If we were to unchain God from the artificial strictures of preconceived rationality that reduce him to an object that either can be known and grasped like other objects or, alternatively, is completely unknowable, and if we were to allow reason to find its conditions in this unchaining, we would have to find ourselves believing in God by virtue of the compelling force of revelation’s own rationality, its capacity to illumine the meaningfulness of existence.
And if God is God, this rationality would emerge out of the faith by which one places their entire existence at God’s disposal in an attitude of complete surrender and total trust in the unconditional goodness of such a posture, taking the orientation of one’s life from this absolute starting point.
The Hebrew Bible calls this conception of truth emeth - that which is solid, firm, reliable and can be trusted with all one’s weight. Such a religious rationality is wild and daring, but it is no monster. Perhaps it is the paragon of sanity itself. What but an ultimate divine word is capable of bearing the immeasurable weight that we sense our lives to bear and of which we find time and again nothing less is worthy? What else can provide the ultimate horizon of intelligibility within which the world and our humanity find the satisfaction of truth worth living?
Chris Hackett, The problem of religious diversity and the dead-end of reason, ABC Religion & Ethics. This article is written on the eve of the annual Australasian Philosophy of Religion Association, which is themed: “Religious Diversity and Its Philosophical Significance.” The program looks quite interesting. Hackett’s address is on the interest of contemporary Continental philosophers in St. Paul, something I have recently read much about in St. Paul Among the Philosophers. Another looks at John Milbank’s critique of Jean Luc Marion. I would love to be a fly on the wall for this conference.
H/T to the Centre of Theology & Philosophy.
