Faith and Reason E-Book

• Herausgeber: IVP Academic
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Spectrum Multiview Book Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 343

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Life confronts us with an endless stream of questions. Some are trivial. But some draw us into the deepest dimensions of human inquiry, a place where our decisions have profound implications for life and faith. Is there a God, and if so, how can I know anything about who or what God is? Is the quest for truth an elusive dream? How should I live and what should I value? What happens at the end of my biological existence? These questions lead people of every creed and belief to consider important existential concepts. But many people wrestle with the relationship between faith and reason as they dig into the roots of this theological and philosophical pursuit. Does a shared interest in a common set of questions indicate that philosophy and theology are close kin and allies, or are they competitors vying for our souls, each requiring a loyalty that excludes the other? In this Spectrum Multiview volume Steve Wilkens edits a debate between three different understandings of the relationship between faith and reason, between theology and philosophy. The first viewpoint, Faith and Philosophy in Tension, proposes faith and reason as hostile, exclusive opposites, each dangerous to the integrity of the other. The second, Faith Seeking Understanding, suggests that faithful Christians are called to make full use of their rational faculties to aid in the understanding and interpretation of what they believe by faith. In the third stance, Thomistic Synthesis, natural reason acts as a handmaiden to theology by actively pointing people toward salvation and deeper knowledge of spiritual truths. Bringing together multiple views on the relationship between faith, philosophy and reason, this introduction to a timeless quandary will help you navigate, with rigor and joy, one of the most significant discussions of the Christian community. Spectrum Multiview Books offer a range of viewpoints on contested topics within Christianity, giving contributors the opportunity to present their position and also respond to others in this dynamic publishing format.

Leseprobe

Faith and Reason

THREE VIEWS

EDITED BY Steve Wilkens

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY Craig A. Boyd, Alan G. Padgett and Carl A. Raschke

www.ivpress.com/academic

InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com Email: [email protected]

©2014 by Steve Wilkens

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

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Design: Cindy Kiple

Images: The Incredulity of St. Thomas by Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio/Schloss Sanssouci, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany/The Bridgeman Art Library

ISBN 978-0-8308-8023-2 (digital)

ISBN 978-0-8308-4040-3 (print)

Contents

Introduction

1 Faith and Philosophy in Tension

Faith Seeking Understanding Response

The Synthesis of Reason and Faith Response

2 Faith Seeking Understanding

Faith and Philosophy in Tension Response

The Synthesis of Reason and Faith Response

3 The Synthesis of Reason and Faith

Faith and Philosophy in Tension Response

Faith Seeking Understanding Response

Conclusion

List of Contributors

Index

Notes

Praise for Faith and Reason: Three Views

About the Editor

Spectrum Multiview Book Series

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Introduction

Steve Wilkens

Life confronts us with an endless stream of questions. Where should I go for lunch? Is it time to buy a new coat? Should I head for bed now or stay up and watch the show I recorded? Paper or plastic? Questions of this variety are rather mundane, and our decisions about them, at least taken separately, have little effect on the overall course of our life. At times, though, we contemplate inquiries that take us to a deeper dimension, a place where our decisions have profound implications. Is there a God? If so, how can I know that, or know anything about who or what God is? What sources and authorities can I trust in my pursuit of truth, or is the quest for truth an elusive dream? How should I live and what should I value? Do I really have any choice in what I value or how I live? Is my life meaningful, or am I simply the accidental result of blind material forces? What happens at the end of my biological existence?

These and similar questions draw us into the most important ponderings of human inquiry. Because they are fundamental, we all ask these questions at some point. Sometimes they arise in crisis situations when events force our attention in their direction; occasionally they come in quiet, reflective moments while sipping coffee in front of a fire or rocking a child to sleep. However, we sometimes work through these deep questions in a more intentional and systematic manner, perhaps in an educational setting or more informally by sustained reading and reflection. When this is the case, we generally refer to this activity as either theology or philosophy.

Theology and philosophy have never been able to completely distance themselves from each other precisely because they have a shared interest in matters of deep existential concern to us. Yet, although both address the same questions, there are important differences. First, philosophical inquiry is generally understood to be rooted in reason, seeking justification for positions that any clear-thinking person could share. Theology, in contrast, is grounded in revelation, knowledge communicated by God to humanity via Scripture or in some other way. A second difference concerns the proper stance of the individual engaged in these activities. Traditionally, the philosophical ideal is to put aside biases and personal commitments so the best argument can take us where it will. We start, if you will, from a position of detachment and skepticism, evaluating arguments and counterarguments until we arrive at a rational conclusion. Detachment is not an option for faith and theology, however. Theology, as opposed to religious studies,1 starts from an attitude of trust or faith. In other words, the Christian theologian is committed to beliefs (perhaps as a result of prior philosophical investigations) that are central to the Christian faith.

Because people of faith start from a set of beliefs, certain potential answers to life’s big questions will remain viable for a philosopher that will not be options for the Christian. For example, fundamental to Christian faith is a commitment to belief in God’s existence. However, philosophers, as philosophers, may remain agnostic or come to a conclusion contrary to that of a Christian. While the philosopher may seriously entertain the belief that human life is accidental or that Scripture is a hindrance in our quest for truth, Christian theology starts from the premise that life is purposeful and the Bible is an authoritative guide to truth. This is not to say that Christians agree on every detail about life’s purpose or how we are to understand scriptural authority. Nor, as we will investigate at length in this book, does a believer’s commitment allow us to predict how one views faith in relation to philosophy. Instead, the point is that Christianity assumes the truth of basic principles and ideas that philosophers, as philosophers, may view as open questions.

The differences between philosophy and theology concerning authority, stance and method set up the tension this book investigates. Does a shared interest in a common set of questions indicate that philosophy and theology are close kin and allies, or are they competitors vying for our souls, each requiring a loyalty that excludes the other? Do differences in method and orientation signal that these disciplines are valuable and complementary partners, or do their dissimilarities indicate that we should expect philosophy and theology to be incompatible or even mutually hostile?

Getting Beyond the Binaries

The differences between faith and reason often lead to the assumption that we are confronted by a binary choice—we must choose one or the other. Indeed, individuals on both sides have come close to declaring war on the other. Many who line up on the “reason” side of the line assert that theology and faith are antithetical to clear thought and are inherently hostile to science (which today is often cited as the paramount expression of rational thought). They argue that reliance on faith and the revelation upon which it rests tangles humanity in hopeless and outmoded superstitions that hinder progress. In this view, faith is not benign but dangerous, and thus should be relegated to the dustbins of history.2 At the other end of the reason-faith spectrum, Christians have often denigrated reason as “merely human,” identifying it as the archenemy of faith. In this view, our very salvation is at stake, so dependence on any finite human capacity threatens or diminishes the faith upon which our eternal destination depends.

While these binary opposites describe perennial and often-popular impressions of the relationship (or lack thereof) between faith and reason, they do not represent the best thinking of either group. Most philosophers today are more circumspect about reason, moderating the Enlightenment’s confidence that rationality can transcend the influence of culture, personal bias or perspective, religion, social status and other factors. Indeed, while Christopher Hitchens and others who represent the view that science is the antithesis of faith say, “Our principles are not a faith,”3 those more careful about the manner in which scientific thought proceeds acknowledge that the scientific enterprise relies on principles that themselves cannot be demonstrated by reason. In addition, science itself relies on the regularities of nature, what we often refer to as the laws of nature. However, the laws on which science is grounded are not themselves directly open to empirical confirmation, even if their utility provides good reasons to trust (i.e., have faith in) them. In short, faith of some kind is fundamental to scientific investigation itself.

Similarly, Christians who claim to reject reason’s authority inevitably smuggle it back into their considerations in a multitude of ways. They are quite happy to employ the fruits of rational investigation embedded in their cellphone’s technology or give thoughtful consideration to retirement investment strategies. Indeed, they may even give reasons, arguments they expect logical individuals to find convincing, for rejecting the spiritual authority of reason. In reality, we all rely on reason in innumerable ways, from balancing the checkbook to reading a map—or reading this page, for that matter. Thus, to make sense of the discussions in this book, we will need to get beyond the stereotypical either/or binaries mentioned above. Instead, the more specific question with which we will struggle concerns the proper relationship of faith and reason, theology and philosophy.

The Scope of the Book

Before we move to a general overview of the three positions examined in this book, a few qualifications are in order. First, this book surveys only a subset of the broader topic of the proper relationship between faith and reason. Rather than examining faith as a generic religious concept, our focus is on the relationship between reason and Christian faith. Moreover, all three views assume that faith is a necessity for Christian life and that theology is a means of knowing that does not depend on philosophy or any other discipline for its validity. Thus we will not survey variations of the idea that reason equates to, supersedes or renders faith obsolete. In other words, the philosophies of Hegel (who argues that philosophy gives full expression to truths only vaguely discerned by theology), Kant and the deists (who maintain that true religion is that which meets the standard of reason alone), or logical positivism (which places a chasm between truths that can be verified by direct observation and religious claims that can be judged as neither true nor false) will not be examined directly, although all will be addressed tangentially.

Second, each of our views will affirm, in varying ways, the validity of reason and philosophy. This requires that we transcend the caricatured binary oppositions examined above and recognize that the debate is not whether reason has a role for Christians. Instead, our discussion will center on the intellect’s proper realm of operation, the necessary conditions for reason’s efforts to be of spiritual benefit, and the extent to which reason facilitates an understanding of God, purpose and goodness. Unless we recognize the Christian tradition’s affirmation of reason, it is impossible to understand why believers of almost every theological tradition have planted universities wherever they have settled. This is hardly an enterprise for those who reject or denigrate reason.

The third qualification is that, while our contributors each exposit a distinct view of the relationship between faith and philosophy, each of these categories has a number of intramural variations. This should not surprise us, because our three paradigms are relatively broad, and it is not always clear where to place certain thinkers within our categories. In addition, disagreement about the place of philosophy has a history almost as old as Christianity itself. The ancient church contained ardent Christians such as Justin Martyr, Clement, Origen and Augustine who drew on the philosophy of ancient pagans as well as their contemporaries. During this same period, influential leaders such as Tertullian and Tatian were less optimistic about philosophy’s use for faith, a sentiment generally echoed by the early monastics and Christian ascetics. A little later on, the medieval church was populated by mystics and contemplatives who sought communion with God by bypassing or transcending reason’s powers. However, they shared this historical period with the figures of high scholasticism, who developed rigorous philosophical structures intended to deepen faith and to demonstrate Christianity’s truth to the heathen. On this side of the Reformation, the role of the intellect has been emphasized by such diverse groups as Protestant scholasticism and classical Protestant liberalism, while the place of the intellect has been rigorously challenged by groups such as the Pietists, Pentecostals and postmodern Christians. To more clearly understand the contours of the debate about faith and philosophy, we will examine three models—Faith and Philosophy in Tension, Faith Seeking Understanding and the Thomistic Synthesis.

Faith and Philosophy in Tension

When Christians and non-Christians alike look for sound bites from prominent believers who appear to support an anti-intellectualist approach, their first stop usually involves one of the representatives of the Faith and Philosophy in Tension (hereafter, Tension position). “Exhibit A” is often provided by one of Christianity’s earliest theologians, Tertullian, when he asks, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?”4 These are, of course, rhetorical questions implying that Athens, the cradle of Western philosophy, should be kept separate from Jerusalem, the birthplace of Christian faith. Tertullian appears to have an ally in Martin Luther, who is famous for statements such as: “Reason is the devil’s prostitute and can do nothing else but slander and dishonor what God does and says,”5 and “Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but—more frequently than not—struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”6

On the surface, these prominent Christians seem to offer a dim assessment of rationality’s value. However, there is more to this story than these selective quotes reveal. Tertullian’s legal training, which was highly philosophical in orientation, is apparent throughout his work. In fact, his legal/philosophical background supplied language that the church has used for centuries to give expression to trinitarian theology. His writings engaged those he considered heretics in rational arguments, referred to the Stoic philosopher Seneca as “almost one of us,”7 and claimed that classical philosophers had borrowed many of their ideas from Hebrew Scripture.8 Similarly, Luther was well versed in philosophy. The nominalist philosophy of his fellow Franciscan William of Occam was a major influence on his insistence on salvation “by faith alone.” In the same book where he describes reason as “the greatest enemy that faith has,” Luther also argues that, when enlightened by faith, human wisdom is “a fair and glorious instrument, and work of God.”9 At minimum, these factors remind us that dismissing these and other scholars in the Tension camp as anti-intellectual fideists or irrationalists distorts their positions. Instead, understanding how they view faith and philosophy will require a more nuanced perspective, one that holds these two elements in dialectical tension.

I believe it is fair to say that the Tension position encompasses a greater number of variations than the other two we will consider in this book. At the same time, these variations can be placed in two basic categories. First, many who embrace the Tension view emphasize the vast ontological distance that distinguishes Creator from creation. God’s transcendence, this perspective argues, necessitates that the means by which we know of God differ from the process by which we come to other types of knowledge. This does not mean that rational processes have no value. Advocates of this model will affirm that reason is well suited for navigating questions about the created order, such as selecting the best tires for snowy surfaces, providing proper drainage for a parking lot, or setting a broken bone. However, we do not operate only in a world of atoms, flora and human beings. We live also in the presence of the Creator who is Other than creation. Because God inhabits a completely different category of reality, the logic of God differs radically from what we consider rational in the creaturely world. Indeed, because of the ontological distance between God and human beings, God’s actions may be viewed as wholly irrational from the human perspective. This dialectic between the knowledge of the created order and knowledge of the divine is often related to a distinction between will and reason. Our task is not to comprehend God’s ways through rational means. Instead, salvation requires faith, trust and commitment, which are movements of the will.

A second category within the Tension view places emphasis on the moral/spiritual distance that distinguishes God from creation. To be sure, all three views take sin and its effects seriously. However, the Tension view is distinct in its view that sin’s lingering effects continue to diminish and distort reason’s capacity to comprehend divine truth even after regeneration. Thus reliance upon rationality to discern the nature and ways of God does more harm than good. Stated otherwise, the Tension position is pessimistic about the value of general revelation even after redemption, placing the emphasis on special revelation as the final arbiter of spiritual matters.

As we will see below, some individuals and theological traditions within the Tension category place the emphasis on reason’s diminished usefulness because of the ontological distance that separates creature and Creator, while others will stress our moral/spiritual distance from God. However, these themes are not mutually exclusive, and sometimes both appear as complementary features within versions of the Tension model.

One example of placing the emphasis on ontological distance is found within Christian mysticism. Early forms of Christian mysticism were influenced by Neoplatonism, which stresses the ineffable character of the divine.10 As a result, theological approaches influenced by Neoplatonism often espouse the via negativa (or apophatic theology), the view that God is so transcendent that human reason and experience provide no appropriate positive analogies to describe God. Rather than revealing the transcendent God, reason’s finite capacities yield only a finite god, resulting in idolatry. Therefore, we can only say what God is not.

Many forms of Christian mysticism argue that the ontological otherness of God requires a unique means of apprehending God. This leads to a contrast between rational forms of knowledge and the moral/ spiritual path to rightly conceiving of God. The anonymous medieval work The Cloud of Unknowing offers such a contrast. “For of all other creatures and their works, yea, and of the works of God’s self, may a man through grace have fullhead of knowing, and well he can think of them: but of God Himself can no man think. . . . By love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought never.”11 With this sort of perspective, we see a clear delineation between two spheres. Reason is a useful tool for earthly matters. However, as the title of Unknowing emphasizes, our apprehension of God requires that we “unlearn” pretensions of gaining knowledge by human reason and, instead, strive to know God through love.

The idea of love as a form of knowledge brings us to another motif often present in the Tension position. Dispassionate reason provides understanding of objects. However, love is never detached, and God is subject, not an object. Thus the means by which God is truly apprehended is not the use of detached and objective reason. Instead, God is known via the volitional and personal approach of love and trust. A related idea is found in James K. A. Smith’s appraisal of Pentecostal contributions to philosophy. He argues that the “openness” of the universe to God and the fact that Christianity requires “affective understanding” mean that Enlightenment notions of knowledge should not dictate the terms of belief.12 Instead, there are ways of knowing that are heart centered rather than head centered.

Nicolas of Cusa links the themes of “unlearning” and affective understanding with another common element of the Tension position—paradox. He asks us to imagine a circle that contains an inscribed square with each of its corners touching a point on the circle. A mystery becomes evident when we modify the square by increasing the number of sides. As more straight lines are added to what is now an inscribed polygon, its shape paradoxically conforms more closely to that of the circle, which has no straight lines. Yet, “even if the number of its angles is increased ad infinitum, the polygon never becomes equal [to the circle] unless it is resolved into an identity with the circle.”13 Recognition that as the number of sides in a polygon increases so also does its conformity to the shape of the circle, which lacks any straight lines, throws us into paradox. This reveals that “the intellect, which is not truth, never comprehends truth so precisely that truth cannot be comprehended infinitely more precisely.”14 It is within the mystery of paradox that we are drawn back to a sense of wonder and awe that opens our will to trust in that which transcends rational comprehension.

A more recent example of paradox in Tension thinking appears in Blaise Pascal’s philosophy. His Pensées is full of observations of the paradoxes of human existence, but perhaps the defining paradox arises with the question of God’s existence. On the one hand, reason provides enough evidence of God’s existence that it is irrational to disbelieve. On the other hand, reason is insufficient to provide certainty about God’s existence. Thus reason draws us into a paradox: it is neither rational nor irrational to believe in God. This paradox is heightened by the reality that we cannot not choose. Of the question of God’s existence in Pascal’s famous “wager,” he states: “But you must wager. There is no choice; you are already committed. Which will you choose?”15

A similar call to the urgency of choice is found in Søren Kierkegaard’s statement that

Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm, and shrewdly relapsing into repose. . . . Nowadays, not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and carefully that he literally chokes himself with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.16

Both Pascal and Kierkegaard recognize that rational uncertainty may become an excuse to postpone a decision about where we will stand in relationship to God. Cool rationality, after all, demands the time and leisure to work through every angle of a question before making a commitment. However, Thomas Morris tells us that Pascal’s Pensées was written “to shock his indifferent friends out of their apathy and goad them into a philosophical and religious line of inquiry about life.”17

The quote above offers a critical insight into the emphasis placed on the urgency of choice by Pascal and Kierkegaard. A purely rational approach to spiritual matters asks only whether an idea is factually true. For the Tension position, this is the wrong question. Even if logic provides an intellectually satisfying conclusion, it leaves unanswered the bigger question of how we are related to God. In short, the rationalist approach, to the extent that it remains in the realm of thought, does not address the question of salvation. Salvation is a matter of faith, and faith questions can only be resolved in the sphere of the will, not in the sphere of reason.

Because the Tension position decisively emphasizes the role of faith and choice over reason, Pascal, Kierkegaard and others who hold this position are often considered irrationalists. However, this categorization overlooks some crucial factors. First, reason plays a role in salvation by revealing its own limitations and inadequacies. It confronts us with the paradox of evidence that is simultaneously “enough” and “not enough” for belief in God and thrusts us into the situation in which we must exercise faith.

Second, reason’s “negative knowledge,” knowledge of its own boundaries, sets the stage for a contrast between the “objective” knowledge of discursive reason and personal knowledge. In this case, personal knowledge takes two forms. First, reason’s inability to attain certainty stands as a stark reminder that we are not God. This knowledge is more than just comprehension of a metaphysical fact. At its deepest level, this self-knowledge is an acknowledgment that we are finite and fallen beings who stand before a holy and infinite God. Thus, while reason itself is not faith, this self-knowledge is the condition for becoming open to reliance on the transcendent God. Second, this model challenges the supremacy of detached, impersonal knowledge by positing that personal, subjective knowledge is the means by which we know God. To use Pascal’s words, Christianity’s call is to know the “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,” not a God who is the logical construct of “the philosophers and scholars.”18 The latter is knowledge about God; it views God as an object to be analyzed from a distance. For all its value, objective knowledge cannot bring us into relationship with God. For that, we must know God as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob knew God—as a person rather than object. This type of knowing is rooted in personal encounter and trust, not in detached observation and analysis.

Finally, some Christians embrace the Tension paradigm as a result of their understanding of sin’s continuing effects. For example, the Formula of Concord says that, although believers

are regenerate and renewed in the spirit of their mind, yet in the present life this regeneration and renewal is not complete, but only begun, and believers are, by the spirit of their mind, in a constant struggle against the flesh, that is, against the corrupt nature and disposition which cleaves to us unto death.

The formula goes on to state that “this old Adam . . . still inheres in the understanding, the will, and all the powers of man.”19 “This old Adam,” therefore, requires that Christians, even after salvation, remain modest about the mind’s ability to discover or recognize truth.

This view of sin’s tenacity contextualizes negative comments concerning reason that appear in Luther, the spiritual father of Concord. For example, in the passage in which he describes reason as “the devil’s whore,” Luther is criticizing those he believes have arrived at their conclusions about baptism by reason alone. In contrast, Luther states that “we first want to prove our faith, not by setting forth capitals or periods or touto tauta but by clear, sober passages from Scripture which the devil will not overthrow.”20 Thus the rather indelicate designation of reason as “the devil’s whore” is not a denigration of reason per se, but a condemnation of prioritizing rationality over Scripture.

The Formula of Concord’s position corresponds to Luther’s notion of the “two kingdoms.” One kingdom, the earthly kingdom, is given by God to govern the earthly affairs of life. In view of human sin, secular powers, which Luther refers to as God’s “left hand,” exert their influence by law and coercion. By this means, God uses the earthly kingdom to provide order and justice, which are facilitated by our rational capacities. However, those who administer this power do so only in a very imperfect manner and from unholy and rebellious motives. God’s “right hand” is a spiritual kingdom revealed in Scripture alone and governed by grace. Both kingdoms exist side by side in this life, and Christians live in the ambiguity of citizenship in both worlds. This dual citizenship on the corporate level parallels the individual Christian’s dual identity as simul justus et peccator (“simultaneously justified and sinner”), described in the Formula of Concord above.

The Anabaptist tradition also adheres to a “two kingdoms” model, but one that differs significantly from Luther’s. Instead of dual kingdoms, each ordained by God, Anabaptists view the church as an expression of God’s kingdom, while the other kingdom, generally referred to as “the world,” stands in opposition to it. “The world” uses material and military power, not as an agent of God’s will, but in direct rebellion against God’s kingdom and its values. Therefore, the church’s call is to separate itself from the world as a witness to the power of love and sacrifice exemplified in the life and death of Christ. As Stanley Hauerwas puts it, “The church first serves the world by helping the world to know what it means to be the world. For without a ‘contrast model’ the world has no way to know or feel the oddness of its dependence on power for survival.”21 While the Anabaptist “two kingdoms” doctrine starkly differs from the Lutheran paradigm in this regard, it also represents a Tension in that the logic of God’s kingdom differs from the fallen and rebellious strategies embedded in earthly reason.

My summary of the Tension paradigm has touched on various expressions ranging from the church fathers up to the nineteenth century. Carl A. Raschke, professor of religious studies at the University of Denver, will extend this discussion beyond the borders of my survey by giving careful attention to biblical support for the Tension view and then drawing ably from contemporary sources to bolster his perspective. In his argument that the message of the gospel represents a radical departure from both Greek and Enlightenment philosophical categories, you will detect echoes of the themes above in his affirmation that the believer’s mandate is not intellectual comprehension of an abstract and impersonal God, but trust in the resurrected and risen Christ. A major theme in Raschke’s chapter is that whenever Christians have depended on philosophical means to justify or express the Christian faith, the gospel message of personal trust and relationship with the living God has suffered.

Faith Seeking Understanding

Two recurring themes in the Tension view provide a segue to the Faith Seeking Understanding (hereafter FSU) position. The first is an agreement with Tension thinking about the corrosive effect of sin on both our rational and volitional powers. Both camps believe that, as a result of this corruption, reason cannot aid us in acquiring salvation. The second point of contact is the emphasis placed on the primacy of the will. If faith belongs to the category of volition, questions about salvation find their center in this capacity, not reason.

Perhaps the most important dividing line between Tension and FSU is the role of reason in the life of the Christian. FSU argues that God’s salvific work restores both reason and will to the extent that reason can be of spiritual benefit to the believer. However, returning to the second connection cited above between the two views, the will retains a primacy over reason in that the latter is not capable of its most important tasks until the will has been renewed and made capable of desiring to know rightly. Although we could cite numerous advocates of this position, we will focus attention on a line that begins with Augustine, moves to the great medieval intellectual and ecclesial figure Anselm of Canterbury, and finally finds expression in the theology of John Calvin. While the two later figures differ in some details from Augustine’s ideas, his influence is evident in their thought.

Prior to his conversion to Christianity, Augustine had a strong affinity for Neoplatonic thought, and even after coming to faith he says that “Those Platonist writings conveyed in every possible way, albeit indirectly, the truth of God and his Word.”22 This “truth of God” Augustine finds in the Platonists can be identified as such because human rationality provides a point of contact with the divine. In short, our nature as thinking beings reflects the rational nature of our Creator. However, Augustine’s agreement with Platonism on this point is tempered by a stark disagreement on another. The Platonists believed that, when properly informed, reason redirects our volition to desire that which is good. Against this belief, Augustine insists that reason never operates in isolation from volition but is always directed and motivated by our desires. To the unregenerate person, this is a deep problem, because our desires are corrupted by the power of sin and are in rebellion against God. In this rebellious state, there are many things that we do not know, not because the intellect cannot know them, but because our will does not want to know them.

Although sin infects and weakens the power of reason, the intellect remains capable of performing the functions that we typically attribute to rationality, even in an unregenerate person. It allows such an individual to comprehend a book, design buildings and diagnose mental disorders. What fallen reason cannot do, however, is allow the unredeemed person to use knowledge toward the highest purpose for which the intellect is designed. Reason’s primary task is to draw us toward God, the source and goal of rational thought, in an attitude of trust and love. However, apart from grace, our fallen and corrupt will cannot desire this purpose for reason. Instead, unregenerate reason remains trapped in the prideful illusion that its powers allow us to achieve fulfillment on our own terms.

This background allows us to understand Augustine’s famous summary of the relationship between faith and reason. In Tractates on the Gospel of John, Augustine says, “If you have not understood, I say, believe. For understanding is the recompense of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand so that you may believe, but believe so that you might understand; for ‘unless you believe, you will not understand.’”23 In this quote, “understanding” entails more than the accumulation of cognitive or technical information. “Understanding” refers to the capacity to put this information into the broader framework of God’s desire to save us. This cannot occur until faith has restored the believer’s desire to see the higher purpose for which reason is designed and rightly order knowledge toward this purpose.

Unlike the Tension position, however, Augustine argues that faithful Christians are called to make full use of their rational and critical faculties so that they can understand and express what they believe by faith. Indeed, he states that, while rational analysis cannot improve or add to the truths of special revelation, it can correct our interpretations of revelation and aid in understanding how we apply revealed truths to specific situations. At the same time, Augustine maintains that many truths of faith transcend the comprehension of natural reason. Thus, in his discussion of the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus, he argues that “Faith gives the understanding access to these things, unbelief closes the door to them.”24 Through faith’s eyes, we are able to discern a logic that transcends the power of reason alone.

Although Augustine’s approach to faith and philosophy was challenged by scholars in the later medieval period, his theological authority in the centuries immediately following his death was profound. This influence is evident in Anselm, viewed by many as the most important theologian of the early scholastic period. Anselm’s most famous piece of philosophical theology has come to be known as the ontological argument for God’s existence.25 In it, Anselm seems to depart from Augustine’s FSU approach, because his argument states that our ability to conceive of a perfect being logically leads to the conclusion that such a being (God) actually exists. In short, Anselm seems to say that all people have an innate knowledge of God’s existence, and all that is necessary to arrive at this conclusion is careful analysis of the concept of perfection. This appears to be consistent with Anselm’s preface to Cur DeusHomo (“why God became human”), in which he identifies two goals: answering the “objections of unbelievers who reject the Christian faith because they think it contrary to reason” and “setting Christ aside (as if he had never been) prov[ing] by logical arguments that it is impossible for any man to be saved without Him.”26 These elements lead many to believe that Anselm has a higher degree of confidence than Augustine that unaided human reason can grasp theological truths.

However, Anselm’s work also includes aspects that bring his view of faith and reason into close connection with Augustine’s position. For one thing, Proslogion, the book in which Anselm’s argument appears, is written as a prayer, an odd genre if one intends to prove God’s existence by reason alone. Moreover, it is hard to overlook Anselm’s homage to Augustine in the original title for this brief text—“Faith Seeking Understanding”—and we see this reinforced in the statement that appears immediately prior to his argument for God’s existence: “For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe even this: that unless I believe, I shall not understand.”27 Further, in this same context Anselm identifies human sinfulness and the resulting distortion of desire as the obstacle preventing reason from seeing clearly the truths of God that lead to human happiness.28

In short, Anselm’s thought shows strong Augustinian affinities in his belief that we cannot fully grasp the ultimate purpose of theological truths apart from the restoration of our will. Nonetheless, even if we do not read Anselm’s philosophical theology as rational proofs aimed at convincing the skeptic, it is clear that he is convinced that reason cannot contradict revelation. Thus he actively advocates the application of philosophical categories to theological matters by Christians. However, looking again at the material at the beginning of our examination of Anselm, it appears that he goes somewhat beyond Augustine by arguing that philosophy can demonstrate to the unbeliever that Christianity’s doctrines are not irrational (a goal more modest than proof). However, Anselm retains a level of intellectual restraint by reminding readers that while redeemed reason can demonstrate that Christianity’s claims are rational, it is limited in fully explaining how they are true.29

Like so many other Christian scholars, John Calvin can sound either like a committed rationalist or an unrepentant irrationalist when selectively read. Thus, on the one hand, he asks,

Shall we say that the philosophers were blind in their fine observations and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably? Shall we say that they are insane who developed medicine, devoting their labor to our benefit? What shall we say of all the mathematical sciences? Shall we consider them the ravings of madmen? No, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without great admiration. We marvel at them because we are compelled to recognize how preeminent they are.30

On the other hand, commenting on 1 Corinthians 1:20, Calvin writes that “man with all his shrewdness is as stupid about understanding by himself the mysteries of God as an ass is incapable of understanding musical harmony.”31

While the quotes above may seem contradictory, they come together when we recognize that Calvin’s primary concern is soteriological rather than epistemological. In other words, the highest expressions of the art of disputation, medicine and the mathematical sciences, as valuable as they may be, cannot lead us to salvation, or what Augustine and Anselm might have called “understanding.” The failure of these intellectual pursuits to point us toward God is not due to a lack of revelation. Nor is God to be blamed for creating humans with intellectual powers deficient in their ability to discern the available revelation. Indeed, reason’s power would have been sufficient to rightly discern God’s revelation through creation (even if not completely) “if Adam had remained upright.”32

Even in our fallen state, Calvin says, “There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity.”33 This awareness of God, the sensus divinitatas, is a sign of God’s invitation to faith. However, this gift of grace is a double-edged sword, since humans, under sin’s influence, fail to use this knowledge as God intends. Thus Calvin says, “they are condemned by their own testimony because they have failed to honor him and to consecrate their lives to his will.”34

The story is different for those whose will has been restored so that reason is now subject to the Holy Spirit and thus properly oriented toward God. It is part of the Christian’s duty to employ intellectual faculties in service of faith. Reason is, after all, God’s gracious gift, and when rightly subjugated to divine authority, it assists us in comprehending and applying Scripture’s truth to the diverse dimensions of human existence. However, Calvin remains constantly vigilant about the danger of autonomous reason and emphasizes the instrumental use of reason. We are to ground ourselves first in what is clearly known by means of Scripture. Only then does reason come into play as a means of analyzing and organizing that which God reveals.

Our advocate for the FSU position is Alan G. Padgett, professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary. Dr. Padgett will echo FSU’s rejection of the notion that our rational processes are value-neutral, objective and exempt from sin’s effects. Thus he argues that faith is necessary to reorient our rational capacities to the purposes for which God intends them. At the same time, Padgett encourages a mutuality model in which philosophy critiques our theology, explores the ramifications of our belief and its connections to every aspect of life, and deepens our understanding of and gratitude toward God.

The Thomistic Synthesis