Rational Religion- Christianity and the Force of the Better Reason

7/28/2019 Rational Religion- Christianity and the Force of the Better Reason

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(Harris 1997, p. 101) were but the imaginary relation of symbols (Žižek 2002, p. 1421) as in the mind

of some crazed theorist.

As Robert Brandom rightly points out “one’s exploration of semantic relations (including

pragmatically mediated ones) among vocabularies of antecedent philosophical interest need not be

motivated by some global, monolithic program, such as empiricism or naturalism. The merit or benefit of

the analytic project is not hostage to such programs, for the distinctive kind of understanding it aims at

is not. That understanding can be well served by accumulating particular, local connections that support

no antecedent global program and perhaps could be predicted by none… Nor must the search for such

semantic relations among vocabularies and the discursive practices-or-abilities they specify or that deploy

them be motivated by some deep-seated philosophical anxiety or puzzlement, the proper deflating

diagnosis of which then exhibits or renders the task of exploring those relations otiose. Simple curiosity,

the desire to deepen our understanding, can suffice as much for this sort of philosophical theorizing as

for the empirical scientific variety” (2008, p. 227). Accordingly, as a corollary, if we begin from the global

belief in the truth of the Christian faith, and its creedal affirmations as recognised by the Bible, we can be

assured that the strength of the best reasons, including ones that remain to become explicit to us, will be

found to be in consonance with the will of God. The only assumption entailed in the above position of

the believer is that he takes God to be omniscient (Proverbs 8), in the sense of having access to the totality

of vocabularies that are sufficient to elaborate another set of autonomous discursive practices (Brandom2008). Indeed, there is no reason to imagine that what belongs to reasonable judgements does not partake

of its reasonability and incompatibility with falsehood, or confusion, in its being through God (Koons

2003, p. 29) independently of the believer’s living commitments. And, though the being of God in

Himself is made explicit to us according to our mortal frames, and in His participation in human history

so by this we may affirm the analogy of human and divine natures, even accessing it through intuition or

“angeschaut” in Hegel’s parlance, since we belong to the momentariness of our existence, He remains

mysteriously cloaked by the blindness of our reasonings in the larger scheme of the real which has yet to

effectuate potential into actuality (Moyar & Quante 2008, p. 132).

Now, though the light is obscured by the clouds man puts his faith in the eventual rending of the

darkness, even so where faith is placed in God’s ways which are those of reason itself we may be assured

of continued guidance. Thus, it is the duty of all believers to justify themselves the state of their

intellections, desires and hopes in light of God’s historical revelation in the incarnation, the crucifixion,

1 “The way of the superego is precisely that of the sacrifice to the obscure gods of which Lacan speaks: the reassertion of the

barbaric violence of the savage obscene law in order to fill in the gap of the failing symbolic law”. Žižek, Slavoj. (2002).



the resurrection, and the Biblical explications of the Will of God even as these, and all other aspects of

knowledge and wisdom in us, continue to illuminate our subjection to reason. Bearing our witness to his

promise that in the days after the Christ has been among us we will be led by the Spirit of God, or by His

revelations through the Word. Religion in its commitment to the will of God must enjoin the believer toalign his will with His, in conformity with the lights of reason and the sweetness of the Good News. In

this spirit must all inquiry and curiosity must be dedicated unto the lord of all creation, so even philosophy

may partake of eternal wisdom in salutary, if meagre, morsels that do much to nourish the believing soul.



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Rational Religion- Christianity and the Force of the Better Reason