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Philosophy Then

First Believe, Then Understand

Peter Adamson reviews the relation of reason & revelation.

Since the seventeenth century or so, European thought has been increasingly shaped by the idea that science and religion are opposed. Enlightenment philosophers and their heirs have mostly striven to align their discipline with science and distance it from religion. Once the handmaid of theology, now philosophy is often the handmaid of neuroscience or particle physics. So pervasive now is the notion that religious belief is independent from, or even diametrically opposed to, scientific inquiry, that it can be hard for us to appreciate older ways of seeing the relationship between reason and revelation. But let’s try.

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