Scottish Philosophical Theology

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-fertilsation 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 a 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.