Me: I’m trying not to engage in much theological dispute/discussion during Lent, in order to discipline myself and help me avoid some of the attendant temptations. Here are a few brief thoughts:

a) I knew I should have checked the wording of the passage I quoted! But I am not sure I understand the

distinction you are making between doctrine and reason for hope. Surely “don’t despair” is both a doctrine

(despair being sinful and all) and based on doctrine (Christ’s Resurrection and the salvation He brought),

no? I think we may be getting tangled in vocabulary here, using the same words for different things. […]

b) I’m not surprised you didn’t find any basis for my irrational/suprarational distinction, since I didn’t give any. Didn’t (and don’t) have time to flesh it out as it deserves. Suffice it for the moment to say that there are things which either are not, or cannot be, known by reason, that are nonetheless not contrary to the things that are or can be known by reason. I suspect this is another vocabulary issue, though probably not a Protestant/Catholic divergence.

c) I’m unclear on what you’re saying about rationality and revelation. Maybe an example will help: Was St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo both anchored in revelation and produced using reason? If so, which bits were which (if they can even be separated)? Is revelation antithetical to reason? Can it spur and guide reason, or is reason just kind of sitting off to one side getting everything wrong?

As I have probably mentioned to you before, I think some of our differences MAY spring from the fact that I was brought to Christ through a) poetry (most prominently Eliot’s “Preludes“); b) the belief that things in the world have inherent meaning, that the physical world is intrinsically important and good; c) a strong belief in original sin (once it was explained to me), and d) trying to work my way through the philosophical consequences of b) and c). In other words, the goodness and the Fallenness of this world were equally important to me, and the use (or attempted use, anyway!) of reason played a pretty enormous role.