The Biblio-Files

bib·li·o·phile (bĭb'lē-ə-fīl') n.

1. A lover of books.
2. A collector of books.

2.8.07

Philosophy & The Christian Faith


The author writes that the aim of this book is to make a survey of the main thinkers and intellectual movements of western thought of the past thousand years, with a view to showing how they affect Christian belief" (9). He writes, "There are many people who have heard of such names as Kant, Hume, Aquinas, and Kierkegaard and keep coming across terms like empiricism, rationalism, Existentialism and Logical Positivism, and who want to know what they mean and how they affect Christianity" (10). This is the book for those people. He divides the book into 4 sections:
1. Medieval Philosophy
2. From the Reformation to the Age of Enlightenment
3. The Nineteenth-Century Ferment
4. Philosophy and Faith in the Twentieth Century
-----In just over 300 pages, Brown covers a lot of ground. This is a great intro to philosophical theology, or for a general overview of the history of philosophy.
Quotes:
-----"to go through life putting off thought about ultimate questions is to miss the whole point of human life." 30
----"As we saw when we were looking at theological trends in the nineteenth century, Evangelicals made great contributions to evangelism and even to biblical scholarship; but they contributed little or nothing to the philosophical defence of their faith. For many, scholarship had a largely negative value. It was useful to defend the faith against hostile criticism. Few Evangelicals seem to have considered the philosophical implications of a faith based upon God's revelation of himself and their significance for apologetics." 245

2 comments:

Eron said...

Bleez,

I like the last quote about Evangelicals not contributing much intellectually. It's true.

We need to play poker soon.

EP

Unknown said...

No doubt. Let me know. We could break in the new place, or come over here. Either way, I'm game. Monday is coming soon.