Search results for ""Author Craig Steven Titus""

The distinctive contribution that Christianity makes to investigations of culture and science is that of a coherent vision of truth - a unifying truth that takes flight on the two wings of faith and reason. Against methodological reductionism, philosophical nihilism, and postmodern skepticism, such a vision affirms that the unity of truth is ultimate and personal and that science and culture participate therein according to their own geniuses.""On Wings of Faith and Reason"" provides reasons for a unified vision of truth, while giving examples of the roles that faith and reason play in scientific activities and cultural expressions. Contributing authors from the fields of medicine, ethics, philosophy, and theology argue that Christianity makes a difference, not only in providing an understanding of the ultimate origin and end of the human person, but in contributing to practical applications. Christianity offers assurance about the course of scientific and cultural inquiry, while encouraging creative expression and personal excellence in its execution.Against fideists, it is argued that reason has a differentiated role to play in Christian efforts and theological investigations. Against rationalists, it is argued not only that faith builds up reason without making it a-rational or irrational, but also that it is a source of knowledge, the denial of which restricts not only our passive reception and active observation of reality, but also our creative responses to it. The image of two wings affirms that faith and reason exercise distinct roles, not the same role, in a unified flight of knowledge. It refutes the idea that isolated one-dimensional theories of truth will satisfy.The contributors are Jude Dougherty, Kevin L. Flannery, John Haas, Peter Kreeft, Richard John Neuhaus, Edmund Pellegrino, and Robert Sokolowski.

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This volume, God, Religion, and Civil Governance, aims to confirm thatliberty and autonomy are essential to contemporary Western democraticsocieties. However, so is religion. Religious freedom actually servesas the most basic liberty that protects our other freedoms and humanrights, while serving the common good. Religious freedom, in this view,cannot be reduced to the freedom to worship the God of the universe.It also includes recognizing the moral structure of the universe and themoral principles that honor the basic dignity of each human personfrom conception to death. Although Christianity has influenced Westerncivilization's notion of God, religious freedom, its laws, and formsof governance, the effect of secularization and extreme views on theseparation of church and state have created new challenges for Westerncivilization. Claims about certain individual rights and governmentalprerogatives have been used to limit religious and other basic freedomsand rights. This volume addresses the major issues concerning God,religion, and civil governance in a way that offers guidance for a civicculture that seeks both a sure sense of its roots and a level measure forgovernance supported by just law, human dignity, and virtuous character.ABOUT THE EDITORCraig Steven Titus is Associate Professor and Director of Integrative Studiesat the Institute for the Psychological Sciences (Arlington, VA) and is the author ofResilience and the Virtue of Fortitude: Aquinas in Dialogue with the PsychosocialSciences (CUA Press, 2006) and numerous articles and book chapters. He has edited14 books.

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The contribution of Christian intelligence to western culture is widely recognized by those committed to the scholarly pursuit of truth, concerned for the welfare of the nation, and dedicated to the preservation and advancement of the permanent achievements of the West. The dignity of the human person and the place of the human person in society, the western polis, have in large part been developed in the context of a Christian culture that continues to offer insights for the development of the human person. This book addresses the place of faith and values in the secular state. Renowned specialists in a wide range of disciplines - philosophy, jurisprudence, psychology, and theology - discuss how the person and the polis are guided by ethics and religion, and how liberty and transcendence interact in human aspirations. The contributors are Hadley Arkes, Romanus Cessario, Robert P. George, Michael Novak, Daniel N. Robinson, Kenneth Schmitz, and Paul C. Vitz. The authors enter into a constructive conversation in an attempt to attain a deeper understanding of the human person through the integration of insights from practical wisdom and Christian faith. The book advances the cause of the human person and society by synthesizing the genuine contributions of the human sciences with an openness to spiritual sources of understanding and practice. Such intelligent dialogues between the sciences, philosophy, and religion - about human dignity and beatitude, moral responsibility and values, law and custom, community and institutions - contribute potent means for nourishing the person and constructing the polis with the insights of reason strengthened by the surety of faith and Christian intelligence.

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Western culture and art were not born of unknown parents. Christianity, while receiving its mother tongues and its first canonical texts within Hebrew and Greco-Roman civilizations, has provided its own major contributions to the art and culture of the last two millennia. In this volume, scholars of international reputation, clerics and lay, Catholic and Protestant have reflected on how Christians have dialogued with diverse cultures and religions, even as they forged directions unique to the Gospel.The contributors of ""Christianity and the West"" scrutinize past achievements in order to face the postmodern secularization of western society and the globalization of communication, trade, and travel that claim a right to experimentation, free from long-standing values and detached from communities where the quality of culture and art makes a difference. It is argued that the creative manifestations of culture express the genius of human agents, authors, and artists, but they find their acid test in relationship with the flourishing of human persons and society. However, a human social standard is assured by a divine one. Culture risks becoming destructive when the aesthetic is severed from sources of faith and reason about human origins and ends.In order to face this risk, the present volume explores the interaction between Christianity, art, and culture in the West, especially in fine art and architecture, theatre and cinema, literature and politics. It demonstrates that Christianity has served as a living memory for humanity, above all, concerning the unity of the physical and spiritual dimensions that constitute the human person and culture.

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Moral frailty and failings have fascinated thinkers ever since the first records of drama, philosophy, and religion. How can we explain deliberate unethical acts and persistent urges to do evil? How can we account for wrongdoing in the face of intentions to do good? Strident examples of the flawed hero and the divided self raise problems for the psychological understanding of character and virtue. Neither normative principles nor simple accounts of immaturity, errors, and sin are enough to explain them. The difficulty of inculcating character and virtue makes us ask furthermore whether families, communities, and even republics can become havens for civic, moral, and religious growth.Throughout the millennia 'virtue' and 'character' have not only referred to what is best in human beings, but have been misrepresented in ideological propaganda or misconstrued as static habits or compulsive behavior. In the psychosocial and moral domains, these terms indicate not only the stability but also the creative nature of traits that tend toward moral and prosocial action and toward psychological and moral growth, a forward-leaning and interconnecting movement of excellence."" The Psychology of Character and Virtue"" contributes to the renewal of character and virtue theory. As experts in philosophy, ethics, psychology, political theory, and religion, the contributors enact a critical dialogue on the nature, function, and development of the human person, while paying particular attention to the possibility of instilling stable dispositions of moral character. In various ways they all seek to correct partial and excessively negative views on the nature of the human person. They employ Greco-Roman, medieval, modern and contemporary philosophy, Shakespearean drama, the American Founders, and Christian thought in order to make the case that the crux of moral development and education is the integrity of character and the connection of the virtues.

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