GOD AND WORLD IN EARLY CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

The divergence between the traditional world-view assumed by Christianity, and the attitudes and presuppositions of modern man, is recognized by the author as a major crisis in theological thinking of the present day. The problem of reconciling the Gospel with a secular world-view, however, was very much in the consciousness of the early Church fathers. The author turns, therefore, to the writings of four of these early theologians in the confidence that their struggles with this problem can be instructive for the present. His chapters deal with Greek and Hellenistic Cosmology; Justin Martyr and Platonism; Irenaeus and the Gnostic Problem; Tertullian--A Latin Perspective; Origen--A New Christian Platonism; Achievement of the Fathers-whom he sees as arriving, not at a settled system, but a series of interrelated problematic themes. The style is clear; the discussion well supported by recourse both to the writings of the four principals and of their contemporaries. A helpful study for those who wish to ground their present attempts to manage the age-old problem of relating Gospel and world on some of its earliest foundations.