Peter Kreeft, Luke Timothy Johnson, and Cognitive Activity

My friend Iain has posted these quotes from Luke Timothy Johnson from his book "Miracles"

"The epistemological inadequacy of the secular (𝘼𝙉𝘿 𝘼𝙇𝙎𝙊 𝙔𝙀𝘾) construction of the world is linked to the restriction of authentic knowledge to a single step of mental processes applied to material objects and the interactions amongst them, and its banishing of other modes of knowing to the epistemological rubbish heap. Thus "reason" (𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗶 𝘀𝗮𝘆, 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗶𝘀>>𝗜𝗔𝗜𝗡) is defined in terms of the accurate description of the things apprehended by the senses, their analysis, measurement, calculation prediction and control. Modes of cognition activated by poetry, art and music do not count as real knowledge. "

....

"The greatest deficiency of the secular construction of reality <(𝙤𝙧, 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙔𝙀𝘾 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮>>𝙄𝙖𝙞𝙣)>, in fact, is its refusal to recognise that it is in fact an imaginative construct rather than a straight forward perception of "How things are". By no means is the epistemological reduction effected by the Enlightenment simply natural or obvious. It consist first of an overall construct of reality as a material and self-contained system of interrelated causes, knowable exclusively though the senses. "

 If what is real is only that which can be quantified, measured, predicted and controlled, then of course reason will be limited to that which can be "apprehended by the senses, their analysis, measurement, calculation prediction and control."

In his "Back to Virtue," Peter Kreeft writes about the situation in terms of heart and head:

For the Greek, head judges heart: "Live according to reason." For the Jew, heart judges head, "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. (Pr. 4:23 KJV)

THE MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS

...there were from the beginning three different attitudes on the part of Christians to the pagan world in general and to pagan notions of virtue in particular: (1) uncritical synthesis,(2) critical synthesis and (3) criticism and antisynthesis. Different Christian thinkers accepted either (1) all, (2) some, or (3) none of the Greek ideals of virtue. The greatest and mainstream Christians, like Augustine and Aquinas, took the second way and have been criticized by extremists of both wings right up to the present day. They are labeled fundamentalists by the modernists, and modernists by the fundamentalists.

THE RENAISSANCE and REFORMATION

Two forces separated the strands of the rope that the Middle Ages tied together...

The Renaissance tried to return to the Greco-Roman classicism and humanism minus the medieval additions of scholastic philosophy and theology. The Reformation tried to return to a simpler, premedieval NT Christianity, a Christianity minus the additions of Greek rationalism and Roman legalism and institutionalism which the Reformers thought had corrupted the Catholic Church. From our vantage point today we call the Renaissance and the Reformation progressive movements because they led out of the Middle Ages into the modern world. However, thinkers in those times saw themselves as part of nostalgic or returning movements, purifying movements: the Renaissance returning to Hellenism, the Reformation to Hebraism.

The dichotomy is still with us. Hebraism and Hellenism, heart and head, will and reason, are still separated...

THE ENLIGHTENMENT

The term is ironic, for spiritually the 18th century was the darkest ever. Scientism and rationalism replaced faith; the human heart narrowed and hardened in conformity with its own gods, the inventions of its own hands...

***Enlightenment rationalism cut the top off Greek ideals and kept the bottom; cut off wisdom and kept logic, transformed reason into reasoning. With this new streamlined tool, the world could be conquered. The scientific method became the new tool for the summum bonum, the new meaning of life: "man's conquest of nature." ***

ROMANTICISM

19th century Romanticism and its philosophical child, Existentialism, was the reaction against Enlightenment rationalism, the reaction of heart against head. But just as the Enlightenment's head was a trimmed-down and secularized head, Romaniticism's heart was a a trimmed-down and secularized heart. It was sentiment instead of will, and it was in relationship to nature rather than to God.>
https://www.amazon.com/Back-Virtue-Traditional-Wisdom-Confusion/dp/0898704227

The irony here is that YEC pretends to be an heir of the Reformation, but in fact has more in common with Enlightenment rationalism. It has transformed reason (which for the Greeks included both logic and intution/contemplation) into reasoning (logic only.)