Christianity and Western Thought: Journey to Postmodernity in the Twentieth Century (Volume 3) (Christianity Western Thought Series

by Alan G. Padgett, Steve Wilkens

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 was continued with the same spirit, energy and design by Steve Wilkens and Alan Padgett in volume 2, which explores the main intellectual streams of the nineteenth century. This, the third and final volume, also by Wilkens and Padgett, examines philosophers, ideas and movements in the twentieth century and how they have influenced Christian thought. Students, pastors and thoughtful Christians will benefit from this volume which, when combined with the previous two, completes an authoritative history of Western thought since the birth of Christianity.

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

388 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.