Christianity regards its followers as the one who has been given the kingdom of heaven. They believe that God is omniscient and regards all things equally. In this passage of scripture, we find that God’s omniscience is demonstrated in the fact that he knows all things whatsoever (both the present and future), whereas man believes differently. The Christian thinker strives to demonstrate that the Bible’s claims are true while man’s understandings are false.
The most common concept behind Christianity is the idea of salvation. This is associated with the concept of election, whereby salvation is predestined for all those who have been saved through Christ. There are two concepts involved here: faith and works. A distinction must be made between the two.
On the one hand, Christians argue that because of the existence of evil, God can’t be everywhere at once and therefore he can only be found where people are. Because of this, the Christian thinkers feel that God is omnipresent and can do everything just as he wishes. To these thinkers, humans aren’t responsible for their deeds and therefore they don’t deserve a saving. A non-believer may say, “I don’t see how it can be that God is everywhere and doesn’t have to do/work something just so I’ll be saved.” This argument is a fundamental part of fundamentalism.
Another popular Christian thought is that salvation is simply an act or deed. It cannot be intellectualized or made intelligible, in the eyes of some Christians. Believers view salvation as being an act that is done voluntarily by an individual. It may also be viewed as being a means to an end, or as a means to gratify the sense of religious feeling.
There is also another common Christian thought which is that the thoughts of their Fathers are timeless, thus before the Flood there were no such ideas as Original Truth, or Truth at All. Some Christians view this idea to be unbounded and believe that all ideas regardless of the period in history can be trusted. This is theologically linked to the concept of Original Sin, wherein those who do not believe in Christ are bound to eternal punishment. The fathers of the church did not think like this, and even called the concept of Original Sin a “falsehood”.
The third most common thought, and the least rational of the three, is that all knowledge found in Philosophy, Science, and the Arts belongs exclusively to Christianity. The reason is merely a tool used by man to understand the world around him. In this way, a person can say that because the philosophy of their Father’s was excellent, it must also be so for us. The problem with this is that while all knowledge found in philosophy, science, and the arts have value, this does not mean that it is the only valuable knowledge. Many persons do not truly value religious or philosophical knowledge, but simply use these concepts to justify their own lack of belief.
One of the most important trends in ancient thinking is the development of philosophies which became popular amongst the people of the east to include Taoism, Zen, and Indian yoga. While some might argue that these philosophies are not based on Christian thought, they were in alignment with much earlier thought, and in parallel to the intellectual developments which came to dominate the east towards the end of the medieval era. The key fathers of the eastern religion, from India to China, never denied the importance of the role religion played in the lives of individuals. Some of them, like St. Paul and St. Bernard of France, were deeply involved with the Eastern philosophies and founded major schools of thought in the west that have continued to influence modern thinking even though most of their followers in the west have become very secularized.
The ideas of the philosophers who produced the early churches were not restricted to the east alone. Some of them found application in the philosophy of the west as well, especially those of Sartre and Camus. The main characteristic of this sort of thinking is an excessive distrust of religion as a whole. Though skepticism about the claims of religion was widespread in the east, it was especially rare in the west until the nineteenth century. This was a significant development in the history of Christian thought, as it marked a break with the preceding belief system.