Idealism and Christian Theology: Idealism and Christianity Volume 1 (Idealism and Christianity, 1) - Softcover

The 'Idealism and Christianity' series is the first of its kind, an inauguration of a rich conversation in metaphysics that manages to be coherent, insightful, and accessible to students and professors alike.
Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies

The philosophical idealists addressed in this volume teach that minds are most real, that the physical world depends for its being on the mind (especially the mind of God), and that matter is a fiction when depicted as a substance that undergirds reality. Few late-modern thinkers have found their arguments convincing. But in the pages of this volume a diverse array of first-rate metaphysical minds seek to rehabilitate some of the features of the idealism of Bishop George Berkeley and the Rev. Jonathan Edwards for contemporary theology. Their efforts will surely generate a good deal of debate, but they deserve careful attention from intellectual historians, philosophers, and constructive theologians.
Douglas A. Sweeney, Professor of Church History and the History of Christian Thought, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, USA

In a materialist age, the idealist notion that esse est percipi aut percipere ("to be is to be perceived or to perceive†?) is not a popular one. Yet, a number of brilliant thinkers in the Christian tradition have argued that what we call matter is really a set of ideas in the mind of God. This solid collection of essays puts two of the most prominent idealists, George Berkeley and Jonathan Edwards, in dialogue with each other. This book well deserves to be the catalyst for continuing theological discussion of idealist metaphysics.
Hans Boersma, J.I. Packer Professor of Theology, Regent College, Canada

In the recent history of philosophy few works have appeared which favorably portray Idealism as a plausible philosophical view of the world. Considerably less has been written about Idealism as a viable framework for doing theology. While the most recent and significant works on Idealism, composed by the late John Foster (Case for Idealism and A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenological Idealism), have put this theory back on the philosophical map, no such attempt has been made to re-introduce Idealism to contemporary Christian theology. Idealism and Christian Theology is such a work, retrieving ideas and arguments from its most significant modern exponents (especially George Berkeley and Jonathan Edwards) in order to assess its value for present and future theological construction. As a piece of constructive philosophical-theology itself, this volume considers the explanatory power an Idealist ontology has for contemporary Christian theology.