# Rationalism and Reason in Religion



## AV1611 (Jun 5, 2007)

Who are the key rationalist thinkers who have impacted Christianity and do you know of any good books on this issue?

Kant?
Bacon?


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## VictorBravo (Jun 5, 2007)

Start with Plato, then read up on the neo-Platonists. As for true rationalists, it is a hard category because there is overlap, but I'd included Aquinas and DesCartes too.

Gordon Clark's _Thales to Dewey_ is a good place to start. I haven't completely read Sproul's book _The Consequences of Ideas_, but it looks like it would give a helpful background too.


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## RamistThomist (Jun 5, 2007)

rationalism in a good sense or in a bad sense?


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## VictorBravo (Jun 5, 2007)

Draught Horse said:


> rationalism in a good sense or in a bad sense?



Good question, I assumed in the bad sense, more or less.


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## Peter (Jun 5, 2007)

*http://www.puritanboard.com/newreply.php?do=newrep*

St. Augustine, and subsequently all Christianity, was profoundly influenced by neo-platonism and Plotinus. Augustinianism/ neo-platonism are sometimes called rational mystic philosophies.

Thomas Aquinas is usually considered an empiricist. I suspect though that these epistemological generalizations are overly simplistic and anachronistic. Rationalism v. Empiricism was a 17th and 18th c. debate. Thomas through Aristotle e.g. believed the primacy of experience yet held certain propositions to be self-evidencing knowledge while memory of past events mere opinion.


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## VictorBravo (Jun 5, 2007)

Peter said:


> Thomas Aquinas is usually considered an empiricist. I suspect though that these epistemological generalizations are overly simplistic and anachronistic. Rationalism v. Empiricism was a 17th and 18th c. debate. Thomas through Aristotle e.g. believed the primacy of experience yet held certain propositions to be self-evidencing knowledge while memory of past events mere opinion.



Right you are. I hesitated to include Thomas Aquinas as a rationalist, except that I remembered his theistic proofs seemed to place reason above revelation--or at least acknowledged that reason could get you a long way before you needed revelation.

I agree that there are many nuances to the term "rationalism."


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## AV1611 (Jun 6, 2007)

Draught Horse said:


> rationalism in a good sense or in a bad sense?



Both to be honest.


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## Dieter Schneider (Jun 6, 2007)

AV1611 said:


> Who are the key rationalist thinkers who have impacted Christianity and do you know of any good books on this issue?
> 
> Kant?
> Bacon?



I think Nancy Pearcy is excellent, see http://www.gnpcb.org/sites/total.truth/

and here http://www.veritas.org/3.0_media/presenters/49

I would have thought that Darwin, Marx and Freud have had an influence for bad on Western Christianity (LIberalism, I would argue, is ancient Gnosticism). 

For all that, there is nothing new 'under the sun' (the rationalist approach which results in nihilism). 

Two key questions we ignore at our peril are 
1. Is it right?
2. Is it true?


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## yeutter (Jun 6, 2007)

Archbishops of Canterbury: 
1. St. Anselm
2. Thomas Bardwardine

Had a great deal of influence in advancing a positive type of rationalism in England.


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