about the possibility of free will in the face of God's omnipotence. Again, the problem of theodicy is paramount. The question that the characters return to repeatedly is, if God is all-powerful and if nothing occurs without “His explicit command,” how are men to blamed for their faults? As Iblis declares in his own defense, “Hath not the Potter power enough over the pot?” If so, Iblis reasons, then the horrors and injustices of the world are God's fault. If not, then God cannot be all-powerful.
The third of three parts, The Men Who Have the Elephant, uses the contradictory conclusions drawn in the first two parts to ask how one must act upon or interpret scripture to conform to the will of God. Here a Bakkan trader hurts the pride of the Christian King of Yemen, Abraha. Abraha, seeking to avenge this hurt, uses scriptural justification for an attack on the pagan shrine in Bakka (pre-Islamic Mecca). Abraha is counseled and warned by his lieutenant, Siraaj (Khidr), and by a Bakkan chief, Shayba (Ibn al-Muttalib) who is the grandfather of Muhammad. The question now turns from the use of reason to resolve contradictions inherent in monotheism to the “end of reason;” that is, the need to put human reason aside as the single standard by which to ask and answer questions about God. Like Hume's conclusions in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, this work takes Hume's side, but not for Hume's reasons. The possibility of “natural” religion is discounted and the work underscores the importance of revealed religion as the source of understanding God, but also demonstrates the limitations of that understanding, whether in literal or figurative (analogical) terms.
A book for anyone who believes in God and who takes the contradictions inherent in monotheism seriously, The End of Reason, in spite of its provocative title, is a very human attempt to reconcile faith with reason.
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