REVOLT AGAINST REASON by arnold lunn (1951 update on 'flight from reason')

introduction
..20  years ago when i wrote The Flight from Reason the attack upon reason was still camouflaged and the behaviourists, extentialists and logical positivists had not yet crowded the old fashioned Victorian rationalists off the centre of the stage. these later manifestations of irrationalism have one thing in common, the tacit abandonment of all attempt at reasoned refutation of christianity...

chapter 1 - in search of definitions

3  the success and enduring influence of any systematic construction of truth, writes archbishop Trench, depends as much on an exact terminology as upon close and deep thinking itself.  'terms, says Whewall, record discoveries...hardly any original thought assume their proper importance in the mind of their inventors until aptly selected words and phrases have nailed themdown and held them fast.

it is equally true that the success and enduring influence of a systematic construction of falsehood depends very largely on INEXACT terminology. both the advance of materialism in the 19th century and the retreat from christianity were accelerated by the fact that the orthodox were outmanoervred in the battle of words. the christians imperilled the whole campaign when they conceded by implication that those who rejected christianity had the right to describe themselves as 'rationalists'.

the concise oxford dictionary offers a definition of rationalism with which no christian can quarrel:
'Rationalism, n., practice of explaining the supernatural in religion in a way consonant with reason or of treating reason as the ultimate authority in religion as elsewhere; theory that reason is the foundation of certainty in knowledge (opp. empiricism, sensationalism).

rationalism owes much of its success not only to its name, but also to the folly of christians who should never have described their opponents as rationalists, thus labelling themselves by implication as anti-rational. the question at issue is not whether reason is to be preferred to unreason, but whether.

4  the theistic or atheistic conception of the universe is the more rationa, in other words whether the theists are right. equally michievous in it s influence is the misuse of the word 'science'.  and the readiness of too many christians to admit the reality of the alleged conflict between science and religion.
'science' is derived from the latin scientia, which means knowledge and in the middle ages 'science' covered all forms of knowledge, supernatural and natural, but even if the word be used in its modern popular and inexact sense and restricted to the knowledge of nature, there is no justification for the loos talk about the conflict between religion and science. on the contrary, it is as true as in bacon's time that 'a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth man's mind to religion'.

..the acquiescence of christians in an inexact and inadequate terminology - inadequate because  'no words and phrases have nailed and held fast' the distinction between scientists as such and the sect of scientists who rejected the supernatural - had disastrous results.  on the other hand, thousands rejected christianity because they had been misled into accepting the reality of the alleged conflict between

5  the science which they equated with the truth and the religion which, so they were assured, could not be reconciled with science.
6  no argument is possible, as st. thomas aquinas fully realised, until you and your opponent have discovered a common premis.
7  'faith is not common to the believer and the sceptic and therefore reason, which from its very nature is impersonal and objective, must be the starting point of rational apologetics. it may be true that no man has ever been wholly convinced by reason, but the operative word is 'wholly', for the discovery that christianity can be defended without invoking the appeal to faith has often been the first and decisive factor in the return to the Faith.
it is arguable how far men can be converted by sound arguments, but it is certain that they can be perverted by unsound arguments...
8  it is not, of course, reason which creates the spiritual appetite of which st. augustine speaks, that disquiet of the heart until it finds rest in Him who made it...and it is not reason which convinces a hungry man that he needs food, but reason guides us in the choice of food and helps us to distinguish between nourishing food and poison, be that food physical or spiritual. 

..'for the mystic especially it is important that theology should flourish and good theologians abound, for in the guidance which objective theology supplies lies the mystic's sole certainty of escaping self-illusion'.
gerson, perhaps the greatest religious writer and preacher of the 14th century,  'notes acutely as a matter that can be observed every day, the contemplative's temptation to be his own guide...' and also 'how often false mysticism and a certain looseness about sex morality go together', as for instance in the case of the beghards, whose doctrines were condemned at the general council of vienna in 1311.

the beghards maintained that man, even in this life, can attain to perfection. when he reaches this stage, he need neither pray nor fast, for his spirit has achieved such complete dominion over his senses that he can freely yield to the desires of his body.  once a man has reached this stage he is emancipated from human authority or from the authority of the church. 'where there is the spirit of God there is liberty and the practice of the virtues is a mark of the imperfect man:  the perfect soul

9  emancipated itself from the virtues...whoever kisses a woman unless led by sexual impulse sins mortally, while no sexual act is sinful if it is done from a sexual motive; such acts are especially free from blame if they are yielding to temptation'.
the beghards were the precursors of the antinomians (a person who maintains that christians are freed from the moral law by virtue of grace as set forth in the gospel; 1635-45; plural of antinomus opponent of the moral law

chapter 2 - the birth of rationalism

11 humanly speaking, there might never have been a christian philosophy but for greece. in europe there is no philosophy which is not derived directly or indirectly from greece, even marxism, for marx's debt to hegel is no greater than hegel's debt to greek philosophy, but though there was no hebrew equvalent of aristotle or plato, the hebrew prophets were at home in a realm to which the greek philosophers did not attain. to the prophet God was revealed. to the greek, god could only be inferred as a conclusion at the end of a chain of syllogisms. the contrast between isaiah and plato is a contrast between vision and inference. the essence of religion for the jew was that it was revealed. the greek demanded not that religion should be revealed, but that religion should be explained.  'the jews, said st. paul, require a sign and the greeks seek after wisdom.
now there is a place in religion not only for the prophet, but also for the philosopher, not only for experience, but also for rational inference. st. thomas aquinas realised that no argument is possible until a common premise has been discovered with one's opponent.  the prophet never tries to find a common premise, for the prophet is not interested in argument.
the essential contrast between the hellenic and the judaic outlook was the contrast between a people with a passion for hearing both sides of a case fully stated and a people whose only interest in other people's views was to refute them.
plato seldom gave complete victory to one side in the dialogues. he seemed more concerned to understand the different approaches to a controversial issue than to defend a particular thesis. herodotus and thucydides are at pains to give either in direct speech or in narrative the views of both contending parties.
christianity owes an immense debt to hellenism, for the art of rational apologetics was a discovery of the greeks. 'come now and let us reason together saith the Lord, but though isaiah records this invitation there is no record of the invitation being accepted, as indeed sir ronald storrs pointed out in the story
12  of his own experiences in palestine. the greek was and the hebrew was not, prepared 'to reason together' and a whole world of thought and feeling separates, 'thus saith the Lord'  from a socratic dialogue.
it is indeed with a shock of surprise that one comes across st. peter's 'be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a REASON of the hope that is in you.
logon peri, 'a rational account' is a fragment of greek feeling embedded in a judaic epistle, for this good classical phrase, almost identical as dr. selwyn points out, with a phrase in plato, is almost without parallel in the new testament.
so far at least as the west is concerned, aristotle may be described as the father of natural theology, that is of the theology which relies for its doctrines on reason alone, unaided by revelation.  his system of physics compelled belief in a prime mover who was Himself unmoved and though aristotle's god is very different from the christian God, it would be difficult to exaggerate the influence of aristotle's natural theology on st. thomas aquinas.
many of the rational arguments for the existence of god which are still used by modern theologians can be found in the works of the stoics. stocism was founded about 300 BC jby zeno, who was born in cyprus and who taught in athens. Z's thesis  which cicero quotes, is still valid agianst materialistic evolution...'nothing that is devoid of life and reason can give birth to a rational being'.  elsewhere in the same book cicero makes balbus reject the argument that
13  the universe has originated by chance. 'balbus compares the man who believes that the universe came together by chance to a man who was prepared to believe that if a large quantity of each letter of the alphabet were thrown on the ground they might fall by chance in such an order as to form the Annals of Ennius. marcus aurelius, perhaps the greatest of the stoics, anticipates the great argument from design:  'can order, he asks, subsisting in yourself be consistent with disorder in the All?

christian rationalism had its root in greece. greek rationalsm..began by replacing the traditional religion of greece and then itself became a religion, a religion which found its ultimate expression in Logos worship, 'in the deification of Intelligence as the supreme cosmic principle.

chapter 3 - the uncertain frontier

17  whether or not st. thomas aquinas succeeded in proving the existence of God by pure reason is a question of opinion, but it is a question of fact that a vast gulf separates st. thomas ..from luther who..was intemperate in his abuse of rationalism...
(note: 2 observations..i have a real respect for the reasoning and thinking of Lunn and for him as a man but in this book 1. i cannot square what he writes of Luther here with the reality of how much what i have read of him..let alone the life he lived, has SPOKEN GOD into my life and makes me yearn for the God who reveals Himself in the Bible...to be like Him and to obey Him. 2. all men are wicked. Luther was very clear about the fact that he (i would say, like all men romans 3.10f) was a wretched sinner. also the best of men can be exposed as such by a close mining of his words and of his life. as a result i skip a good deal in this book. just because i am not perfect does not mean that God cannot say and do good through even me..martin luther and arnold lunn, etc.)

chapter 7 - the pedigree of modern science

62..it is true that the scientific movement began in greece, but also true that it would not be easy to decide whether greek thought had on the balance a greater influence in stimulating or in retarding scientific research. the decisive advance of science began when science liberated itself from teleology and the teleological outlook did not begin with the mediaeval theologians. plato and aristotle were teleologists and the greek bias in favour of the deductive as opposed to inductive reasoning was certainly one of the influences responsible for the stagnation of science in the middle ages.

a deductive or a priori reasoner deduces either from truths universally admitted or from truths deduced from truths universally
63  ..admitted, their necessary consequences. thus st. thomas aquinas, starting from the universally admitted truth that 'it is certain and obvious to our senses that some things are in motion', proceeds to deduce the existence of God.
inductive or a posteriori reasoning is the attempt to discover the existence of a general law from its observed consequences.
astronomers observed that certain planets did, in point of fact, move in elliptic orbits. they inferred by inductive reasoning that the movement of these particular planets was a consequence of a general law that all planets move in elliptic orbits. induction will thus often create a strong presumption in favour of a general law, the proof of which depends on deduction or on mathematical processes. from the fact that certain planets move in elliptic orbits, it is impossible to infer with certainty that all planets move in such orbits. observation must be supplemented by mathematics in order to achieve exact proof.
the deductive approach to truth is usually preferred by the philosopher, the inductive by the scientist. i shall describe those who prefer the deductive approach as apriorists and those who rely on inductive reason and experiment as empiricists.
the contrast between the mediaeval and the modern outlook may be illustrated by galileo's retort to sarsi. sarsi maintained that motion invariably produced heat and in support of this theory he quoted a statement, which he had seen in print (and which he therefore assumed to be infallible), that the babylonians cooked eggs by whirling them in a sling. G made the obvious reply that it would be perfectly easy to test the truth of this statement by repeating the experiment. S, we may be sure, had never thought of that, for the very idea of appealing from authority to experiment and form a priori reasoning to empiricism was foreign to the mediaeval mind.
G, like the modern scientists, was mainly interested in the 'how', the mediaevalist in the 'why of phenomena. in other words, the mediaevalist was a teleologist. teleology is the

64  doctrine of final ends rather than of efficient causes. the teleologist explains phenomena, not by trying to discover how things work, but by attempting to show why things are. to the mediaeval thinker the 'why' of natural phenomena was solved once you had discovered their usefulness to man.

nature is the work of  God and since God made man only a little lower than the angels, it was reasonable to deduce that nature has been created purely for the benefit of man. from this assumption the scholastics deduced that the best method of understanding nature was to interpret nature with reference to man's eternal destiny.
ruskin was in the direct descent from the great mediaeval teleologists. his 'geology', if indeed it can be described as such is gloriously mediaeval in outlook. mountains, for R, were not the inevitable result of certain physical changes on the surface of the earth. no, they are appointed to fulfil 'three great offices', which he proceeds to describe in detail, 'in order  to preserve the health and increase the happiness of mankind'. nor is their arrangement haphazard. the great peaks are set back on a vast alpine plateau. they 'are not allowed' - a telelogical phrase - to come to the edge of this plateau for fear lest the stones and snow slides from their slopes should fall on inhabited ground and cause death and destruction'.  'it is hardly necessary to point our, adds R,  the perfect wisdom and kindness of this arrangement as a provision for the safety of the inhabitants of the high mountain regions. st. thomas G himself might have concluded, as R concludes,  'now that such a structure is the best and wisest possible is indeed a sufficient reason for its existence and to many people it may seem useless to question further respecting its origin.
65  teleology such as R's can only retard the advance of science, but though teleology is associated with deductive reasoning it would be absurd to suggest that deductive and a priori reasoning is of no value in science. all that we are entitled to affirm is that the value  of induction increases in proportion as science comes down to earth. the propositions of euclid, to cite a classic examaple, are concerned with pure abstractions, with timeless truths which are eternally valid for tthe only kind of space with which E  is concerned. it might well be that euclidean space only exists in the mind of God and the E's propositions are not true of our space, for our space it would seem is not euclidean.  it is possible that some of E's theorens may have originated in observation or experiment, but E never strengthens his argument by the appeal to experiment or by the faintest suspicion of