THE OLD FAITH & THE NEW
David Frederick Strauss
Translated by Mathilde Blind
German philosopher and radical theologian David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) distinguished
himself as one of Europe's most controversial critics of the Bible and an intellectual martyr for
freethought. In The Old Faith & the New (1872) he uses both 19th- century science and leading
philosophers to reject God as the creator of the universe and humankind, the divinity of Christ,
and the reality of miracles (the Old Faith), thus consigning religion to the domains of history,
myth, and ethics. With Christianity's cosmology undermined, Strauss constructs a new view of the
universe and humanity's place in it grounded in science and contemporary technology. Darwinian
evolution, and inductive reasoning (the New Faith), all of which offered the hope of finding
solutions to human problems.
300 pp ISBN 1-57392-118-1. Paper
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