Lauren Ducommun

Crossway first published The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts That Shaped Our World by renowned theologian, R.C. Sproul, in 2000. In their latest edition, Sproul writes biographies of great thinkers and philosophers throughout history–from Ancient Greece to the 21st century with the aim to show us how ideas, good and bad, have shaped our society and worldviews. 

“We do not create a world or environment from scratch and then live in it,” Sproul says. “Rather we step into a world and culture that already exiosts, and we learn to interact with it.”

He reminds it is important to become foundational thinkers as it “lays bare all of our assumptions so that we may discover those assumptions that are false and often lethal.” 

I appreciate not only Sproul’s passion for philosophy, but also how he wrote this specifically not with the average person in mind, so that anyone can understand or see how ideas impact us and have impacted us for millennia. Because of this, Sproul’s writing is great for older students, especially those already exposed to church history or chemistry. Sproul defines a lot of philosophical terms and purposefully writes to show how philosophy impacts even our Christian life.

The only other philosophy book I’ve read, besides Descartes and Plato, is The Love of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy for Theologians by Andrew Davison. While I found that book extremely insightly and showed the movement of thinking and ideas, I would say The Consequences of Ideas is much easier to read and has meatier biographies about these great thinkers.

How I will use this book:

AmblesideOnline has The Consequences of Ideas scheduled along with Sophie’s World in 12th Grade. My seventh grader has already been exposed to some of the philosophers mentioned through The Mystery of the Periodic Table in 6th Grade and biographies of philosophers from Saints and Heroes in 7th grade, and later in 7 Men Who Rule the World from the Grave in 10th grade. So by the time my kids read this, they’ll be familiar with some of these people.

It looks like Sproul also had a video series on some of these philosophers–so I may incorporate those videos as well, if time permits.

I received this book from Crossway as a gift. All opinions are my own.

The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts That Shaped Our World
by R.C. Sproul
Crossway, 2025
216 pages