Get the full picture! Understand the whole story! Faith and Modern Thought is a jargon-busting and engaging introduction providing an imaginative and creative way into the great minds that have forged the modern world, especially Kant and Hegel and the revolutionary philosophies of existentialism and Marxism they inspired. Tim Hull provides the wider intellectual picture, the fuller philosophical story in which modern theology was forged. After an engaging introduction to the European Enlightenment and the cultural crisis it triggered, the stage is set to understand the essence of modern theology. From that essential background the radical faith of many of the most influential of modern theologians and philosophers of religion is explored, exposing a deep-rooted indebtedness to the Enlightenment tradition.

A narrative history of philosophical reflection on religion from the seventeenth century to the present.

Excerpt from Faith and Modern Thought The occasion of this little volume may be found in the spirit of modern discussion. The title - Faith and Modern Thought - was chosen by the writer long before he knew that a similar subject - Christianity and Modern Thought - had been proposed for a course of lectures in Boston, during the winter of 1875-6. The material is composed, in part, of essays prepared for special occasions, and subsequently published in Quarterly Reviews. If, in defence of certain positions, plain words have been employed, they are in reply to plain words employed in attack. If it be questioned whether the spirit of the book is in too close sympathy with the spirit of the time, the author has no reply to make; if it be asserted, he has no apology to offer. Earnest inquiry everywhere prevails. Old theories are scrutinized; new theories are criticised. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The contemporary theologian Hans Küng has asked if the "death of God," proclaimed by Nietzsche as the event of modernity, was inevitable. Did the empowering of new forms of rationality in Western culture beginning around 1500 lead necessarily to the reduction or privatization of faith? In Dialogues between Faith and Reason, John H. Smith traces a major line in the history of theology and the philosophy of religion down the "slippery slope" of secularization—from Luther and Erasmus, through Idealism, to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and contemporary theory such as that of Derrida, Habermas, Vattimo, and Asad. At the same time, Smith points to the persistence of a tradition that grew out of the Reformation and continues in the mostly Protestant philosophical reflection on whether and how faith can be justified by reason. In this accessible and vigorously argued book, Smith posits that faith and reason have long been locked in mutual engagement in which they productively challenge each other as partners in an ongoing "dialogue." Smith is struck by the fact that although in the secularized West the death of God is said to be fundamental to the modern condition, our current post-modernity is often characterized as a "postsecular" time. For Smith, this means not only that we are experiencing a broad-based "return of religion" but also, and more important for his argument, that we are now able to recognize the role of religion within the history of modernity. Emphasizing that, thanks to the logos located "in the beginning," the death of God is part of the inner logic of the Christian tradition, he argues that this same strand of reasoning also ensures that God will always "return" (often in new forms). In Smith's view, rational reflection on God has both undermined and justified faith, while faith has rejected and relied on rational argument. Neither a defense of atheism nor a call to belief, his book explores the long history of their interaction in modern religious and philosophical thought.

The recent renewal of the faith-reason debate has focused attention on earlier episodes in its history. One of its memorable highlights occurred during the Enlightenment, with the outbreak of the "Pantheism Controversy" between the eighteenth century Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and the Christian Counter-Enlightenment thinker Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. While Mendelssohn argued that reason confirmed belief in a providential God and in an immortal soul, Jacobi claimed that its consistent application led ineluctably to atheism and fatalism. At present, there are two leading interpretations of Moses Mendelssohn's thought. One casts him as a Jewish traditionalist who draws on German philosophy to support his premodern Jewish beliefs, while the other portrays him as a secret Deist who seeks to encourage his fellow Jews to integrate into German society and so disingenuously defends Judaism to avoid arousing their opposition. By exploring the Pantheism Controversy and Mendelssohn's relation to his two greatest Jewish philosophical predecessors, the medieval Rabbi Moses Maimonides and the seventeenth century heretic Baruch Spinoza, Michah Gottlieb presents a new reading of Mendelssohn arguing that he defends Jewish religious concepts sincerely, but gives them a humanistic interpretation appropriate to life in a free, diverse modern society. Gottlieb argues that the faith-reason debate is best understood not primarily as an argument about metaphysical questions, such as whether or not God exists, but rather as a contest between two competing conceptions of human dignity and freedom. Mendelssohn, Gottlieb contends, gives expression to a humanistic religious perspective worthy of renewed consideration today.

He argues that the reasonableness of faith depends not only on beliefs about the world but also on beliefs about oneself (for instance about what one wants, about one's hopes and fears) and on what one is willing to trust. Helm goes on to look at the relations between belief and trust, and between faith and virtue, and concludes with an exploration of one particular type of belief about oneself, the belief that one is oneself a believer. This is a book for anyone interested in the basis of religious faith."--BOOK JACKET.