Christian Thinkers, Thinking Christians

Ferdinand Ebner

"Ferdinand Ebner is one of the few philosophers who had the courage and the strength as a thinker to remain a Christian, and as a Christian to remain a thinker."

Christian thinkers and thinking Christians!

Thinkers need to believe.
Belief should help you think!

Believers need to think.
Thinking should help you believe!

If believing does not aid your thinking, one of them is wrong!
If thinking does not aid your faith, again, it is a sure sign of error.

Thinking without belief is ignorance or dishonesty, for every philosophy is based on the fundamental outlook of the philosopher: his presuppositions, i.e. his faith, what he holds as the starting point.

Believing without thinking is blind.

Fides quærens intellectum.

The above quote is of Emil Brunner as found in Theodore Steinbüchel, Der Umbruch des Denkens (The Revolution of Thought), Regensburg: Pustet, 1936, 166-167. That little book was--along with Steinbüchel's two volume work on the philosophical foundations of moral theology--the most influential philosophy book of Joseph Ratzinger's education. Plinthos translation.
The other Steinbüchel work on the philosophical foundations of moral theology is where Ratzinger got his philosophical bearings regarding the modern mind: i.e. the thought of Heidegger and Jaspers, Nietzsche, Klages and Bergson. Cf. Milestones, 43.