"Gregg's book is the closet thing I've encountered in a long time to a one-volume user's manual for operating Western Civilization." —The Stream "Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization offers a concise intellectual history of the West through the prism of the relationship between faith and reason." —Free Beacon The genius of Western civilization is its unique synthesis of reason and faith. But today that synthesis is under attack—from the East by radical Islam (faith without reason) and from within the West itself by aggressive secularism (reason without faith). The stakes are incalculably high. The naïve and increasingly common assumption that reason and faith are incompatible is simply at odds with the facts of history. The revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures of a reasonable Creator imbued Judaism and Christianity with a conviction that the world is intelligible, leading to the flowering of reason and the invention of science in the West. It was no accident that the Enlightenment took place in the culture formed by the Jewish and Christian faiths. We can all see that faith without reason is benighted at best, fanatical and violent at worst. But too many forget that reason, stripped of faith, is subject to its own pathologies. A supposedly autonomous reason easily sinks into fanaticism, stifling dissent as bigoted and irrational and devouring the humane civilization fostered by the integration of reason and faith. The blood-soaked history of the twentieth century attests to the totalitarian forces unleashed by corrupted reason. But Samuel Gregg does more than lament the intellectual and spiritual ruin caused by the divorce of reason and faith. He shows that each of these foundational principles corrects the other’s excesses and enhances our comprehension of the truth in a continuous renewal of civilization. By recovering this balance, we can avoid a suicidal winner-take-all conflict between reason and faith and a future that will respect neither.

For those, like myself, who have enjoyed and greatly benefitted from reading the essays of Joseph Pearce, published in a variety of venues, especially as editorials in the Saint Austin Review, but who have not practically been able to save them in an effective way for future consultation and reflection, the present volume is indeed a great gift. For those who are not familiar with the essays of Joseph Pearce, the volume represents a treasure of the most solid Catholic thought on important aspects of culture, both historical and contemporary, especially as it expresses itself through literature. Joseph Pearce has a remarkable gift of writing about history, literature, and culture in general. His writing is objective and accessible, that is, it shows his steadfast attention to the truth and to language which manifests the same truth in its inherent beauty or natural attractiveness. The fifth essay in this collection, "History Revisited," for instance, is a sterling example of his gift for such writing. The essays of Joseph Pearce reveal his profound understanding of reason and faith, of classical realist philosophy and Catholic doctrine, which permits him to write about history, literature, and culture in general with an unfailing attention to the objective reality of God and of His earthly creation, that is, of man and of the world. Book jacket.

Is religious belief reasonable? Specifically, is the doctrine of the Catholic faith consistent with reason? Drawing on Catholic and Christian theological traditions, Martin Albl engages readers in theological thinking on various topics including the Trinity, Christology, ecclesiology, human nature, sin, salvation, revelation, and eschatology. Clear and focused, the text links traditional teaching with contemporary issues to show the relevance of faith to contemporary issues. A glossary, cross-referencing system, text and discussion questions, and footnotes with information about Internet resources provide more in-depth information. --Publisher description.

The Christian life is one of dualities: we are simultaneously sinner and saint, we know believers and non-believers, we interact in the left and right kingdoms, and we hear Law and Gospel.

On the one hand, Eagleton demolishes what he calls the "superstitious" view of God held by most atheists and agnostics and offers in its place a revolutionary account of the Christian Gospel. On the other hand, he launches a stinging assault on the betrayal of this revolution by institutional Christianity. There is little joy here, then, either for the anti-God brigade -- Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in particular -- nor for many conventional believers. --Résumé de l'éditeur.

In this book, George Karuvelil seeks to establish the rationality of religion and theology in the contemporary world. Theology has always required some philosophical basis. Moreover, Christian theology has had a dynamic character that enabled it to adapt to more than one philosophy depending on the need of the time. For instance, it shifted in accordance with the change from Neo-Platonism to Aristotelianism in the thirteen century. However, this dynamism has been absent since the dawn of modernity, when reason became identified with modern science to disastrous results. While the advent of postmodernism has brought the limits of modernism to light, it has done nothing to establish the rationality of religion, other than to treat religion as a cultural phenomenon along with science. This book conceives fundamental theology as a discipline that seeks religious truth in the midst of diverse perspectives, ranging from militant atheism to violent religious fanaticism.

We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.

The contemporary theologian Hans Küng has asked if the "death of God," proclaimed by Nietzsche as the event of modernity, was inevitable. Did the empowering of new forms of rationality in Western culture beginning around 1500 lead necessarily to the reduction or privatization of faith? In Dialogues between Faith and Reason, John H. Smith traces a major line in the history of theology and the philosophy of religion down the "slippery slope" of secularization—from Luther and Erasmus, through Idealism, to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and contemporary theory such as that of Derrida, Habermas, Vattimo, and Asad. At the same time, Smith points to the persistence of a tradition that grew out of the Reformation and continues in the mostly Protestant philosophical reflection on whether and how faith can be justified by reason. In this accessible and vigorously argued book, Smith posits that faith and reason have long been locked in mutual engagement in which they productively challenge each other as partners in an ongoing "dialogue." Smith is struck by the fact that although in the secularized West the death of God is said to be fundamental to the modern condition, our current post-modernity is often characterized as a "postsecular" time. For Smith, this means not only that we are experiencing a broad-based "return of religion" but also, and more important for his argument, that we are now able to recognize the role of religion within the history of modernity. Emphasizing that, thanks to the logos located "in the beginning," the death of God is part of the inner logic of the Christian tradition, he argues that this same strand of reasoning also ensures that God will always "return" (often in new forms). In Smith's view, rational reflection on God has both undermined and justified faith, while faith has rejected and relied on rational argument. Neither a defense of atheism nor a call to belief, his book explores the long history of their interaction in modern religious and philosophical thought.