Why we need to move from reason and theology and how such a move might change our schools and homes

Against the Rising Tide

by: Stratford Caldecott

How should Christian classical educators in the early 21st century evolve, and on what points should we stand fast in the face of the rising tide of progressivism and modernism?

I want to focus on one point in particular, namely the teaching of sexuality and sexual ethics. In the last few years, we have seen a rapid change in the behavior of teens amounting to a catastrophic decline of sexual morality. It is hard to see how this might be reversed. How can we teach children in a class of mixed beliefs that one doctrine applies to all?

The answer, if there is one, is to start from a fundamental anthropology. If all men are the same, in some basic respect, we have a reason for treating them the same way. This fundamental anthropology is taught by, or at least implicit within, the great books and the sources of classical tradition. It is one of the elements that are under attack by the forces of progressivism and modernism. And because it goes to the heart of who we are, it is one of the most important.

Broadening of Reason

Corresponding to a universal anthropology is a universal reason or rationality. Logos or “reason” was a recurrent theme in the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, who often wrote on its importance as the counterpoint to his “dictatorship of relativism” (for example in the Regensburg lecture). Only true rationality and intelligence can see through relativism and attain some kind of absolute. But the word “Logos” does not simply mean “reason”; or at least, there are subtleties here that are worth our attention.

In an Endnote to Beauty in the Word, I explain that Logos originally meant speech, account, reason, definition, rational faculty, or proportion. For Heraclitus, logos was the name of the underlying organizational principle of the universe, related to its common meaning as proportion and therefore harmony, but also identified with a material element – cosmic fire. Plato used the word rather more abstractly, meaning an analytical account, distinguishing it from mythos or a fanciful tale of the gods. For Aristotle it meant the definition of a whole, or else reason or rationality, particularly in an ethical context. It could also mean mathematical proportion or ratio (from which we get the word "rationality"). The Roman Stoics employed the word in a way reminiscent of Heraclitus, to refer to the divine principle of organization – the fiery, active seed-force in the universe.

With all this in the background, it is fair enough to translate Logos as Reason. But then the focus becomes the human subject – the consciousness that “tunes into” or grasps the Logos. This may be leading us to miss an important distinction between two types of reasonableness or rationality: discursive (or conceptual) rationality on the one hand, and intuitive rationality on the other. Medieval writers sometimes drew the distinction between upper and lower reason. For Aquinas, the faculty of reason in its upper part touches on the realm of the angels, who know things intuitively (On Truth, Q 16, a 1). He therefore distinguishes reason or ratio, which arrives at knowledge step by step, from understanding or intellectus, which “reads the truth within the very essence of the thing” (Q 15, a 1). This is not Platonism, but it is closer than Aquinas is normally thought to go.

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