Faith and the Philosophy of History

Abstract

Abstract The late professor Martin Wight (1913–1972), a historian and scholar of International Relations, conducted research on many topics, including British colonial history, European Studies, international institutions, and the history and sociology of states-systems. This volume draws together many of Wight’s previously unpublished, obscurely published, and anonymous writings about faith and the philosophy of history. Owing to his premature death at the age of 58, he was unable to complete several works in progress, partly because his perfectionism led him to refrain from publishing many of them. He nonetheless wrote original and striking works regarding secular and sacred history since antiquity, with particular attention to Christianity and Eschatology, including Antichrist and the Second Coming. The chief themes in the writings in this volume fall into five categories: History and the presuppositions of the Social Sciences; Christendom and civilization; the historical evolution of Christian thinking on war; aspects of the Antichrist myth; and Eschatology and Progress. His most remarkable works in this volume embrace “The Development of Christian Thought on Violence,” “The Church, Russia and the West,” “The Crux for an Historian Brought Up in the Christian Tradition,” and “Some Reflections on the Historic Antichrist.”

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