Details

Jesus in an Age of Enlightenment

Radical Gospels from Thomas Hobbes to Thomas Jefferson
Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World

von: Jonathan C. P. Birch
96,29 €
Verlag:	Palgrave Macmillan
Format:	PDF
Veröffentl.:	18.07.2019
ISBN/EAN:	9781137512765
Sprache:	englisch

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Beschreibungen

Titelbeschreibung

This book explores the religious concerns of Enlightenment thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to Thomas Jefferson. Using an innovative method, the study illuminates the intellectual history of the age through interpretations of Jesus between c.1650 and c.1826. The book demonstrates the persistence of theology in modern philosophy and the projects of social reform and amelioration associated with the Enlightenment. At the core of many of these projects was a robust moral-theological realism, sometimes manifest in a natural law ethic, but always associated with Jesus and a commitment to the sovereign goodness of God. This ethical orientation in Enlightenment discourse is found in a range of different metaphysical and political identities (dualist and monist; progressive and radical) which intersect with earlier ‘heretical’ tendencies in Christian thought (Arianism, Pelagianism, and Marcionism). This intellectual matrix helped to produce the discourses of irenic toleration which are a legacyof the Enlightenment at its best.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter One: Introduction.- Chapter Two: Imagining Enlightenment – The Historical and Historiographical Context.- Chapter Three: Overture to a Moral Messiah - God, Goodness, and the Heretical Tendency.- Chapter Four:  Material Messiah - Hobbes, Heresy, and a Kingdom Not of This World.- Chapter Five: ‘No Spirit No God’ - From the Light of Christ to the Age of Enlightenment.- Chapter Six: What Would Jesus Tolerate? - Reason and Revelation in Spinoza, Locke, and Bayle.- Chapter Seven: The Unity of God and the Wisdom of Christ - The Religious Enlightenments of Joseph Priestley and Thomas Jefferson .- Chapter Eight: Postscript and Conclusion.

Autorenportrait

Jonathan C P Birch teaches in the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is an intellectual historian who specialises in biblical interpretation and Western philosophy.

Back cover copy

This book explores the religious concerns of Enlightenment thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to Thomas Jefferson. Using an innovative method, the study illuminates the intellectual history of the age through interpretations of Jesus between c.1750 and c.1826. The book demonstrates the persistence of theology in modern philosophy and the projects of social reform and amelioration associated with the Enlightenment. At the core of many of these projects was a robust moral-theological realism, sometimes manifest in a natural law ethic, but always associated with Jesus and a commitment to the sovereign goodness of God. This ethical orientation in Enlightenment discourse is found in a range of different metaphysical and political identities (dualist and monist; progressive and radical) which intersect with earlier ‘heretical’ tendencies in Christian thought (Arianism, Pelagianism, and Marcionism). This intellectual matrix helped to produce the discourses of irenic toleration which are a legacyof the Enlightenment at its best.

Sonderbeitrag

Examines the interpretations of Jesus from c.1650 to c.1826 to illuminate the intellectual history of the Enlightenment Demonstrates the persistence of theology in modern philosophy and projects of social reform Explores the religious concerns of Enlightenment thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to Thomas Jefferson

Unpublished endorsement

“With this important contribution, Jonathan Birch takes his place in the growing field of Enlightenment studies. By shedding new light on the significance of Jesus for seminal figures in the period, Birch pluralizes and unsettles our notions of what the Enlightenment was and, indeed, what it means today.” (Michael C. Legaspi, Pennsylvania State University, USA)“This book is complex, timely, and its ambitions bold. A well written and deeply researched work, Birch masters a number of historiographies and scholarly discourses to provide an account of how developments in critical method combined to deliver an enlightened Jesus. This will be necessary reading for historians of Enlightenment ideas, and the history of theology and biblical criticism.” (Justin Champion, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)