Foundations of Christian Thought: Faith, Learning, and the Christian Worldview

"Faith is not just meant for church on Sunday," contends Mark Cosgrove. "Faith and learning are interwoven with each other for the full functioning of the human mind." A book that details this interconnection between faith and learning, Foundations of Christian Thought encourages readers to view the Christian faith and worldview as relevant to everything they read, study, and consider.

In part 1, Cosgrove explores the relationship between faith and learning and how an underlying worldview can influence one's beliefs. Part 2 describes and tests five major worldviews competing with Christian theism, including naturalism, secular humanism, atheistic existentialism, pantheism, and the New Age movement. The last part probes the Christian worldview in more detail by analyzing the challenges it faces and how it is lived out day-to-day.

An educator on the college campus for thirty years, Cosgrove testifies to how well the Christian worldview relates with the current needs and ideas in American culture. Through Foundations of Christian Thought, high school and college students will begin to see how the Christian worldview is relevant to what they are studying in the classroom and the decisions they make. Readers in the workforce and elsewhere will learn to relate their faith to modern worldviews in our culture.

“We must rid ourselves of the notion that faith and learning are somehow opposites or enemies. Faith and learning are interwoven with each other for the full functioning of the human mind.”

Foundations of Christian Thought is a clear, even-handed presentation of the interconnection between faith and learning, and the modern worldviews competing for our attention, including naturalism, secular humanism, atheistic existentialism, pantheism, and the New Age movement. Guided by the author’s fresh approach, readers on the college campus, in the workforce, and elsewhere will learn to relate their faith to their own intellectual journey and the ideas they encounter along the way.

“Mark Cosgrove has accomplished the difficult task of making the issues of worldview and faith integration with academic disciples accessible to the non-expert. . . . Highly useful as an introduction to these issues.”

—Harry Lee Poe
Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture,
Union University

“Mark Cosgrove refuses to dodge the hard questions and presents the Christian worldview with honesty and humility. I strongly recommend Foundations of Christian Thought as well tested and effective.”

—Jay Kesler
President Emeritus,
Taylor University

“As a consummate teacher, using more leisurely language and current examples, Mark Cosgrove leads the reader—as if in a classroom—to ask the questions that compel a carefully reasoned response.”

—D. Bruce Lockerbie
Chairman, PAIDEIA, Inc., Stony Brook, NY
Author, Thinking and Acting Like a Christian

“Foundations of Christian Thought offers a completely new and fresh approach to exploring and engaging the inescapable commingling of faith, learning, and worldview. [It] takes the reader on an intellectual expedition.”

—Richard C. Chewning
Emeritus Professor of Christian Ethics,
Baylor University

Mark P. Cosgrove (Ph.D., Purdue University) is a professor and chairman of the psychology department at Taylor University and the author of several books. He has taught the subject of Foundations of Christian Thought for more than thirty years.