Christianity & Western Thought: A History of Philosophers, Ideas & Movements

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InterVarsity Press, 1990 - Philosophy - 447 pages
From Socrates and the Sophists to Kant, from Augustine to Aquinas and the Reformers, Colin Brown traces the turbulent, often tension-filled, always fascinating story of the thinkers, ideas and movements that have shaped our intellectual landscape. Is philosophy the "handmaiden of faith" or "the doctrine of demons"? Does it clarify the faith or undermine the very heart of Christian belief?Brown writes, "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."Students, pastors and thoughtful Christians will benefit from this rich resource. The first in a proposed three-volume work, Brown's easy-to-read, hard-to-put-down introduction to Christianity and Western thought focuses on developments from the ancient world to the Age of Enlightenment.

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Contents

Socrates and PreSocratic Philosophy
19
Platos Vision of Reality
29
Aristotle and the Physical World
39
Epicureans Stoics Skeptics and Cynics
51
From Greeks to Gospel
63
Philosophy and the Church Fathers 79 228
79
Early Medieval Philosophy
101
Aquinas and Later Medieval Philosophy
119
Rational Religion and the Era of Deism
197
The Rise of British Empiricism
215
The Skeptical Empiricism of Hume
235
Scottish Common Sense and Early American Philosophy
259
Enlightenment and Skepticism in France
285
Enlightenment and Skepticism in Germany
301
Retrospect and Prospect
331
Notes
341

Philosophy and the Reformers
143
Old Questions and New Crises
159
The Age of Rationalism
173
A Note on Books
423
Select Index
442
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