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The rationality of faith

By Peter Sellick - posted Wednesday, 16 January 2008


The crucial aspect about these visions of the healing of the earth and of men is that we are not the main protagonists. In an age that celebrates Promethean humanity, drunk on its own achievements, this sounds like heresy. This new reality is brought about by the Word of God which creates all things with the complicity of men.

Traditions of rationality do more than share presuppositions, their main aim is to promote acts in the world. While the disembodied rationality of Descartes and Locke are directed toward certain knowledge about the world, the traditions that we have been speaking of are about action. How do we close down the offence of the other team, what kind of players do we need to have to do so, how should we train the players to be an effective team?

Likewise, the tradition of rationality embodied in the Christian faith is directed towards action based on knowledge. It is acknowledged that such action requires training and discipline. The goal is to live the life of the disciple to the glory of God.

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Notice that this goal is not self directed, happiness or fulfilment are not primary but may be secondary results of this orientation. Indeed, the baptismal liturgy makes it plain that the disciple shares the death of Christ and his resurrection; that the way to life is through death. Although this may seem, from the outside, to be the most drastic loss of self in death and enslavement, the reality is that it is the door to life and radical freedom.

When we talk this way we demonstrate the rationality peculiar to the Christian faith that the Age of Reason denied when it attempted to replace it with the rationality of universal or mathematical reason. From then on faith has been found wanting because it was tried at the court of a reason that was foreign to it just as football may be tried in the court of medical reason. The decision, in the light of the injuries received by players, would be that football was bad for health. Just so, faith was judged to be bad for understanding the world and the conflict between science and religion arose.

It is becoming apparent that in many areas of our lives government is powerless. Even though it may throw millions of dollars at a social problem like drug use, single mothers, marital breakdown, suicide and anomy often diagnosed as mental illness, nothing changes.

The only solution that we see for the moral problems that beset us is harm minimisation. Legalise the brothels and abortion, supply clean needles to drug addicts, teach minors about sexual health instead of giving them a healthy respect for what love demands. Harm reduction is the minimalist intervention that shows us that we do not have any idea of how to alleviate the problem.

We have no idea because under the dispensation of liberalism, derived from the Age of Reason, no shared premises are permitted and therefore no rational argument may occur.

Unless we agree on the connection between love and sex and procreation we will never come to a decision about abortion. Unless we agree that the dignity of women is destroyed by prostitution we will never come to an adequate decision about it. Unless we agree about the destructive influence of gambling we will continue to garner taxes from the misery of some of our citizens.

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It is time that we realised that government cannot help us and that we must do it for ourselves. By us, I mean the Church. If we want to build up the rationality of faith we must do it through our own schools and theological colleges because only there will we have the autonomy that we require. Our focus cannot any longer be on the survival of the Church but on how the Church, weak as it is, can work towards the survival of our society.

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About the Author

Peter Sellick an Anglican deacon working in Perth with a background in the biological sciences.

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