Reason and Faith: The Sacred Unity By James Reed

     This is another great Christian philosophy book which we should read, based upon this book review from the conservative organisation IPA.org, who also love Western civilisation and want to resist its deconstruction by the forces of the Left. The book is Samuel Gregg, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization (2019), reviewed by Zachery Gorman:
  https://ipa.org.au/ipa-review-articles/beyond-reason

“Gregg’s thesis is that the great genius of the West has been the way it has balanced reason and faith, which he writes “correct each other’s successes” and “enhance each other’s comprehension of truth”. Great enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and Isaac Newton used rational inquiry to extend our knowledge and improve our world, but their quest was anchored in some fundamental Christian truths about the value of the individual and humanity’s capacity to exercise free will. This same moral anchor proved the difference between the positive change of the American Revolution and the unhinged despotism of the French Revolution.
Gregg argues the real problem facing the West is not predicated on our free institutions or an excess of progress, but the fact that faith has been decoupled from reason to the point where many believe faith is the antithesis of reason. This is largely a product of the 19th century. Nietzsche is obviously singled out for condemnation, though he is not the only culprit identified. Gregg is keen to point out the German philosopher did not end with his famous dismissal of God, but went on to dismiss rational inquiry as a whole. He ended up at a theory of power now seen as a precursor to fascism. The book’s message is clear: the path from dismissing long-held moral truths to despotism is less of a slippery slope than it is a sheer cliff.

The book identifies two main problems associated with this growing disconnect between faith and reason. The first is ‘Prometheanism’, the idea that man has no intrinsic morals but instead is entirely a product of their cultural surroundings. This threatens to undermine the concept of free will, denying that people are ultimately responsible for their actions, and thus destroying both the concept of the individual and of justice as the West has long understood them. It also opens the door to sinister dreams of man being ‘remade’ through social conditioning. With the death of religion, a heavenly afterlife based on good works has been replaced with schemes to create earthly utopias; be they socialist paradises or more recently efforts to establish a world without gender. As Jewish theologian Will Herberg first argued, man is innately religious, and as such these dreams can take the place of faith psychologically. Nazism and Communism were and are godless faiths, in a perverse way fulfilling man’s search for purpose. The other threat Gregg identifies is ‘scientism’: believing only that which can be objectively proven. The problem is that a whole host of core questions concerning man’s existence cannot be proven scientifically. Morality is an abstract concept which has led to the postmodernist position that it is a social construct. This goes against everything the Western tradition once stood for, with morality being innate and the whole concept of inalienable rights being based on their universality. This ultimately comes back to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage, which sees man as made in the image of God with the ability to reason and choose between right and wrong. That is not to say people have to be Christian to have morals. Thomas Aquinas looked back to the Ancient Greeks and saw that even without divine revelation they believed an awful lot of the things Christians believe. In response he looked to the theory of natural law: the idea that a large part of how God intended us to act is accessible through reason alone. Gregg emphasises the concept of ‘logos’ from the Gospel of John and the parallel concept of ‘dabhar’ in Judaism. In essence this is the idea that God is order and reason, so the universe is comprehensible. He argues this has always been a spur to rational inquiry and is central to the very nature of the West.

The book completely rejects the stereotype that Christianity has been historically hostile to reason. Gregg argues monotheism was a rational choice to believe in an ordered universe—which scientific discoveries have only reinforced—compared to the chaos and superstition of polytheism. This logic is demonstrated by Aristotle, who reasoned the necessity of an intelligent creator from first principles. Beyond this point, Catholic theologians have a long tradition of combining as it were the intellectual traditions of ‘Athens’ and ‘Jerusalem’. The IPA Review of April 2019 showed how John of Salisbury created what might be dubbed an early classical liberal treatise by doing just that. As a Catholic, Gregg does not resist the opportunity to point out that Luther openly complained about papal scholars being too engaged with the Ancient Greeks. While Gregg attacks the ‘pathology’ of reason divorced from faith, he believes the opposite is also true. Christians can fall into the trap of blind faith, though this is an aberration rather than sound theology. Perhaps the most controversial part of the book is that it maintains Islam is characterised by ‘fideism’, the idea that Allah cannot be understood by human beings and must be unthinkingly obeyed. He acknowledges there was a time when the Islamic East was more open to the ideas of the Ancient Greeks than Western Christendom, but maintains subsequent culture wars saw the Muslim world recede from this point. Crucially, Muslims do not interpret the biblical line about man being made in the image of God in the same way, and are therefore less open to humanism. Gregg is very careful to cite his sources clearly on this.”

     A very good review of what would appear to be an excellent book. I am putting away spare coins in an old jar, and when I can afford it, will get the book for review, but it may take a few years. So, don’t wait for me to get the book, on the basis of the above, you should get it now without my official seal of approval, or take this quasi-review of the poor as my new stamp!