Great Christian Thinkers

Posted by Tel Asiado Dec 27, 2007

It took me a while to borrow this book Great Christian Thinkers by Hans Küng but it's worth the wait. By the very title I thought it might be too complicated for my reading comfort. I've initially assumed that Küng's approach would be full of methodological abstractions geared towards people coming from the theology world.

On the contrary, I found the book clear, readable and very interesting. It is short considering the coverage. I appreciate the way Hans Küng outlined it as he starts with a short yet clear introduction about theology. He then proceeds to discuss about the seven Christian thinkers starting from Paul to Karl Barth, as initiators of new paradigms in the the development of the Christian church. What hooked me is how he offers a view of theology in terms of the life and work of these great thinkers, as Küng says: "in the doing and in the living," really in simple terms, according to their social, religious and intellectual environment. The seven great thinkers represent different periods in time, which is even better, with each thinker providing a historical continuity at how Christianity came about, and the influence each one of them contributed.

The Seven Theologians:

1. Paul: Christianity becomes a World Religion
2. Origen: The Great Synthesis of Antiquity and the Christian Spirit
3. Augustine: The Father of All Western Latin Theology
4. Thomas Aquinas: University Science and Papa; Court Theology
5. Martin Luther: Return to the Gospel as the Classical Instance of a Paradign Shift
6. Friedrich Schleiermacher: Theology at the Dawn of Modernity
7. Karl Barth: Theology in the Transition to Postmodernity

Source:

Great Christian Thinkers by Hans Küng, Continuum Publishing Company (1994)