Theology: Mythos or Logos?: A Dialogue on Faith, Reason, and History

John Médaille maintains that philosophers—beginning with the consummate dialectician Socrates who gives Euthyphro a thorough drubbing—have illegitimately stifled the special access that theologian-poets have to ultimate truths at the heart of all human experience. Thomas Storck objects: the power to see reality as it is, to discover principles and arrive at conclusions, is as natural to man as breathing and walking; after all, even Scripture says we have no excuse if we fail to recognize God in his works, if we fail to yield to the testimony of miracles and the evidence for revelation. Back and forth it goes, as Storck defends philosophy, objectivity, and Thomism, while Médaille seeks to expose their vulnerable flanks. In a world of sound bites and short attention spans, how rare is an amiable, penetrating, sustained dialogue between two thinkers of great intelligence and undoubted good will, who, though disagreeing about many things, are still drawn back, again and again, to the central mystery of Christ, supreme Logos and sacrificial Lamb?

“John Médaille and Thomas Storck have done a wonderful thing in this book. In a time when mere partisan yarking across no-man's-lands of intellectual barrenness passes for a ‘national conversation,’ these men revive the true meaning of the word ‘argue’: that is, to clarify. Read this book and profit from two thoughtful minds in pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.”—MARK SHEA, author of The Church’s Best-Kept Secret

“In the course of their cordial ‘debate’ Thomas Strock and John Médaille discuss the perennial issue of the relationship of philosophy, with its abstract approach to truth, to the Christian ‘story,’ mythos, and history. The exchanges are warm, insightful, charitable, and provide a model of how two different intellectual approaches to the Catholic faith can converge in essential unity while maintaining the integrity of each approach.”—ADDISON HODGES HART, author of Confessions of the Anti-Christ

“In Theology: Mythos or Logos?, John Médaille, taking the mystical approach to epistemology, argues that, in fact, Mythos is fundamental and Logos follows, that poetry grounds philosophy and story dictates science. Thomas Storck, taking the scholastic approach to epistemology, retorts that reason must ground faith, stories must be judged by science, and philosophy uncovers truth, not poetry. Any reader of this book will find their epistemological foundations shaken but their thinking enriched as Médaille and Storck delve ever more deeply into how we know and how we believe.”—ROMAN A. MONTERO, author of All Things in Common: The Economic Practices of the Early Christians, and Jesus’s Manifesto: The Sermon on the Plain

“In this wonderfully thought-provoking dialogue, distinguished Catholic thinkers John Médaille and Thomas Storck present two radically opposing answers to these questions, two radically opposing views of the place of faith, reason, and history in Christian apologetics. For anyone interested in the question of where our modern world has gone wrong and what sort of apologetic is needed to win it back, this book is pure gold.”—KENNETH HENSLEY, Catholic apologist, Pastoral Care Coordinator for Coming Home Network, and co-author of The Godless Delusion

“Beginning in 2018, John Médaille and Thomas Storck began an exchange of letters, collected here, ranging over issues of faith, reason, history, economics, politics, and social philosophy. They disagreed, sometimes sharply, but did so out of an ultimate concern for truth and wholeness. In this, they have provided a model of how substantive, Christian conversation—and argument!—might proceed in a time when concern for clarity, conviction, care, and above all, charity seems so rare.”—THE REV. JASON A. FOUT, Bexley Seabury Seminary Federation, Chicago, IL

JOHN MÉDAILLE is a former businessman who retired to become an Adjunct Instructor in Theology at the University of Dallas, where he teaches courses in Social Justice for Business Students and Understanding the Bible. He has authored two previous books, The Vocation of Business: Social Justice in the Marketplace and Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective, and articles in about a dozen other books. He has been married for 48 years, is the father of five, and the grandfather of three. He blogs occasionally at The Front Porch Republic.