ACTON INSTITUTE — In his acclaimed book Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization (Regnery Gateway, 2019), Samuel Gregg argues that while reason and faith are often at fierce odds with each one in our contemporary Western culture, they shouldn’t be. Going back to the Hebrew Scriptures and tracing the development of ideas through the Enlightenment to our own time, Gregg asserts that Western culture was decisively forged by its particular integration of reason and faith. Many of its contemporary problems, he says, reflect the disintegration of that relationship, grounded in the idea of God-as-Logos.

As Gregg’s book illustrates, when reason and faith are separated, they fuel “pathologies” such as scientism, relativism, fundamentalism, sentimental humanitarianism, and ideologies like Marxism which seek to establish heaven on earth. The only way forward, Gregg argues, is for those who believe in truth to restate the integration of reason and faith in ways that draw upon its Jewish, Greek, Roman, and Christian roots but also the insights of modernity and the Enlightenment.

This book presentation is a recording on Zoom from 13 May 2020 and hosted by Istituto Acton.

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