Is there any way to bring political philosophy and revelation, Athens and Jerusalem, into a coherent, non-contradictory relation to each other without undermining the integrity of either? The issue is ancient no less than medieval and modern. We need a philosophy that only “searches” for wisdom but did not constitute it. We need a revelation that is open to reason, not based solely on the voluntarist proposition that each existing thing could be otherwise. To consider this relationship, we presuppose that both political philosophy and revelation talk of intelligible things.
Whether we “believe” it or not, we can basically understand what is proposed in revelation. The immediate source of their intelligibility may differ, but, when brought together, reason and revelation turn out to be dealing with at least some of the same issues. This convergence is striking and unexpected. For philosophy to be philosophy, it has to be open to everything that is. A philosophy that argues that nothing exists, or that we cannot know anything even if it does exist, will not be able to enter into this discussion. Such premises do not allow us to think at all.
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