Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: Is Faith Irrational? | Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2020

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

Fr. Dominic Legge discusses the relationship between faith and reason, challenging common misconceptions that faith is irrational or purely subjective, and instead arguing that Christian faith is fundamentally reasonable and compatible with reason.

The lecture was given on October 7, 2020 at the Catholic Information Center.

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The handout for this event can be found here: tinyurl.com/y54dzpz5

About the Speaker:

Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P., is the Director of the Thomistic Institute and Assistant Professor in Dogmatic Theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Ph.L. from the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America, and a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. He entered the Order of Preachers in 2001, after having practiced constitutional law for several years as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. He has also taught at The Catholic University of America Law School and at Providence College. He is the author of The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Transcript

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0:00.0	This talk is brought to you by the Tamistic Institute.
0:03.3	For more talks like this, visit us at Tamistic Institute.org.
0:11.1	So the title of this talk is,
0:13.3	wisdom in the face of modernity,
0:16.0	is faith reasonable, or the relationship between faith and reason?
0:19.4	Is faith rational, you might ask?
0:22.2	And I think we could start off by asking the question, how do we understand the act that a
0:29.2	Christian makes when he or she says, I believe? And of course, every Christian, at, you know, if you go to Sunday Mass, you profess the creed, which begins with this statement, I believe in one God, etc. Credo.
0:47.7	So is this a leap in the dark? Is it an act of pure obedience to the church?
0:56.6	The church tells you to believe.
0:59.0	Is it an act of obedience to God?
1:01.9	Is it a pure act of entrusting yourself to God,
1:05.8	no matter what objections the mind might proffer?
1:09.3	Some Christians consider faith to be primarily an inner
1:16.0	subjective conviction of this kind. So it's a complete placing of my confidence in God or in the
1:26.2	Bible.
1:32.9	Okay, now, maybe you yourself have expressed a thought like that before or had that thought.
1:38.7	But of course, in a secular culture, the culture in which we live,
1:41.7	you might also encounter objections to this kind of act.
1:51.5	And some people in our culture might ask, well, how is this Christian act of faith, or the act of faith that a Catholic makes when you profess the creed?
1:54.8	How is that any different from placing your trust in the Quran, for example?
1:59.7	Is it effectively the same kind of act?
	...

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