Lesson Four: Faith and Reason: Religious Belief from Augustine to Luther

The great medieval Christian thinkers would all have been bewildered by the idea, widespread in contemporary culture, that faith and reason are fundamentally at odds. Christian theology reaches back to the contributions of the church fathers but is transformed by Augustine of Hippo. His writings did more to shape theology than anyone else from the apostle Paul to the present. The philosophical and theological foundations he laid shape theological discussions today. After Augustine, Aquinas is the next dominant figure, followed by Martin Luther who initiated the Reformation. In this class, we will consider the influence of great theologians and learn how they shaped the Christian intellectual tradition. Their views on faith and reason were debated and disputed with the rise of religious skepticism in the seventeenth century Enlightenment, the focus of our discussion next week.