Marriage of faith and reason explored at lecture

Recently, The University of Scranton hosted “The Wild and Wonderful Marriage Between Faith and Reason: A Historical Story,”  a lecture and discussion by Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Boston College, Boston, Mass.
In his lecture, Dr. Kreeft introduced the concept of marriage by saying, “The fundamental intellectual project of Christian culture is the marriage of faith and reason. Historically and culturally this began with the merging of biblical Judeo-Christian culture with classical Greco-Roman culture.”
According to Dr. Kreeft, this marriage united the Judeo-Christian concepts of God and sin with the Greek concepts of logic and nature – two concepts previously unconsidered by other cultures. This marriage, he posited, “was not the Hellenization of Christianity, but the Christianization of Greek philosophy.”
After his historical introduction, Dr. Kreeft explained the distinctions between three aspects of the faith-reason marriage. The first aspect considers both faith and reason as “timeless, objective truths,” an aspect that St. Thomas Aquinas tackled in his theological and philosophical writings. The second aspect – the more typical modern meaning –considers both as “temporal, historical, subjective acts of the human soul.” A third aspect considers both as “human, cultural, historical entities,” exemplified in Adam and Eve.  
To consolidate any perceived conflict within this metaphorical marriage, Dr. Kreeft said, “Faith and reason are both ways of opening yourself to God’s truth.” Their marriage works because they are both “rational, egalitarian, public and objective.”
This event, held in the Moskovitz Theater of the DeNaples Center, was sponsored by the University’s Catholic Studies Program, Jesuit Center and Department of Theology/Religious Studies. A recording of this event can be found at The University of Scranton’s YouTube channel.
 
Catherine Erbicella ’14, Media, is a management major with a minor in philosophy and participant in the Special Jesuit Liberal Arts Honors Program and the Business Leadership Honors Program at The University of Scranton.