By E.J. HUTCHINSON | October 24, 2017 | Christian Week
The 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation is upon us, and with it a veritable host of narratives both illuminating and misleading as to its causes and effects.
One of those effects is sometimes thought to be a downgrading of the importance of liberal education, intellectual tradition, and the Western heritage of philosophical inquiry into the natural order via the use of reason. Supposedly, the Reformation brought about a surge of irrationalism and blind faith in a God who only made himself manifest through special revelation, and whose creation would therefore be an utterly unintelligible mystery absent such a deliverance from on high. …