A journey through 2,000 years of Christian thinking
What does it mean to be a Christian at the dawn of the third millennium? What did it mean to be a Christian at the dawn of the first millennium? Christian Thought: A Brief History charts the path Christian thinkers have taken over the last 2,000 years searching for answers to some of the basic questions concerning existence and creation that have been churning in the minds of great thinkers for years. In 13 chapters, taken from the highly acclaimed Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, written by distinguished theologians and church historians from both sides of the Atlantic, themselves Christian thinkers, the reader is taken from Pre-Constantinian times to the end of the twentieth century. The chapters don't just travel through time, they also chronicle the journey through different traditions of thought - Eastern Orthodox thinking, Armenian and Syriac thought, and Byzantine theology as well as Western traditions. There is not one single strand of thought that can be identified as 'Christian thinking' and there are no observable facts. The history of 'Christian thinking' is made up of many strands which, even though they may be said to converge to the same point, are very distinct in their own right. The chapters in this book do not aim merely to explain or tell the story of 'thought', they reflect the thinking of the scholars who wrote them and aim to provoke the reader into further study.
'Thought' is a much wider concept than either 'philosophy' or 'theology'. Humanity has for centuries been searching to find the meaning to or the meaning of existence and Christians throughout history have contributed a significant weight to this search. Derived from the highly-praised Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, published in 2000, in 13 chronologically organised chapters, this book journeys the reader through the various stages of this search first through the East and then the West from Pre-Constantinian times to the end of the last millennium.
What does it mean to be a Christian at the dawn of the third millennium? What did it mean to be a Christian at the dawn of the first millennium? Christian Thought: A Brief History charts the path Christian thinkers have taken over the last 2,000 years searching for answers to some of the basic questions concerning existence and creation that have been churning in the minds of great thinkers for years. In 13 chapters, taken from the highly acclaimed Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, written by distinguished theologians and church historians from both sides of the Atlantic, themselves Christian thinkers, the reader is taken from Pre-Constantinian times to the end of the twentieth century. The chapters don't just travel through time, they also chronicle the journey through different traditions of thought - Eastern Orthodox thinking, Armenian and Syriac thought, and Byzantine theology as well as Western traditions. There is not one single strand of thought that can be identified as 'Christian thinking' and there are no observable facts. The history of 'Christian thinking' is made up of many strands which, even though they may be said to converge to the same point, are very distinct in their own right. The chapters in this book do not aim merely to explain or tell the story of 'thought', they reflect the thinking of the scholars who wrote them and aim to provoke the reader into further study.
'Thought' is a much wider concept than either 'philosophy' or 'theology'. Humanity has for centuries been searching to find the meaning to or the meaning of existence and Christians throughout history have contributed a significant weight to this search. Derived from the highly-praised Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, published in 2000, in 13 chronologically organised chapters, this book journeys the reader through the various stages of this search first through the East and then the West from Pre-Constantinian times to the end of the last millennium.