Theology

John Mdaille maintains that philosophers-beginning with the consummate dialectician Socrates who gives Euthyphro a thorough drubbing-have illegitimately stifled the special access that theologian-poets have to ultimate truths at the heart of all human experience. Thomas Storck objects: the power to see reality as it is, to discover principles and arrive at conclusions, is as natural to man as breathing and walking; after all, even Scripture says we have no excuse if we fail to recognize God in his works, if we fail to yield to the testimony of miracles and the evidence for revelation. But what is reason, after all? Are there even facts apart from judgments, judgments apart from interpretations, and interpretations apart from worldviews developed through the stories we learn and tell one another? Back and forth it goes, as Storck defends philosophy, objectivity, and Thomism, while Mdaille seeks to expose their vulnerable flanks. In a world of sound bites and short attention spans, how rare is an amiable, penetrating, sustained dialogue between two thinkers of great intelligence and undoubted good will, who, though disagreeing about many things, are still drawn back, again and again, to the central mystery of Christ, supreme Logos and sacrificial Lamb?