Faith and Reason in the Reformations

Terence J. Kleven

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2021
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978792357
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The five-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation reawakened a long-standing and spirited conversation between philosophic science and religious faith, a conversation which continues to have consequences on how we understand both science and faith. This book brings scholars together to reflect on the topic of the Protestant Reformation, as well as the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation, the nature of science, and the unity of the Church. Five chapters in this collection represent five distinct theological formulations within Christianity; the other seven chapters are from a variety of historic, philosophic, and theological starting points on the topic. These twelve accounts range from theologies informed by the Classical Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle; medieval Jewish and Roman Catholic writers; Moses Maimonides and Thomas More; writers of the Protestant Reformation (Martin Luther, John Calvin, Richard Hooker, and William Shakespeare); the founders of modern science (Francis Bacon and T. H. Huxley), and the modern day theologies of Abraham Kuyper, Flannery O'Connor, H. R. Niebuhr, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Five Keynote Addresses
• ‌‌Catholic Reflections on Reason and Faith after Five Hundred Years of Reform and Enlightenment
• ‌‌Sola Fide: What Is the Role of Reason after the Reformation?
• ‌‌The Grammar of Faith in Twelfth Night: Richard Hooker’s Gift to Shakespeare
• Reason and the Paradigms of the Nature-Grace Relationship
• An English Major’s Theology?‌‌
• Seven Studies on Core Treatises from the Medieval to Modern Periods
• A. Medieval Alternatives
• ‌‌“And Ye Shall be as Rulers, having Opinions about Good and Evil” (Gen. 3:5b)
• ‌‌‌The Ills of Man Writ Large: Hythloday’s Diagnosis and Solution in Thomas More’s Utopia
• B. The Reformation Argument
• The Impotency of Reason in Calvin’s Account of Natural Law and Natural Reason‌‌‌‌‌
• C. The New Science and Christian Theology
• Faith and Reason behind the Throne‌‌
• D. Science and Faith in the Nineteenth Century
• The “New Reformation” of Victorian Scientific Naturalism
• E. Contemporary Reflections on Faith, Politics, and Education
• Prodigal Ratio‌‌: The Autonomy of Reason
• Teaching Christianly‌‌
• Index
• About the Contributors