Reviews for Reconciling Faith and Reason: Apologists, Evangelists and Theologians in a Divided Church

The average rating for Reconciling Faith and Reason: Apologists, Evangelists and Theologians in a Divided Church based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-12-20 00:00:00 Shane Benally Father Thomas Rausch is a thoughtful and honest writer hobbled only by his tendency to see apparent conflicts between faith and reason as a tug of war between medieval and modern views. By his reckoning, stubborn traditionalists are responsible for many of the current tensions in the church. I disagree with his criticisms of popular lay Catholic apologists like Karl Keating and Peter Kreeft, and find it comical, given their influence, that he calls their "pre-critical" theology "unworkable." In praising doctrinal development and recommending that Catholic teaching be evaluated in part by how Catholics themselves receive it, Rausch allies himself with many of the people who want to remake the church in their own image. Unlike some of the ideological company he keeps, however, Rausch loves the church and wants it to flourish. Although it was written in the pontificate of John Paul II, this accessible little book remains a useful snapshot of the ongoing argument between traditionalists and modernists everywhere. It should be interesting even to non-Catholics. (Full disclosure: I took a couple of theology classes from Fr. Rausch as an undergraduate more than 20 years ago; I remember him as one of my better teachers.)

Review # 2 was written on 2018-06-15 00:00:00 Justin Miller I had to read this for a class I took this semester and I have to say that I generally liked it. It's well laid out and explains everything that it needs to explain. On a personal note I found that it worked especially well for my college class because while it discussed Catholicism, it didn't go the "yay, everyone should be Catholic" route. It's pretty rare to find something that isn't overwhelmingly "yay for Catholics" but is brief and doesn't go off into long tangents about everything.