Samuel Gregg: "Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization"

Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization
by Samuel Gregg.
Gateway Editions (June 25, 2019). 256 pgs.

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.

Reviews and Discussion

• Review by Reviewed by Rev. Ben Johnson. TransAtlantic Blog Acton Institute. 8/16/19.
• All Is Not Lost: Reason, Faith, & Western Civilization, by Fr. Dwight Longenecker. The Imaginative Conservative 07/30/19:

  Samuel Gregg is to be congratulated for writing a concise, accessible, and clear explanation of our present situation. His book is uncluttered with intellectual jargon, academic posturing, and obscure argumentation. It’s the kind of book that should be required reading for any liberal arts college student because it gives the historical background that explains where we are today and why. This sort of book provides the context and matrix for current trends in philosophy, politics, economics, the arts, media, religion, and popular culture.

• Reason, faith, and the pursuit of wisdom, by Phil Lawler. Catholic Culture 08/09/19.
• The Logos of Western Civilization: A Conversation with Sam Gregg (Podcast). Law and Liberty 08/16/19.
• Samuel Gregg: Discussion w/ John J. Miller National Review 07/08/19.
• The Struggle for Western Civilization – Conversations with Mark Bauerlein Ricochet