In the beginning is philosophy - 223

Philosophy, when understood to embody the values that are fundamental to modernity, is biblical in origin, both historically and ontologically.

Central to this idea is the question famously posed by Tertullian: What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?

The answer - as based on a comprehensive and systematic discussion of the key texts and ideas of Spinoza, Vico, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche - is that we can overcome the conventional opposition between reason and faith, between philosophy and theology, and between the secular and the religious only if we learn to see that, as Spinoza shows us, both philosophy (reason) and theology (faith) are based on caritas: love - on the divine command to do unto others what you want others to do unto you.