Günter Frank: Die Vernunft des Gottesgedankens

One subject dealt with systematically in the classical philosophy of religion is the conditions of the possibility under which the concept of God is imaginable. The philosophy of religion did not become an independent discipline until the Early Modern Age, starting with the treatise »The True Intellectual System of the Universe,« written by the British Platonist Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688) and published in London in 1678. This was the first work to see itself and to call itself a »Philosophy of Religion.« This historical and systematic study documents the transformation of classical philosophical theology into the modern philosophy of religion under the conditions of Reformation theology which seemed to exclude a conceivability of the concept of God.