25 Ways Peter Kreeft’s 4-Volume History of Philosophy Is Different from All the Others

The prolific popular-level philosopher, Peter Kreeft of Boston College, has a four-volume history of philosophy coming out in March.

Professor Kreeft explains what makes these volumes different:

It’s neither very long (like Copleston’s twelve-volume tome, which is a clear and helpful reference work but pretty dull reading) nor very short (like many skimpy one-volume summaries) but just long enough.It’s available in separate volumes but eventually in one complete work (after the four volumes – Ancient, Medieval, Modern, Contemporary – are produced in paperbound editions, a one-volume clothbound will be published).It focuses on the “big ideas” that have influenced present people and present times.It includes relevant biographical data, proportionate to its importance for each thinker.It is not just history but philosophy. Its aim is not merely to record facts (of life or opinion) but to stimulate philosophizing, controversy, argument.It does this by aiming above all at understanding, at what the old logic called the “first act of the mind” rather than the third: the thing computers and many ”analytic philosophers” cannot understand.It uses ordinary language and logic, not professional academic jargon or symbolic logic.It is commonsensical (and therefore is sympathetic to commonsense philosophers like Aristotle).It is “existential” in that it sees philosophy as something to be lived, and tested in life. It concentrates on the questions that make a difference to your life. It dares to be human and, therefore, occasionally funny or ironic.Like the “Great Books,” it assumes that philosophy is not about philosophy but about reality; about wisdom; about life and death and good and evil and man and God and “stuff like that,” rather than mere analysis of language. It cooks edible meats rather than just sweeping the floor of garbage.It tries to be simple and direct and clear in showing how deep and dark and mysterious the questions of philosophy are. It combines clarity with profundity, as neither “analytic” nor “continental” philosophy yet does (though they’re both trying).It sees the history of human thought as more exciting, more dramatic, than military or political history. Its running thread is “the great conversation.” It lets philosophers talk to each other.It takes the past seriously. It does not practice “chronological snobbery.” Our ancestors made mistakes. So do we. We can see ours best by reading them.It will stay in print forever or till the Cubs win the World Series and the world ends.It gives more space (16-20 pages) to the 10 most important philosophers, medium space (5-15 pages) to the next 20, and only a little space (2-4 pages) to the other 70.It’s not “dumbed down.” It doesn’t patronize.It can be understood by beginners. It’s not just for scholars.It’s usable for college classes or by do-it-yourselfers.It takes every philosopher serious, but it’s not relativistic. It argues (usually both pro and con), because it believes in Truth.It does not deliver platitudes. It emphasizes surprises. For “philosophy begins in wonder.”It includes visual aids: charts, cartoons, line drawings, and each philosopher’s face.It gives not just the what but the why: why each philosopher asked the questions he did, and the rationale for the answer he gave.It includes many memorable and famous quotations, in boldface type.It prepares readers for reading the philosophers themselves, by warning them what to expect.Copyright © 2014 by the author listed above. Used by permission.

Why the New Book by David Wells Is Different and How It Relates to His Earlier Works

    In a new interview with Crossway, David Wells talks about his new book, God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-Love of God Reorients Our World. I recommend reading it to get a good feel for his book and what he’s seeking to accomplish.

It may help to put the book in context of his previous works.

Kevin Vanhoozer refers to David Wells’ magnum opus as “Courage Quintet.” By this he is referring to his four-volume work, plus a summary and update volume) published by Eerdmans from 1993-2008.

Although it is not widely recognized as such, Wells conceived of this series of volumes as an unconventional setting forth of theology:

1. Prolegomena to culture, so that our theology isn’t swallowed up by it: No Place for Truth, or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (1993)

2. The doctrine of God: God in the Wasteland: Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (1994)

3. The human being as created and fallen: Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (1998)

4. The person and work of Christ: Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World (2006)

This was summed up, then, in his last published book, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Post-Modern World (2008).

These books were widely read, by both fans and critics. No Place for Truth was named Book of the Year in Christianity Today‘s Theology and Biblical Studies category when it was published.

WORLD Magazine included it in their top 100 books of the Millennium.

Albert Mohler has described the book as “the bomb that exploded on the evangelical playground.”

Cornelius Plantinga Jr. says that “Like that of Solzhenitsyn, David Wells’s cultural criticism will be read a century from now.” What strikes Plantinga most about Wells’s books, he writes, “is their desperately deep sense of loss. David Wells’s books are a prophet’s keys of the heart.” This is why Vanhoozer calls him “the weeping prophet of contemporary evangelicalism.”

In this new book, Wells explains that “some critics have complained that [these earlier five books] contain no answers to the church’s current parlous state. The criticism has some merit. In my mind, I assumed an answer to the dilemmas unearthed and was not always as explicit in setting this out as I should have been.”

This book is his answer—not merely a lament of where we have gone wrong but his positive vision of how we should go forward.

Wells argued that the church must recover an understanding of and encounter with the holy-love of God: his holiness bound to his love. And yet we often struggle to hold the paradox together.

Some of us tend to emphasize his holiness attributes (justice, righteousness, wrath) and others his love attributes (patience, goodness, kindness).

Historically the Church has tended to emphasize holiness at the expense of love (leading to moralism, Pharisaism) or love at the expense of holiness (liberalism, universalism). But Wells argues:

The deepest truths about God’s character are not simply about his holiness, or his love, but about his holiness in its bond to his love, the one expressing the other, each deepening the paradox of their belonging to each other, of belonging together. Each in relation to the other leads us into the glory of who God is in his character.

May the Lord would use this book to encourage and edify God’s people as they seek to live before our holy and loving Lord.

(For more information on the book, go here.)

Copyright © 2013 by the author listed above. Used by permission.

Don’t Believe if One’s Faith is Different it is Insincere

This justifying faith, which we assert to be so discernible, is, in the Lord’s deep wisdom and gracious condescension, variously expressed in Scripture, according to the different actings of it upon God, and outgoings after him; so that every one who hath it, may find and take it up in his own mould. It sometimes acteth by a desire of union with him in Christ; this is that looking to him in Isaiah: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” This seems to be a weak act of faith, and far below other actings of it at other times perhaps in that same person.

It goes out after God sometimes by an act of waiting; when the soul hath somewhat depending before God, and hath not got out his mind satisfyingly concerning that thing, then faith doth wait; and so it hath the promise, “They shall not be ashamed that wait for me.” Sometimes it acteth in a wilful way upon the Lord, when the soul apprehends God thrusting it away, and threatening its ruin: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” The faith of that poor woman of Canaan, so highly commended by Christ, went out in this way of wilful acting over difficulties; and the Lord speaketh much good of it, and to it, because some will sometimes be put to it to exercise faith that way, and so they have that for their encouragement. It were tedious to instance all the several ways of the acting of faith upon, and its exercise about, and outgoing after Christ: I may say, according to the various conditions of man. And accordingly faith, which God hath appointed to traffic and travel between Christ and man, as the instrument of conveyance of his fulness to man, and of maintaining union and communion with him, acts variously and differently upon God in Christ: for faith is the very laying out of a man’s heart according to God’s device of salvation by Christ Jesus, “in whom it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell;” so that, let Christ turn what way he will, faith turneth and pointeth that way. Now he turns all ways in which he can be useful to poor man; and therefore faith acts accordingly on him for drawing out of that fulness, according to a man’s case and condition.   Wheresoever he be, there would faith be; and whatsoever he is, faith would be somewhat like him; for by faith the heart is laid out in breadth and length for him; yea, when the fame and report of him goeth abroad in his truth, although faith seeth not much, yet it “believeth on his name,” upon the very fame he hath sent abroad of himself.
–William Guthrie ‘The Christian’s Great Interest’