The Theological Origins of Liberalism

Ismail Kurun

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2016
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498527415
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This eye-opening book offers a critical survey of the true origins of liberalism. It challenges the widely held belief among social scientists that liberalism was developed in opposition to Christianity. Beginning with the Protestant Reformation, it illustrates how Christian thinkers reinterpreted Christianity and used a set of indemonstrable biblical presuppositions from their reinterpretations to develop the first liberal ideas, starting a process that culminates in the birth of the first liberal political theory in the writings of a devout Christian philosopher, John Locke. It explains how the Protestant Reformation, covenant theology, anti-trinitarianism and medieval Christian natural law theories formed the foundations of liberalism. Thus, the central claim of this book is that liberalism is better understood as a radical reinterpretation of Christianity that emerged in the post-Reformation and early modern period. As a logical consequence of revealing the hitherto generally neglected roots of liberalism, it eventually proposes that a legally pluralist liberal political theory is the best way to maintain human dignity and peace in multi-religious societies of today's globalized world.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Relationship between Philosophy and Theology
• The Protestant Foundations in Liberalism
• Covenant Theology
• Grounding Liberalism on Christian Theology
• Theological Foundations of Liberalism in the Tradition of Natural Law and Natural Rights
• Historical Foundations of the Contradictions in Natural Rights Liberalism and Legal Pluralism as the Way Forward
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author