| Author/Contributor(s): | Wells, Ronald A. |
| Publisher: | HarperOne |
| Date: | 7/19/1989 |
| Binding: | Paperback |
| Condition: | NEW |
An incisive historical survey of how Christian thought and cultural crises shaped the destiny of Western civilization.
Integrating faith with introductory Western history, this text provides a Christian perspective on the major epochs, issues, and events of Western Civilization.
Author Ronald A. Wells traces the institutional growth of the early church through the Roman Empire and medieval Europe, exploring monastic communities, cathedral architecture, and the scholastic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.
The volume examines the religious upheaval of the Reformation and Enlightenment rationalism, analyzing how emerging secular worldviews tested traditional convictions regarding divine sovereignty and human progress. It details the role of the Greeks and Hebrews, Jesus in history, the Renaissance, and more.
- Historical Theology: Investigates the doctrinal divide of the Catholic Reformation, examining how the Council of Trent redefined sacraments and authority in response to Protestant challenges.
- Political Philosophy: Analyzes the seventeenth-century debate over political legitimacy, contrasting Jacques Bossuet’s defense of divine right with John Locke’s covenantal social contract.
- History of Science: Explores the rise of empirical rationalism through Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, tracing how mechanical models of nature reshaped understandings of divine action.
- Historiography: Probes the philosophical assumptions of modern history, demonstrating how twentieth-century cataclysms from the trenches of Verdun to Auschwitz challenged secular narratives of progress.