Sells,

I am now be treated for a stage three cancer. So there is seventy percent chance, I will find out for myself in the next five years, whether the is a God. That said, without the Englightenment, I would have been bleed, rather than retreated with chemo, ratiation and antimatter [PET} scan.I may be been alive to write this email. My chances would be zero.

George and Waterboy.
A whole lot of things here that I will not try to address. Many in our time have congratulated themselves on their tolerance and breadth of understanding by saying nice things about the world religions and it seems narrow and ignorant to depart from that generous spirit. The result is often that we do not stand up for what we believe because that looks like we are discounting other stories. The gospels are not so reticent. “I am the truth and the life”. If we are to be faithful we must turn our backs on other paths even if we do that agnostically. We must point to this one figure Jesus and say “here, in this one man, in his teaching and death and resurrection is the hope of nations”. As such he does not exist at the end of any human path towards God. Rather he comes to us “vertically from above” as the unexpected revelation of God. The man Jesus does not fit any philosophical system, that is why much philosophy about God goes its own way and ends in nihilism. This is the scandal that Paul pointed out that was just as much a scandal for the Jews and Greeks in his day as it is for modern man in ours. The avoidance of that scandal will defeat the gospel which is why liberal Protestant churches are in such a bad way, they have conformed themselves to the age. My point in the article is that when theology becomes philosophy it loses its rationality and its way and the scandal of the gospel is obscured.

Oliver, My criticism of the Enlightenment is quite specifically targeted at the theological heritage, I too am thankful for the advances in science. Be assured that my prayers are with you.

Sells,

Thank you for your kind words and compassion.

Sells,
I agree that theology should not become (be reduced to) philosophy (though Aquinas would probably not understand the difference); neither should one confuse mathematics with physics (though Newton might not have seen such a clear distinction). In both cases the two developed together, and only modernity saw them as clearly separate. Nevertheless, I think there is still some overlap between theology and philosophy. And neither should any of them be confused with reminding the like-minded about the centrality of Jesus in a sermon that does not say much to an outsider. Of course, I completely agree with the way you put it, and I do not think it contradicts with what I wrote.

Let me repeat for the third time, that I did not want to elaborate on the truth value of religions or faiths, but as far as Christianity is concerned, if forced, I could not put it better than Ratzinger (Benedict XVIth) in his 2003 book “Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions”. One quote (I do not have the English version, so excuse my translation from the German original): “Christian faith can concern all people only when it is the truth: when it is just a cultural variant of symbolically encoded and never decoded religious experiences, then it must remain in its own culture, and leave others in their respective cultures. However, this means that the question of truthfulness is the most fundamental question of Christian faith, and in this sense it must be inescapably linked to philosophy.“

Another quote: “Truth descends only on him who tries for it, who yearns for it, who carries within himself, pre-formed, a mental space where the truth may eventually lodge” (Ortega y Gasset). I cannot speak on behalf of waterboy, but all that I was trying to say was to argue for a “mental space where the truth may eventually lodge“ without actually defending, or even naming, this truth.

George,
Whenever I hear Benedict XVIth I wonder why we do not all take the central message of the Reformation and become Catholic. Hauerwas has recently preached a sermon on Reformation Sunday that I think is outstanding:

http://www.reformedcatholicism.com/?p=885

Sells,

Through contacts, I was able to flip the pages of some theology books in English at St. Marys Cathdral, Sydney. Technically, the Catholic Church regards Anglicans as [prodical] Catholics whom one day --in their-- view return to the arms of universal church. Presume, the same applies to other lost sheep, in its view.

The Enlightment is squeezed between the Scientfic Revolution & the Great Divergence. The former is about "authority/loss of authority" and the latter scietufic method, "how to discover/alternative models"