The Relationship of Reason to Faith

Faith and Reason Paper
Introduction
Faith starts in the mind and moves to the will. Aquinas is one of the most well-known scholastics to make that argument.[footnoteRef:2] The mind must consent to the truths of the faith and the heart and mind must then act in unison to bear that faith out in one’s life. This is why the scholastics argued that faith rested on reason—for people are rational beings and need reasons to “buy into” an idea.[footnoteRef:3] Anselm’s ontological argument, for example, used reason to prove God’s existence.[footnoteRef:4] However, as others and Scripture show, faith can be obtained through deep intuition and feeling as well.[footnoteRef:5] This paper will explain how although faith typically depends on the use of reason, faith can be reached in a variety of ways; and in some cases, false reasoning can even be used to destroy faith. [2: Ralph McInerny, ed. Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings (England: Penguin, 1998), 243. ] [3: D.D. Warrick, “The urgent need for skilled transformational leaders: Integrating transformational leadership and organization development. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 8, no. 5 (2011): 11-26.] [4: Norma Malcolm, "Anselm's ontological arguments." The Philosophical Review 69, no. 1 (1960): 41-62.] [5: Anastasia Philippa Scrutton, Thinking through feeling: God, emotion and possibility (Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2011) 12.]
Defining Faith and Reason
Hebrews 11:1 states that faith is the substance of one’s hope in God—it is what allows one to see without seeing. However, God gave evidence to people to convince them of His Divinity: testimony, Scripture, miracles, teachings—all of these served to bring people to faith. In other words, God appealed to people’s reason. Thus, the Christian Faith is generally based on the application of one’s reason to the revelations and teachings of the Christian Church in a process of discernment to see whether the claims of Church are credible or not. This is why the scholastics say that faith is based on reason.[footnoteRef:6] Faith is trust in God—and it is independent of all else.[footnoteRef:7] Faith does not need reason. It simply rests on reason. Of course, it can rest on other things as well, as Avery Dulles shows in his 7 models of faith, which shall be described later in this essay.[footnoteRef:8] [6: Ratzinger, Joseph. "Relativism: Central Problem for Faith Today." ORIGINS-WASHINGTON- 26 (1996): 309-309; Snyder, David C. "Faith and reason in Locke's Essay." Journal of the History of Ideas 47, no. 2 (1986): 197-213.] [7: J.P. Moorland, Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul. 2nd rev. ed. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2012, 19.] [8: Avery Dulles,The Assurance of Things Hoped For (New York: Oxford, 1994), 1.]
Reason can be defined as the assent of the mind to the facts laid before it. In terms of its relation to faith, the use of reason can be described as the process of the mind consenting to the truths that the Church teaches. This use of reason is commonly applied before an act of faith can be made or before faith can be professed. Faith is therefore, typically, the outcome of a rational assent of the mind to the facts laid before it, which teach, namely, that: 1) Jesus Christ is the Son of God; 2) He died on the Cross in reparation for the sins of world; 3) His sacrifice atoned for the sins of mankind and opened the gates of Heaven, which had been barred since the fall of Adam and Eve. The Christian Faith encompasses other teachings and doctrines as well, but these are the preeminent points that have a historical basis. 1 Peter 3:15 tells us to always be mindful of the reasons that we have such hope—such faith. We are not to forget them, because people will want to know. People will see the joy and peace and hope that is in the heart of a Christian and they will not ask, “What feeling gave you this hope?” No, they will ask, “What reason do you have for this hope?” Reason is what drives people to act deliberately and with consideration.
However, God does not always appeal to one’s reason to bring them to faith. In the story of St. Paul, for example, before his conversion Saul is persecuting Christians (Acts 8:3). Saul would not listen to reason because he had built up a wall of hate around his heart and mind. He would not let God’s proofs get in. Thus, to reach Saul, God used a blinding flash of light and literally knocked him off his horse. This experience had nothing to do with the use of reason—it was a visceral experience—a shock to the system that set Saul on his way to conversion—i.e., to the Christian faith. Reason was applied before long, of course, but in the beginning, Saul had to have his inner being shaken up and put in the right disposition. Saul required a dose of humility in other words. Thus, while faith may be said to rest upon reason, it could also be said that reason rests upon humility.[footnoteRef:9] [9: Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ (NY: Image Books, 2008), 10.]
Scripture
Personal Revelation
As Paul was not one for whom reason was the main factor in conversion—but rather revelation—it is fitting to look at what Paul says about faith and reason. In 1 Corinthians 1:23, Paul asserts that faith in a crucified God is not something that “rational” people—aka the Jews and Gentiles—would embrace. Really, he is pointing out that their overreliance on “proofs” and “justification” are because of their pride, which makes them foolish. Paul was similarly prideful when he was Saul, and that is why he had to be knocked off his horse. The reason of God was foolishness to him. This is why elsewhere, Paul claims that if man is going to glory in himself he should glory in his foolishness because this is what allows him to have a humble disposition in order to see the glory of God. When man is full of himself, he cannot see God. Faith in this sense connects to reason by way of humility. Once converted, however, Paul understood the appeal of reason and still used it to teach others—whether Jew or Gentile, going to their temples and synagogues to reason with them and move them to faith (Acts 17:17).
Luke 7:38 describes a woman washing the feet of Christ with her tears, drying them with her hair and anointing them with oil. It is traditionally held to be the conversion of Mary Magdalene—she is making an act of faith and an expression of repentance and contrition for her sins.[footnoteRef:10] She has not been catechized previously; neither has she been shown to pour over the teachings of Christ. She was simply saved by Christ from stoning (John 8:1-11) and the compelled her to conversion. Like Paul, she was moved by a kind of direct, personal revelation—and intimate contact with the divine through Christ that stirred an intuitive reaction, full of feeling and conviction. This was not the same thing as what Aquinas and the scholastics describe as faith resting upon reason. This was faith resting upon a personal encounter with God. Reason could come later. [10: Patricia S. Kruppa, "" More sweet and liquid than any other": Victorian images of Mary Magdalene." In Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society, pp. 126-141. Routledge, 2013.]
The Apostles were the same way. When Christ said “follow me,” they followed Him, without even knowing who or what this Man was (Matthew 9:9). Why should a tax collector stop what he is doing and throw all of it away to follow a Nazarene? There is no rhyme or reason to it other than that he was touched, like the other Apostles, by the spirit of the Holy Ghost. And yet this was not a total conversion because the seed or sapling of faith that they had was still very weak and needed to be reinforced. Christ Himself excoriated the Apostles for being weak in faith during the storm when they feared for their lives even though God was with them the whole time (Matthew 8:26). Christ calmed the storm and did another miracle to shore up their weak faith. They needed reassurance through sense data, through experience, through works that they should have faith, trust, and hope in God. They needed reason to strengthen their commitment to the revelation and move them to totally give themselves to God in mind and heart and spirit.
Miracles, Words and Prophecies
For others, reason would be a huge factor in conversion to the faith. For example, there is Nicodemus, who heard the preaching of Christ and His words appealed to Nicodemus’s reason. Nicodemus was a Jew who knew the Scriptures and understood the prophecies. He came to Christ at night after being questioned by Christ as a teacher of Israel who failed to understand what God was saying and showing to him (John 3:10). As a teacher of Israel, Nicodemus would have focused on the Scriptures of the Old Testament and he would have known the meaning of the prophecies—yet there was a mental block in the way; Nicodemus was not making the logical connections between what the Scriptures and prophecies of the Old Testament were saying and what Christ was showing in Himself, through His words and miracles. Nicodemus needed to look again and see more deeply into the Scriptures, into Christ and into himself. That is why Christ marveled at his ignorance: he should have been able to make the rational step to faith.
The story of Nicodemus shows that reason is not the same as faith. Nicodemus was wise and understood the history of the Jews. He also saw the workings of Christ and understood his words. He was confounded briefly in his reasoning because he did not have faith. Faith is what gets one to the other shores, so to speak. Reason leads one to the outermost pier—but unless one has the raft of faith, one cannot get from the pier to the other shore. Nicodemus was walking up and down the pier in a sense, scratching his head, marveling at everything around him and yet not taking the step of faith. His mind was not consenting to the proofs. Once he finally did consent to the proofs, and make the act of faith, Nicodemus became a follower of Christ, and was there at the end when Christ crucified was buried (John 19:39-42).
Faith, it can be said, is made up of three parts: cognition, relation, and action. To understand the meaning of the Christian Faith, one must understand how the aspects of the Christian Faith are interrelated. The acts of faith that Christians make help to reinforce the cognitive aspect of their faith, as they see in their own lives and in the lives of others the good fruits that come about as a result. However, while one can come to faith without really knowing why, the faith has to be strengthened, as the story of the Apostles fearing for their lives in the boat tossed by the storm shows: Christ reprimanded them for their weak faith—just like he reprimanded Nicodemus for his weak application of reason. God gives all men a mind and a heart and both can be used to come to faith—but ultimately both have to be reinforced through habit. Emotional reinforcement can parlay into cognitive reinforcement.[footnoteRef:11] The good fruit from the good tree strengthens one’s trust in God, which in turn facilitates the development of the behavioral aspect of the faith. So faith is like a continuous feedback loop, which the mind and heart giving way to the development of a relationship with God which gives way to actions or expressions of faith in one’s behavior. This is all of what it means to have faith. [11: Smith, Christian. "Why Christianity works: An emotions-focused phenomenological account." Sociology of Religion 68, no. 2 (2007): 165-178]
Alternative Models of How Faith and Reason Relate
Avery Dulles gives 7 models of faith that show how faith and reason can relate to one another. These models are: the propositional model, the transcendental model, the fiducial model, the experiential model, the obediential model, the praxis model, and the personalist model. These models are not necessarily independent of one another but rather can be integrated altogether to create a sense of how faith is obtained.
The propositional model shows that faith is directly linked to reason for people who will not believe something that is not clearly defined and supported by evidence: these people want a reason to believe and need a proposition—a proof. Matthew 4:4 states that the words of God are important to consider and that they should be lived by, indicating that people have to pay mind to them: this supports the propositional model.[footnoteRef:12] [12: Avery Dulles,The Assurance of Things Hoped For (New York: Oxford, 1994), 8.]
The transcendental model explains how faith is arrived at by way of supernatural grace. The individual is touched by grace and accepts the grace, which allows the individual to transform and transcend to a spiritual understand that leads him to faith. This could be said to be how the Apostles came to faith—though this model alone is not sufficient in most cases and must be attended by some other model, such as the propositional model, whereby the mind and the will are united towards faith.
The fiducial model is characterized as a type of child-like surrender to God, which has little to do with reasoning. Most children do not rationalize their way to truth. They feel it, sense it, intuit it, and gladly submit themselves to it, accepting things with a willing nature. The conversion of Mary Magdalene has aspects of this model in it, as she submitted herself fully to Christ when she wept and bathed his feet in her tears. It was a total conversion—different from the Apostles, such as Thomas, who did not even fully have faith until he felt the wounds in the side of Christ after the Resurrection (John 20:27).
Thomas could also be said to be emblematic of the experiential model. For these people, they have to experience Christ before they can really believe. They may not all be doubting Thomases, but facts and propositions do not speak to them. Experience is what speaks to them. Mystics can be said to come to faith by this model. Experience is what gives them reason to believe.[footnoteRef:13] [13: Ibid.]
The fifth model of Dulles is the obediential model. Some individuals do not trust themselves to be able to decide the right course of action on their own. They thus entrust themselves wholly to God and God’s grace, to live according to the light that He provides. Thus, Scripture and Church teachings can serve as a rule for these types. They are obedient to the rule because their use of reason has allowed them to see that they themselves are incapable of being wise and good on their own. They must be obedient to the rule of God. They thus submit their own reason to the reasons of the Church, the Bible, and so on.
The sixth model is the praxis model, which posits that faith is not separate from action. Faith is reached by acting, by teaching, by engaging with others towards something positive and good through Christ. Reason tells them that faith without works is dead, as the Scriptures teach (James 2:26). Thus, the praxis model appeals to them because it unites the idea of faith to the idea of action. This model is particularly liked by Liberation theologians like Gustavo Gutierrez.[footnoteRef:14] [14: Ibid.]
Finally, there is Dulles’ personalist model of faith, which focuses on union with God. St. John embodies this model. He was there with Christ at the cross and his Gospel is filled with love for God. Union with God is viewed as the highest achievement and the point of all life. In some sense, the personalist model underlies all the other models, as each one focuses in some way in uniting oneself to God’s spirit.
Conclusion
All of these models work to help explain the relation of faith to reason. It is in one’s behaviors in daily life that the full extent of one’s faith becomes known. The faith should translate into life, just like a seed grows into a tree. The faith starts in the mind but then is manifested outwardly in one’s actions. If it is not manifested in this manner, how is one’s faith of any use? The Christian Faith is meant to serve the soul, to open it to God’s grace, that the grace might transform the life of the person. It is meant to give peace and joy and strength to one and free one from depression, from fear, from darkness.[footnoteRef:15] This is also what is meant by the informing of the character by the Christian Faith: the faith must establish the character and shape it so that one begins acting as a living reflection of Christ in the world.[footnoteRef:16]The behavioral aspect of the faith is meant also to help to communicate the Word to others in the world. Faith comes by hearing, it must be remembered. For the faith to grow throughout the world it has to be communicated—and those who have the faith have to be the ones to do the communicating: this is why the Christian Faith cannot be something that one hides under a bushel—but rather the light that one shines from atop the hill (Matthew 5:15). Whether one experiences Christ directly or is appealed to by reason; whether one is brought to God by a proposition, or by a need to do something good, to act; whether one is touched by revelation like St. Paul, or lifted up by the spirit—in every case one is brought to faith and reason plays a part in that journey, just in different ways for different people. However, unless faith is reinforced by reason, it may be weakened over time. [15: Smith, Christian. "Why Christianity works: An emotions-focused phenomenological account." Sociology of Religion 68, no. 2 (2007): 165-178.] [16: Pike, Mark A. "Christianity and character education: Faith in core values?." Journal of Beliefs &Values 31, no. 3 (2010): 311-321.]
Bibliography
Dulles, Avery. The Assurance of Things Hoped For. New York: Oxford, 1994.
Kruppa, Patricia S. "" More sweet and liquid than any other": Victorian images of Mary
Magdalene." In Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society, pp. 126-141. Routledge, 2013.
Malcolm, Norman. "Anselm's ontological arguments." The Philosophical Review 69, no.
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McInerny, Ralph, ed. Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings. England: Penguin, 1998.
Moreland, J. P. Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the
Soul. 2nd rev. ed. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2012.
Pike, Mark A. "Christianity and character education: Faith in core values?." Journal of
Beliefs &Values 31, no. 3 (2010): 311-321.
Ratzinger, Joseph. "Relativism: Central Problem for Faith Today." Origins-Washington-
 26 (1996): 309-309.
Scrutton, Anastasia Philippa. Thinking through feeling: God, emotion and possibility.
Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2011.
Sheen, Fulton. Life of Christ. NY: Image Books, 2008.
Smith, Christian. "Why Christianity works: An emotions-focused phenomenological
account." Sociology of Religion 68, no. 2 (2007): 165-178
Warrick, D. D. “The urgent need for skilled transformational leaders: Integrating
transformational leadership and organization development. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 8, no. 5 (2011): 11-26.