Prof. Jeffrey Stout - Why Religion, Faith, and Freedom Proved Hard to Reconcile

Professor Jeffrey Stout, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, delivers the Gifford Lecture entitled "Why Religion, Faith, and Freedom Proved Hard to Reconcile". It is the third lecture in the series 'Religion Unbound: Ideals and Powers from Cicero to King’.

Aquinas took religion to be a moral virtue, acquired by repeated acts of pious reverence and directed toward proper this-worldly and supernatural ends. He defined faith as a theological virtue, a divine gift that serves to orient one’s intellect rightly to God’s revelation. Early moderns who distinguished religion from faith in this way fell into conflict. Concluding that the received ideals of religion, faith, and freedom could not be reconciled, Locke proposed a separation of church from magistrate, Deists separated true religion from faith, and Hobbes redefined freedom.