Jesus and Philosophy New Essays

This book considers Jesus' contribution and significance to philosophy in historical and intellectual contexts.

What, if anything, does Jesus of Nazareth have to do with philosophy? This question motivates this collection of essays from leading theologians, philosophers, and biblical scholars. Part I portrays Jesus in his first-century intellectual and historical context, attending to intellectual influences and contributions and contemporaneous similar patterns of thought. Part II examines how Jesus influenced two of the most prominent medieval philosophers. It considers the seeming conceptual shift from Hebraic categories of thought to distinctively Greco-Roman ones in later Christian philosophers. Part III considers the significance of Jesus for some prominent contemporary philosophical topics, including epistemology and the meaning of life. The focus is not so much on how 'Christianity' figures in such topics as on how Jesus makes distinctive contributions to them.

Introduction: Jesus and philosophy Paul K. Moser; Part I. Jesus in His First-Century Context: 1. Jesus: sources and self-understanding Craig A. Evans; 2. Sipping from the cup of wisdom James L. Crenshaw; 3. The Jesus of the Gospels and philosophy Luke T. Johnson; 4. Paul, the mind of Christ, and philosophy Paul W. Gooch; Part II. Jesus in Medieval Philosophy: 5. Jesus and Augustine Gareth B. Matthews; 6. Jesus and Aquinas Brian Leftow; Part III. Jesus in Contemporary Philosophy: 7. The epistemology of Jesus: an initial investigation William J. Abraham; 8. Paul Ricoeur: a biblical philosopher on Jesus David F. Ford; 9. Jesus and forgiveness Nicholas Wolterstorff; 10. Jesus Christ and the meaning of life Charles Taliaferro.

What, if anything, does Jesus have to do with philosophy? This collection of essays examines this question in three parts: Jesus in his first-century context, in medieval philosophy, and in contemporary philosophy.

Paul K. Moser is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Loyola University, Chicago. He is author of The Elusive God (Cambridge, 2008), and co-editor of Divine Hiddenness (Cambridge, 2002) and The Rationality of Theism (2003). He is also Editor of the journal American Philosophical Quarterly. His latest book is The Evidence for God, (Cambridge, 2010), aimed at a non-scholarly audience.