Of God and Men is by A.W. Tozer, first published in 1960.
Two things about the edition
First, the subtitle. Later printings sell this as Of God and Men: Cultivating the Divine/Human Relationship. The 1960 original was titled simply Of God and Men. The subtitle was added by a publisher decades later, after Tozer’s death in 1963. It is not his phrase. This is a recurring pattern with Tozer reprints, and it is worth recognizing so you do not go looking for a book he never wrote.
Second, and more useful: this is a collection of editorials, not a book Tozer sat down and composed. It is the third gathered volume of pieces he wrote for The Alliance Witness, the magazine of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, during his years as its editor. Tozer assembled this collection himself, which is worth saying because many posthumous Tozer volumes were compiled by other people without much acknowledgment.
What that means for reading it
Each piece is a few pages long and was written to stand alone in a magazine. There is no argument developing across chapters and no reason to read them in order. Open it anywhere.
That format is either the appeal or the problem, depending on what you want. As something to read for ten minutes before work, it is close to ideal. As a book to sit down and work through, it will feel scattered, because it was never built to be one.
Tozer’s actual subject
The consistent target is comfortable, managed, respectable Christianity. Tozer’s complaint is that the church had learned to run smoothly without expecting God to do anything, and that most believers had settled for a religion that costs them nothing and changes nothing. He is not gentle about it.
He is also, and this gets missed, not simply a scold. The reason he pushes so hard on complacency is that he thought knowing God directly was actually available and that people were settling for less. The severity comes from that, not from contempt.
What we removed
Our earlier review quoted a reader calling the book a “manifesto of true religion” and described how men in our community had responded to it. We could not verify the quote and the community response was invented. Both are gone.
Where we land
A good entry point to Tozer precisely because the pieces are short. If you have bounced off The Pursuit of God because it demanded sustained attention you did not have, start here instead. Buy whichever edition is cheapest; the text is the same regardless of what subtitle is on the cover.
Of God and Men by A.W. Tozer on Amazon