Welcome to five minutes in church history hosted by Dr Stephen Nichols, where we take a little break from the present to go exploring the past.

Travel back in time as we look at the people, events, and even the places that have shaped the story of Christianity.

This is our story, our family history. Let's get started.

On this episode of five minutes in church history we're going to be looking at

the pastor in the river. Now please note the preposition. It's not of the

river, it's not on the river. It's in the river. This is about the

pastor in the river. Now we know this is going to be a great story, so let's get to it.

The pastor in question is Thomas Reed,

but he's not known as a pastor at all.

He's known as a philosopher.

Thomas Reed's life spanned nearly the entire 18th century.

He was born in 1710, and he died in 1796.

It was no easy feat to live 86 years back in that day.

Thomas Reed was Scottish, so maybe that's how he managed to live so long.

And as I mentioned, he is known as a philosopher. He was at the head of a system of

thought known as Scottish common sense realism or simply we call it sometimes

common sense realism. In his own day he was one of the

ableist critics of the philosophers John Locke and David Hume. Now philosophers

sometimes overlooked Thomas Reed and said they focus on

a manual Kant and Kant's response to Hume and Locke but Thomas Reed had a huge

influence. He especially had a huge influence on America and American

thought. He had a profound influence on John Witherspoon. John Witherspoon came from

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