By promoting freedom of opinion and freedom of expression as human rights the Enlightenment put us in a better position to address these problems, as Kung in fact does.

Right. I thought the same thing when I read what he had to say. You caught on with one of the important parts of my post.

I think there is a lot of uncritical acceptance of assumptions from the Enlightenment in our society, especially by Christians who should know better. In part, I think, it is because of the assumption that the “American way” is founded upon Christian principles. Elements of it are, even as elements of the Enlightenment come out of Christian philosophy. But this should not blind us to its problems. We should be willing to criticize the errors of America and its foundations, instead of looking at its origin as some sort of utopia which must be imitated today. But I think this explains why people, like Michael Novak, who look to America as the ultimate representation of a Christian political state, are quick to accept the Enlightenment without sufficient pause.

Of course, I am not saying we need to reject all of the Enlightenment, but to look at it with eyes of faith, to see how it can help the faith, but also to see how it is deficient and why it must not be embraced without a critical adaptation (the kind St Thomas Aquinas was able to do with Aristotle).

I even think the Enlightenment has important things to say. But we must not look or examine it uncritically, just like we shouldn’t look or examine other traditions uncritically. The rise of nationalism, the rise of capitalism, the rise of industrialization and the idea of humanity over nature instead of as steward of creation I think are examples of problems which came out of the Enlightenment.

When I read this blog post, I was thinking how Kung sounds a lot like George Weigel:
http://kevinjjones.blogspot.com/2008/02/weigel-summarizes-benedict-on-islam.html

One can argue that even the beneficient aspects of the Enlightement spirit have demoralized Europe and rendered it more vulnerable to Islamic radicalism. If “Enlightenment values” really end in decadence after only a few centuries of influence, a culture would have to be suicidal to embrace them willingly.

You are right here: the Enlightenment approach, as a whole, I think tends to follow this format and this kind of over-simplification. It’s why it is amazing that so many “neo-conservative” authors or influences on the movement in Catholic circles are engaging the Enlightenment and obeying its dictates without any significant critical work to limit the dark underbelly of the Enlightenment. Just look at how many of them love contemporary “apologetics”– it’s very much in the style and approach developed by the Enlightenment, and like as you said about Kung, it simplifies things way too much because of it. Nonetheless, I would also point out that many of those who mock and ridicule Kung are just starting on the path he his been taking for decades, and I would expect their end, unless they become more critical, will be the same.

After I wrote my post, I thought I could have — and probably should have — mentioned that extreme “fundamentalist” Muslims have, in my mind, taken on elements of the Enlightenment, something which is often neglected in these debates; but these elements are those which were learned from the colonial powers such as nationalism. I even think their own “apologetics,” like so many Catholic kinds, is employing an Enlightenment methodology, and it explains why the fundamentalists love apologetics. It creates an easy truth and an easy, reductionistic, approach towards others in order to criticize them. Such of course is common with their debates with the West. The West is reduced to all that is bad and amoral, therefore, all that is within is to be rejected outright.

One should also point out, and I hope this is not a cheap shot, Kung’s friendship with war criminal Tony Blair. Here, in a very amusing irony, Kung is on the right, and Ratzinger is on the left. You just couldn’t make it up.