The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts that Shaped Our World
Digital Verbum Edition
R. C. Sproul's survey of the ongoing impact of history's most influential philosophies urges readers to take prevailing cultural mind-sets seriously, because ideas do have consequences. The greatest thinkers of all time are impacting us still.
From public-policy decisions and current laws to world events, theology, the arts, education, and even conversations between friends, history's most influential philosophies have wrought massive consequences on nearly everything we see, think, and do. Thus it is critical for Christians to understand the ideas that are shaping them. The greater their familiarity with the streams of thought that have saturated Western culture through the ages, the greater their ability to influence this culture for Christ.
With The Consequences of Ideas, Sproul expertly leads the way for thoughtful readers. Tracing the contours of Western philosophy from the ancients to the molders of modern and postmodern thought-including Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, and Freud-Sproul proves that ideas are not just passing fads; they endure for generations to come and demand our serious attention.
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Top Highlights
“The chief principle of logic is the law of noncontradiction: Something cannot be what it is and not be what it is at the same time and in the same sense or relationship.” (Pages 41–42)
“According to Aristotle, however, there can, indeed must, be something that is pure or absolute actuality. This is Aristotle’s ‘god,’ or his notion of pure being. A being of pure and absolute actuality has no unrealized potential. It is not open to change, growth, or mutation. A being with no potentiality and with pure actuality, since it has no change, must have no motion of any kind. This concept formed Aristotle’s idea of the ‘unmoved mover.’” (Page 49)
“These causes are 1) the formal cause, which determines what a thing is; 2) the material cause, that out of which a thing is made; 3) the efficient cause, that by which a thing is made; and 4) the final cause, that for which a thing is made, or its purpose.” (Page 48)
“Thomas believed that philosophy and theology play complementary roles in the quest for truth. Grace does not destroy nature but fulfills it.” (Page 69)
“For Plato, knowledge that is restricted to the material world is at best mere opinion and at worst ignorance” (Page 35)
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