Thomas Olgetree's Christian Faith and History offers a critical analysis of the views of Ernst Troeltsch and Karl Barth regarding Christian faith and history. Troeltsch and Barth appraoched theology from seemingly antithetical vantage points, but Ogletree seeks to identify overlapping interests in the writing of these two authors, and to suggest a broader framework for understanding that constructively combines the insights of both.

In this book, Thomas Ogletree seeks to establish common ground between biblical understandings and contemporary ethical inquiry. Drawing upon phenomenological investigations, he criticizes and modifies some of the most prominent conceptions of ethics, and moves toward a more coherent and comprehensive ethical theory. Guided by this theory, he critically engages selected biblical treatments of the moral life, placing special emphasis on biblical accounts of eschatology in its import for the ordered life of emerging Christian communities.

The essays contained in this book offer exploratory studies towards a constructive account of "fundamental ethics," that is, a basic description of the constitutive components of the moral life. Thomas Ogletree sketches out the systematic components of Christian ethics, relating them to symbolic ethics--the mediation of Christian traditions of moral understanding--and practical ethics--the critical appropriation of scientific studies of factors controlling human action.