Christianity & Western Thought, Volume 2: Faith & Reason in the 19th Century

by Alan G. Padgett, Steve Wilkens

The nineteenth century continues to wield its substantial influence. Marx, Mill, Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Emerson, Darwin, Freud and Weber brought their era new realms of thought which still populate our imaginations. As a result, the study of history, science, psychology, philosophy, sociology and religion has not been the same. These heirs to rationalism began to explore the full range of human experience--which became a matter of philosophical and theological interest, and even authority. Romanticism flourished in arts and literature as Idealism, Transcendentalism, Pragmatism and other movements developed. All had a profound effect on religion and how it was viewed--particularly on Christianity. Colin Brown's Christianity & Western Thought, Volume 1: From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment was widely embraced as a text in philosophy and theology courses around the world. His project is here continued with the same spirit, energy and design by Steve Wilkens and Alan Padgett. Volume 2 dissects and colorfully explains the main intellectual streams of the nineteenth century. Colin Brown wrote of his first volume: "This book is about the changes in preconceptions, world views and paradigms that have affected the ways in which people have thought about religion in general and Christianity in particular in the Western world. . . . It is a historical sketch, written to help students--and anyone else who might be interested--to get a better grasp of the love-hate relationship between philosophy and faith that has gone on for close to two thousand years." Wilkens and Padgett are also at work on a third volume that will survey the developments of twentieth-century philosophy. Once completed, Christianity & Western Thought, in three volumes, will be the premier text of philosophical history written from a conservative Christian perspective.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, History, Church History, Religion, Christian

436 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2000

Reviews

[Binoy Chacko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard read...Ioved the sections on Freud and other christian liberal thinkers

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every few months, or years, I have a renewed desire to learn a bit of philosophy. With summer setting in, that desire returned. I chose this book because I had read the previous entry in the series, a study of 19th century philosophy. Might as well bring myself up to the present, right? Also, I recently read David Bentley Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite and found myself lost as he discussed a variety of philosophies. My hope was that this book would clear some of that up for me.

Overall, if you want to learn about the major philosophers of the 20th centuries, this is a great book to read. It does not go into depth, instead opting to cover a lot of ground, and many individuals, in less than 350 pages. Also, as the title indicates, the authors are Christian so their bias is not hidden. That said, they present the views of each philosopher quite objectively. At the end of each section they offer a paragraph or two of problems for the philosophy, which is the only place where the author's opinions come in. For a book I expected to focus on philosophy, the chapter on 20th century theology seemed somewhat out of place. There are other places to get that, I'd have appreciated more depth on the philosophers (Heidegger, Wittgenstein) and less on theologians I can read about elsewhere (Barth, Brunner).

Hopefully this satisfies my philosophy appetite for a while.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in the philosophies that have shaped our world today, as well as a Christian critique of them, this is a helpful book. The authors begin with a brief setting of the stage by looking at Kant whose philosophy was a turning point from the Enlightenment into all the movements in the 19th century. From there they discuss the likes of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud and many others. One emphasis they make is that while the Enlightenment tended to emphasize reason, with humans as able to be objective reasoning beings, the thinkers of this century went other directions. There is an emphasis on the role of the will (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche), on social forces (Durkheim, Weber), economic forces (Marx) and the unconscious sexual forces (Freud).

I am not a philosopher and often I struggle to understand what they are saying. This book does a good job of making complex ideas understandable. It is also not hard to see how many of these ideas are still influential in our world today.