Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores what difference developments in philosophy, theology, science, and technology are making, or should make, to our current self-images. Enlightenment critiques of both natural theology and theology founded on Scripture were taken by many to be fatal. It was against this pessimistic background that Romantic theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote his famous apologetic for religion and then developed it into a form of theology that has earned him the title of 'father of modern theology'. F. LeRon Shults reaches conclusions about the nature of religious knowledge that are consistent with Knight's, but arrived at by a very different route. George F. R. Ellis offers a complementary account of religious fundamentalism and compares it to similar attitudes found in science. The book concerns MacIntyre's observation that questions of human identity become philosophical questions whenever religious answers are challenged.