Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization Quotes

“The second important consequence of Judaism’s understanding of the created universe was its accent on human freedom.”
― Samuel Gregg, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

“Though aspects of these theses can be found outside Western societies, it is much harder to find this specific combination of ideas elsewhere. Finnis’s four theses are creation, freedom, justice, and faith. They are, he writes, “truths that none of us can afford to take merely for granted.” 19 And that is why they require restating.”
― Samuel Gregg, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

“At the beginning of the twenty-first century, another Nobel laureate, the economist Vernon L. Smith, proposed a path forward. It was becoming more apparent, he argued, that “what is inescapable is the dependence of science on faith.” By “faith,” Smith had in mind Paul’s definition: the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
― Samuel Gregg, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

“In 1879, the English theologian John Henry Newman addressed “liberalism in religion” in his so-called “Biglietto Speech,” given in Rome on the occasion of his being named a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. His analysis of the subject—the “one great mischief” that he had resisted for fifty years—remains unsurpassed.4 The directness of Newman’s assault on liberal religion surprised many people. He had been seen as ill at ease with the Catholic Church’s direction during the pontificate of Leo’s predecessor, Pius IX, and his misgivings about the opportuneness of the definition of papal infallibility by the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) were well known. But those who had followed Newman’s thought over the course of his career would have recognized the opposition to liberalism that had been there from the beginning. In his Biglietto Speech, Newman identified a number of doctrines of liberal religion: (1) “that there is no positive truth in religion,” (2) “that one creed is as good as another,” (3) that no religion can be recognized as true for “all are matters of opinion,” (4) that “revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective faith, not miraculous,” and (5) that “it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.”
― Samuel Gregg, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

“In such conditions, tolerance is no longer a matter of establishing the freedom to express one’s views and argue about what is true. Instead it becomes a tool for shutting down discussion by insisting that no one may claim that his philosophical or theological positions are true. Tolerance”
― Samuel Gregg, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

“philosophical and religious relativity as having achieved such dominance that it threatened freedom: “Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be ‘tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine,’ seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.”
― Samuel Gregg, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

“There was, however, something else that Christianity stressed about freedom, namely, freedom is more than an absence of constraint. Man is free for something.”
― Samuel Gregg, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

“Instead, Christianity imparted the essence of this message in its fullness to all men. The Christian religion maintained the Hebrews’ understanding of God as Creator, of man as a created being with reason and free will, and of the material world as subordinate to man, who would”
― Samuel Gregg, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization