Comments on: On Reason and Love http://bhakticollective.com/2008/12/03/on-reason-and-love/ Sat, 31 Jul 2010 18:20:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Matthew http://bhakticollective.com/2008/12/03/on-reason-and-love/#comment-1482 Matthew Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:22:58 +0000 http://bhakticollective.com/?p=610#comment-1482 As an undergraduate, I did a lengthy study of the great Anglo-catholic thinker (and bhakta) John Henry Newman. Here is a sermon where he argues for similar principles. Admittedly, the older English takes a minute to get used to, but the sermon is brilliant. http://www.newmanreader.org/works/oxford/sermon4.html My hunch is that Bhaktivinoda, like Newman, also would say that there are also important things over which reason holds sway, and which would be distorted, should Love enter in appropriately. One does not, Newman notes, follow love alone to solve a mathematical problem. And frankly, this kind of mistake may lead to some of the short-sightedness and lack of rational discourse amongst many religious communities. That said, in the light of modern rationalism and cheap enlightenment-style critiques of religious epistemology, Bhaktivinoda and Newman's warnings are salutary. As an undergraduate, I did a lengthy study of the great Anglo-catholic thinker (and bhakta) John Henry Newman. Here is a sermon where he argues for similar principles. Admittedly, the older English takes a minute to get used to, but the sermon is brilliant.

http://www.newmanreader.org/works/oxford/sermon4.html

My hunch is that Bhaktivinoda, like Newman, also would say that there are also important things over which reason holds sway, and which would be distorted, should Love enter in appropriately. One does not, Newman notes, follow love alone to solve a mathematical problem. And frankly, this kind of mistake may lead to some of the short-sightedness and lack of rational discourse amongst many religious communities.

That said, in the light of modern rationalism and cheap enlightenment-style critiques of religious epistemology, Bhaktivinoda and Newman’s warnings are salutary.

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