Idealism and Christian Theology

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.

Joshua R. Farris is Assistant Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University, Smith College of Liberal Arts and the Academy. He is the chief editor (with Charles Taliaferro) for Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology (2015).

S. Mark Hamilton is a PhD candidate University of Bristol, UK. He is co-editor of New England Dogmatics: A Systematic Collection of Questions and Answers in Divinity (2014).

James S. Spiegel is a Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, USA. His books include The Love of Wisdom (2010), Faith, Film, and Philosophy (2007), Hypocrisy: Moral Fraud and Other Vices (1999), and the award-winning How to be Good in a World Gone Bad (2004).