Faith and Reason

Authority level: Authoritative doctrine
Theological status: Theological synthesis
GuideThe entry presents Catholic teaching together with theological explanation. The exact note of each proposition depends on the teaching act and sources cited.
Contents

Faith and Reason are distinct but harmonious ways of knowing truth: reason receives and judges evidence according to its natural light, while supernatural faith assents to God who reveals and elevates the intellect beyond its unaided reach.

Faith and rationality exist in varying degrees of conflict or compatibility. Rationality is based on reason or facts. Faith is belief in inspiration, revelation, or authority. The word faith sometimes refers to a belief that is held independently or in spite of reason or empirical evidence, or it can refer to belief based upon a degree of evidential warrant.[4]

One truth and two orders of knowledge

The Catholic Church rejects both rationalism, which admits only what unaided reason can master, and fideism, which distrusts reason or treats belief as independent of truth and evidence. God is author of creation and Revelation; truths genuinely known in either order cannot finally contradict. An apparent conflict calls for better interpretation, sounder science or philosophy, or correction of an assumption—not a division of reality into religious and factual truth.[1]

Reason can know created reality and can reach certain knowledge of God from creation, though human weakness and sin often impede it. Faith receives mysteries such as the Trinity and Incarnation because of the authority of God revealing. These mysteries surpass reason but are not irrational. Theology seeks understanding from within faith, using concepts, argument, historical study, and philosophical judgment while remaining subject to the revealed Deposit of Faith.

The act of faith

Faith is both assent to revealed truths and personal adherence to God. Grace moves and assists the will and intellect, yet the act remains free. Motives of Credibility show that assent is reasonable without becoming the formal motive of supernatural faith; the believer ultimately assents because God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, has revealed. Difficulty understanding a doctrine differs from positive refusal to believe it.[2]

Autonomy of created inquiry

Philosophy and the empirical sciences possess proper methods and genuine autonomy because created things have stable natures and causes. This autonomy is not independence from truth or morality. Theology does not replace measurement or archival evidence, while science cannot by its method decide that only measurable realities exist. Each discipline should recognize the reach and limits of its questions.

Philosophy in Catholic theology

Fides et Ratio calls philosophy indispensable for articulating truth about being, person, freedom, causality, morality, and God. The Church does not canonize every proposition of one philosophical school, yet she rejects systems incompatible with revealed truth and repeatedly commends the enduring insight of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Historical, phenomenological, personalist, analytic, and other methods can contribute when purified by a realist love of truth.[3]

Reason serves exegesis by studying language, genre, history, and textual transmission; it serves dogmatic theology by clarifying concepts and inferences; it serves moral theology by discerning acts, goods, and consequences; and it serves Canon Law by ordered judgment. Faith in turn heals reason's tendency toward pride or despair and opens inquiry to the full horizon of creation, sin, grace, and final beatitude.

Errors and fruitful dialogue

A contradiction cannot be protected by calling it mystery. Theological claims should be stated accurately, doctrinal grades distinguished, and historical propositions tested. Conversely, the inability to reproduce a miracle on demand does not establish that miracles are impossible; that conclusion imports a philosophical premise beyond experimental method. Catholic inquiry welcomes evidence and refuses both credulity and materialist exclusion by definition.

Faith and Reason reach their proper harmony in the pursuit of wisdom. The believer need not fear a true discovery, and the scholar should not dismiss the question of ultimate meaning as meaningless. Their cooperation supports Catholic Apologetics, catechesis, universities, public ethics, and personal discernment. As John Paul II taught, each is impoverished when cut off from the other; together they orient the human person toward the truth who is Christ.

Relationship between faith and reason

Rationalists point out that many people hold irrational beliefs, for many reasons. There may be evolutionary causes for irrational beliefs—irrational beliefs may increase our ability to survive and reproduce.

One more reason for irrational beliefs can perhaps be explained by operant conditioning. For example, in one study by B. F. Skinner in 1948, pigeons were awarded grain at regular time intervals regardless of their behaviour. The result was that each of the pigeons developed their own idiosyncratic response which had become associated with the consequence of receiving grain.[5]

Believers in the value of faith—for example those who believe salvation is possible through faith alone—frequently suggest that everyone holds beliefs arrived at by faith, not reason.[6]

One form of belief held "by faith" may be seen existing in a faith as based on warrant. In this view some degree of evidence provides warrant for faith; it consists in other words in "explain[ing] great things by small."[7]

Christianity

Catholic views

Thomas Aquinas was the first to write a full treatment of the relationship, differences, and similarities between faith, which he calls "an intellectual assent",[8] and reason.[9]

Dei Filius was a dogmatic constitution of the First Vatican Council on the Roman Catholic faith. It was adopted unanimously on 24 April 1870. It states that "not only can faith and reason never be opposed to one another, but they are of mutual aid one to the other".[10]

Recent popes have spoken about faith and rationality: Fides et ratio, an encyclical letter promulgated by Pope John Paul II on 14 September 1998, deals with the relationship between faith and reason. Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg lecture, delivered on 12 September 2006, was on the subject of "faith, reason and the university".[11]

Lutheran views

Reformed views

Alvin Plantinga upholds that faith may be the result of evidence testifying to the reliability of the source of truth claims, but although it may involve this, he sees faith as being the result of hearing the truth of the gospel with the internal persuasion by the Holy Spirit moving and enabling him to believe. "Christian belief is produced in the believer by the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, endorsing the teachings of Scripture, which is itself divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit. The result of the work of the Holy Spirit is faith."[12]

Evangelical views

American biblical scholar Archibald Thomas Robertson stated that the Greek word pistis used for faith in the New Testament (over two hundred forty times), and rendered "assurance" in Acts 17:31 (KJV), is "an old verb to furnish, used regularly by Demosthenes for bringing forward evidence."[13] Likewise Tom Price (Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics) affirms that when the New Testament talks about faith positively it only uses words derived from the Greek root [pistis] which means "to be persuaded."[14]

In contrast to faith meaning blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence, Alister McGrath quotes Oxford Anglican theologian W. H. Griffith-Thomas (1861–1924), who states faith is "not blind, but intelligent" and "commences with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence", which McGrath sees as "a good and reliable definition, synthesizing the core elements of the characteristic Christian understanding of faith."[15]

Jewish views

The 14th-century Jewish philosopher Levi ben Gerson tried to reconcile faith and reason. He wrote: "the Law cannot prevent us from considering to be true that which our reason urges us to believe."[16]

Islamic view

References

  1. 1.Dei Verbum — Vatican II dogmatic constitution on revelation, inspiration, interpretation, Tradition, and the unity of Scripture
  2. 2.Catechism of the Catholic Church — Authoritative synthesis of Catholic doctrine, sacramental life, morality, and prayer
  3. 3.Fides et Ratio — John Paul II on the mutually sustaining offices of faith and reason, philosophy, fundamental theology, and the search for truth
  4. 4."Faith and Reason | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy". Retrieved 2023-02-21.
  5. 5.Skinner, B. F. (1 January 1948). "'Superstition' in the pigeon". Journal of Experimental Psychology. 38 (2): 168–172. doi:10.1037/h0055873. PMID 18913665. S2CID 22577459.
  6. 6.Rosental, Creighton J (2004-01-01). "The reconciliation of faith and reason in Thomas Aquinas". Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest: 1–243.
  7. 7."Hebrews 11 - Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary - Bible Commentaries". StudyLight.org. Retrieved 2022-11-18.
  8. 8."Faith" from the Catholic Encyclopedia
  9. 9."Reason" from the Catholic Encyclopedia
  10. 10."Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical notes. Volume II. The History of Creeds". ccel.org.
  11. 11.Benedict XVI, Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections, Holy See website, accessed 31 January 2024
  12. 12.Plantinga, Alvin (2000). Warranted Christian Belief. USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 250, 291. ISBN 0195131924.
  13. 13.Robertson, Archibald Thomas. WORD PICTURES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. pp. Chapter 17.
  14. 14.Price, Thomas (9 November 2007). "Faith is about 'just trusting' God isn't It?". Retrieved 23 January 2014.
  15. 15.McGrath, Alister E. (2008). The Order of Things: Explorations in Scientific Theology. John Wiley & Sons. p. 33. ISBN 978-1405125567.
  16. 16.Rudavsky, Tamar (2020), "Gersonides", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2022-11-18