Faith, Reason and Philosophy: Lectures at the al-Azhar, Qum, Tehran, Lahore and Beijing (George F. McLean)

Share This

In considering the relation of faith and reason it is important to appreciate that the issue generally is viewed from the perspective of the secular rationalism which has characterized much of the modern age. This is the cultural context within which we are born; it constitutes the glasses through which our world is interpreted.

There are various and complex reasons for this. One, as with John Locke, is the desire to make everything patent to everyone in order to facilitate the transfer of the exercise of power to popularly elected authorities. For this everyone needed equal access to all that entered into the debate. Locke recast the understanding of human knowledge on the basis of a story — which Wittgenstein found incorrect — of its origin whereby all was sense observation or what could be done with the ideas it produced. Religious ideas were not unwelcome to Locke — he wrote extensive Biblical commentaries — but they came from without and were added over and above reason in accord with the new reformation theology.

Read more

Leave a Comment