This volume concentrates on the period from the beginning of the 18th century to the latter part of the 20th. It is impossible to depict a single school of philosophical theology in Scotland across three centuries, yet several strains have been identified that suggest some recurrent themes or intellectual habits. These include the following: the mutually beneficial cross-fertilisation of the disciplines of philosophy and theology; the tendency to eschew powerful philosophical systems that might threaten to imprison theological ideas; a stress on both the providential limitations and reliability of human reason; a suspicion of reductive theories of a materialist inclination; and a determination to inspect critically the proposals of theology and to place these in positive relation to other disciplines.
