Prologue -- Introduction -- Part One: Gratitude. The good of gratitude : dependence, acceptance and being at home in the world ; A world of rights : the expulsion of love and gratitude from public life ; "Endless gratitude so burdensome" : Christian theology and Western civilization -- Part Two: Pride. Greatness of soul : Aristotle's philosophy of pride ; Givers and takers : the good of self-sufficiency ; The eternal and divine : what everything desires ; The best life of all : politics and contemplation ; Friendship : Gratitude and human fulfillment ; The first cosmopolitan : Plato's discovery of an invisible self ; Preparatio evangelica : Stoicism on the way to Christian thought -- Part Three: Salvation. Creation : making, begetting and creating ; Will : human freedom and the problem of evil ; Grace : divine omnipotence and the Augustinian dilemma ; "Not a sparrow falls" : the abolition of the distinction between form and matter ; The contingency of the world : that whose essence is to exist ; The Pagan temptation : Aquinas and the Aristotelian revival ; God unchained : Ockham's defense of divine freedom ; Theology of the cross : the Lutheran reformation ; The hatred of man : Augustine redux ; The absolute spontaneity of freedom : Kant's Christian metaphysics ; Our better selves : the morality of autonomy ; God becomes a postulate : Reason, freedom and Kant's defense of divine grace ; Reaction : Joseph de Maistre's revolt against pride ; "Fantastic and satanic" : the illiberal theology of Donoso Cortes and Carl Schmitt ; The oblivion of being : Martin Heidegger's reconstruction of Western philosophy ; The disenchantment of the world : Max Weber and the problem of nihilism -- Part four: Joy. The worm in the blood : Spinoza's conception of science ; The god of sufficient reason : physics after Spinoza ; "Endless forms most beautiful" : Darwin's divine biology ; The navel of the dream : Freud and the science of the mind ; "Man is a god to man" : the modern research ideal ; The world as an aesthetic phenomenon : art, truth and morality in Nietzsche's philosophy ; The spider in the moonlight : Nietzsche's interpretation of the will to power as art ; "The gift of transmigration" : the theology of the modern novel ; Genius and sublimity : painting since the Renaissance ; Theological, not political : John Raul's Christian defense of liberal democracy ; Democratic vistas : Walt Whitman and the divinity of diversity -- Epilogue : "Downward to darkness, on extended wings".

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"We live in an age of disenchantment. The number of self-professed "atheists" continues to grow. Yet many still feel an intense spiritual longing for a connection to what Aristotle called the "eternal and divine." For those who do, but demand a God that is compatible with their modern ideals, a new theology is required. This is what Anthony Kronman offers here, in a book that leads its readers away from the inscrutable Creator of the Abrahamic religions toward a God whose inexhaustible and everlasting presence is that of the world itself. Kronman defends an ancient conception of God, deepened and transformed by Christian belief--the born-again paganism on which modern science, art, and politics all vitally depend. Brilliantly surveying centuries of Western thought--from Plato to Augustine, Aquinas, and Kant, from Spinoza to Nietzsche, Darwin, and Freud--Kronman recovers and reclaims the God we need today." -- (Source of summary not specified)