Reason and Faith Revisited: Under The Auspices of The Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau

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The Aquinas Lecture, 1971
Reason and Faith Revisited

Under the Auspices of the Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau
By Francis H. Parker, Ph.D.
MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS

MILWAUKEE
1971
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 79-154285

© Copyright 1971
By the Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter
of the Phi Sigma Tau
Marquette University
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
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To Henry John Schriber
and
Marion Thelma Winegard Schriber
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Prefatory
The Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau, the National Honor Society for Philosophy at Marquette University,
each year invites a scholar to deliver a lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose feast day formerly was March
7. The lectures are customarily given on the first Sunday of March. The 1971 Aquinas Lecture Reason and Faith
Revisited was delivered on March 7 in Todd Wehr Chemistry by Professor Francis H. Parker, Head of the Philosophy
Department, Purdue University.
Professor Parker was born June 23, 1920, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He earned his A.B. in 1941 at Evansville (Ind.)
College, his M.A. in 1947 at Indiana University, and his Ph.D. in 1949 at Harvard University.
He began his teaching career as a teaching fellow at Harvard. In 1949 he joined the faculty of Haverford College,
where he became a full Professor in 1961 and chairman of the department of philo-
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sophy from 1963-1966. In 1966 he became the head of the philosophy department at Purdue University.
Professor Parker has had a continuing interest in the philosophical problems connected with human knowledge, both
in its logical and its epistemological aspects. He has also written extensively in the area of the philosophy of religion.
The publications of Professor Parker include: Logic as a Human Instrument (with Prof. H. B. Veatch), New York:
Harper, 1959; The Story of Western Philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967; articles in two
encyclopedias and many articles in philosophical journals. To these publications Phi Sigma Tau is pleased to add:
Reason and Faith Revisited.
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Reason and Faith Revisited

My title is deliberately ambiguous, for in this lecture I want to do two different but related things. In the first place, I
want to attempt an analysis of the nature of reason and of faith and of the relationship between them, and in this
respect I want to revisit an age when this problem was thought to be more important than it apparently is today. In the
second place, I want to advocate the acceptance of both reason and faith, as they will here be analyzed; and in this
way too I want to return to an age when such dual acceptance was more popular than it seems to me to be today. This
joint project I hope will be appropriate in a lecture meant to honor St. Thomas Aquinas, since I take him to be the
greatest synthesizer of reason and faith and the greatest advocate of both of them as united that the western world has
known. It should be confessed, however,
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that a complete return to the age of Aquinas is today impossible, at least for me. Much as I prize, even envy, St.
Thomas' synthesis, too much water has gone over the falls of modernity for us to be able to return it all to its original
reservoir. Or as Thomas Wolfe wrote, to change the metaphor, "You can't go home again." A visit back home may be
possible, however, even if one has changed too much to live there again permanently. This, then, is what I hope for in
this lecture. I want to try to be a medieval in advocating both reason and faith and their synthesis; but my conceptions
of reason and faith and their relationship, and my reasons for advocating them, will be seen to be influenced—some
may say infected — by the modern thought which I (and, indeed, all of us) have inherited. Let us now proceed.
I
Let us look first at the position of reason or intellect, let us look at the stand of the rationalist. For the rationalist
nothing is taken on faith; nothing is taken for granted (nothing is taken for "granite," one of
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my students once wrote). Things are accepted only when they are rationally or intellectually seen to be so. This
rational or intellectual seeing need not be as narrow as the so-called "continental rationalists" insisted that it should
be, however. The rationalist I am referring to is just the rational or reasonable man of everyday life—the rationalist in
the general and popular sense of that term. He is the man who believes only on the basis of evidence—either his own
personal experience or else his rational inferences from his own personal experience. For the rational man, then,
believing means seeing (or hearing or touching, etc.) or a rational inference from hearing or seeing, and so forth. Or at
least he holds that believing ought to mean experiencing or inferring from experiencing. The rational man may of
course recognize that in a moment of weakness he may believe without having the relevant experience or rational
inferences from experience; but he holds that he ought not to do this, and he recognizes this as a flaw in his character.
Hence for the rationalist here consid-
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ered a belief is to be accepted when and only when it is rational in the sense that it satisfies one or the other of the
following two conditions: First, the belief to be accepted must seem to be a record of immediate experience; for
example, "This is paper before me." Beliefs of this kind let us call "first order beliefs." Or, second, the belief to be
accepted must seem to follow from some other one of the believer's beliefs by logical rules; for example, "April will
be warmer than March (in the northern hemisphere)." Beliefs of this kind let us call ''second order beliefs." Let me
now try to explain first and second order beliefs more fully.
First of all, I want to use the expressions "immediate experience" and "logical rules" quite broadly. The immediate
experience seemingly recorded in a first order belief is usually sensory; but it need not be and sometimes it is not, as
we shall see. It could be an extra-sensory perception or a super-sensory experience, but it must at least always be an
immediate and personal experience. In like manner I mean logical
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rules in the broad sense in which they are utilized and concretely recognized in common life and in which they are
approximately codified by philosophers of ordinary life and language. Thus, while these logical rules are usually the
deductive and inductive ones of the textbooks, they are sometimes more special ones such as those of law, of love, of
religion, and of war. They must, however, be logical rules and not merely psychological generalizations, for I am here
concerned with what ought to be believed and not merely with what happens to be believed. Yet it is not my present
purpose to define or codify logical rules or immediate experiences, and I will be satisfied to count as such whatever
people would ordinarily so count. All I here want to do is to define the stance of the rationalist as that of one who
regards a belief as acceptable when and only when it seems to be a record of immediate experience (a first order
belief) or seems to follow by logical rules from some other of that believer's beliefs (a second order belief)—whatever
ordinary people and philoso-
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phers may decide to let count as an immediate experience or as a logical rule.

Now another caveat is indicated. To say that a belief is a first order one or a second order one, or to say that a first
order or a second order belief is or ought to be accepted, is not to say that that belief is true. Please note that I said
that a first order belief is one that seems to be a record of immediate experience and that a second order belief is one
that seems to follow from some other accepted belief—not that either must actually be what it seems to be. As a
matter of fact, even if the first order belief really were a record of immediate experience as well as seeming to be, or
even if the second order belief really did follow from some other accepted belief by logical rules as well as seeming to
do so, it would not yet quite follow that these beliefs are thereby true. In order for this to follow we would need some
additional premises such as that ''Immediate experience is veracious" and that "Whatever is logical is true." Premises
of
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this second type I will shortly consider as "third order beliefs."

All this is just to say that it is sometimes rational to accept a belief which is as a matter of fact false (though of course
it is not rational—or even possible—to accept a belief which one believes to be false). April might one year be colder
than March; but, in the absence of contrary evidence, it is rational to believe that April will be warmer than March. A
physician may possibly be wrong in his diagnosis, but on the basis of the evidence available to him it is rational for
him to accept that diagnosis. Thus I am not now talking about the truth or falsity of beliefs but rather about their
rationality. If it makes the matter clearer, one may put it in terms of the truth-value of a proposition (for instance, that
"April will be warmer than March") in distinction from the rationality of a belief in that proposition, or a belief that
that proposition is true. Once more, it is only the rationality of the belief in a proposition or that a proposition is true
that I am here
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concerned with, not with the truth of the proposition itself.

Since most beliefs are second order ones, let us consider first what is involved in second order belief. A second order
belief is accepted because it seems to follow from some other accepted belief (by logical rules, deductive or inductive,
etc.). But what is the reason for accepting this other belief? Well, sometimes this other belief is a first order belief, a
belief which seems to be a record of immediate experience. Or sometimes this other belief seems to follow from a
first order belief. Often, however, the ground on which the second order belief is accepted is some other belief which
is derived from some other belief which is derived from some other belief, etc., etc., with no final grounding in any
first order belief. This is to say that second order beliefs often rest on beliefs which are not proven and are not records
of immediate experience and which are therefore not rational in the defined sense. But this seems to make rationalism
turn into its opposite: for the rationalist every belief must
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either be proven or be based on experience, but some of the proven ones require acceptance of beliefs which are
neither proven nor based on experience. Let us call these latter beliefs "third order beliefs: beliefs which are
presupposed by second order beliefs but which are themselves neither proven nor records of experience. A third order
belief, then, is a belief which is necessary as a premise for a second order belief but which is itself neither a second
order nor a first order belief.
Now third order beliefs look very much like articles of faith—since they are necessary as premises for second order
beliefs while not being themselves rational in the defined sense, since, that is, they are neither first order nor second
order beliefs. Hence supposedly rational beliefs seem to rest necessarily upon faith, and the thesis that this is always
and necessarily so has become quite popular in certain circles in recent times. Note, for example, Henry Margenau's
claim that faith is the foundation of science itself—that supposed bastion of rationality:
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. . . all physical explanation starts with premises, i.e., postulates, and not with proven truths. In the old days, these postulates were
regarded as axioms, that is, as propositions which are self-evident and indubitably true. This view has now been abandoned by almost all
scientists, who look upon their postulates as tentative starting points for theoretical deductions, the evidence or truth of which increases
with confirmation of their specific consequences.
. . . even so fundamental a discipline as arithmetic has its own limited range of application, and . . . its truth is contingent upon the
acceptance of certain premises called postulates which, by virtue of their generality and our familiarity with them, frequently take on the
semblance of self-evidence.
Because of this logical structure, because of its need for fundamental postulational commitments, science here joins two other areas of
human concern, religion and ethics. The basic assumptions are called faith in religion, ideals or norms in ethics; in science they go by the
prosaic name of axioms or postulates. The scientific equivalent to the act of faith in religion, the act of dedication to an ideal in ethics, is
the acceptance of basic postulates.
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. . . Items of faith, whether they belong to religion, the field of action or understanding, form anchors for the ships of our lives, and
science is no exception to this general rule. 1
At one level Margenau is surely wrong in contending that science rests on postulates accepted merely on faith.
Margenau himself notes in the above quotation that "the evidence or truth of [these alleged postulates] increases with
confirmation of their specific consequences," but this exactly means that these supposed postulates are not accepted
merely on faith. The alleged postulates or axioms of science are not really articles of faith at all because they are
proven (though not conclusively) by experience and logic, or else scientists abandon them for other and different
"postulates." Hence these alleged articles of scientific faith follow from other beliefs, and ultimately from first order
beliefs or experience. Thus they cannot really be articles of faith. As a matter of fact, they are not even postulates or
axioms in the stricter sense given these terms in axiomatic sys-
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tems, because the truth-value (if any) of genuine postulates or axioms is independent of their logical consequences
whereas the truth of Margenau's supposed postulates or axioms depends on their logical consequences. What
Margenau calls axioms or postulates may perhaps best be called hypotheses, but whatever they are called they are
certainly not articles of faith. They are rather entirely rational in the ordinary sense which I have defined.
At a deeper level Margenau has an important point, however. Granting that science is rational in our defined sense by
virtue of the fact that it regards as unacceptable all beliefs which are inconsistent with experience or with other
accepted scientific beliefs, this attitude, to be justifiable, must presuppose the more fundamental belief that "truth is
consistent," both with itself and with experience. But this presupposed belief that "truth is consistent" is not rational in
the defined sense. In the first place, the belief that truth is consistent is apparently not a second order belief—that is, it
is not derivable from any
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other belief—for a demonstration of it would beg the question by presupposing that truth is consistent. This is so
because by a demonstrated proposition we mean one that ought not in consistency to be false since certain other
propositions (called premises) are true—and in the case of deductive demonstration or strict proof we mean by a
demonstrated proposition one that must not or can not consistently be false since the premises are true.
In the second place, it does not seem plausible to hold that the belief that truth is consistent—that is, that all truth
whatever is necessarily consistent—is a first order belief, a report of immediate experience, in any concrete and
specific sense of "experience," since this belief is too abstract and general and has too much universality and necessity
to be captured in any single concrete and specific experience. On the contrary, an "experience" which could be this
universal and necessary would have to be much more abstract and conceptual than what is normally termed an
experience. One may of course call the apprehension of
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the consistency of all truth, or of the proposition that truth is consistent, an experience if one so wishes. If so,
however, it must surely be granted that it is a very different kind of experience with a very different kind of object
than the immediate personal experience and its object which are ostensibly recorded in what I have called a first order
belief.
In a first order belief the ostensibly recorded object is some restricted part of reality—for example, this paper—so
what is apparently recorded about it is not necessarily true of all reality. In a belief such as that all truth whatsoever is
necessarily consistent, however, the recorded object of the awareness or experience is unrestricted and absolutely
universal—for example, being—so that what is recorded about it is necessarily true of all reality such that there is no
possibility of an exception. Truth is therefore a transcendental, a property of being as such which therefore transcends
all differences. What is true of being as such must be true of every possible particular being. But the converse is not
the
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case. What is true of some particular being—say this paper—need not be true of other beings or of being as such.
What is regarded as an experience ordinarily is always of such a particular being, though there are thinkers who claim
that there is an experience or intuition of being as such. 2 I have no objection to this so long as this type of experience
is sharply distinguished from the type of experience apparently recorded in what I am calling a first order belief, even
though I prefer to use some other term such as intellectual insight or intuitive reason.3
Hence the belief that truth is consistent is neither a second order nor a first order belief, and it is therefore not rational
in the defined sense. And yet this belief that truth is consistent is necessary to the very meaning of second order belief
—defined as that which seems to follow (by logical rules) from some other accepted belief—and thus also necessary
to rationalism as defined. And this is very probably true also of some other beliefs in addition to the belief that truth is
consistent.
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Putting this point more abstractly, you believe that p because you believe that q and because you believe that p follows
from q (by logical rules). But this complex fact is not a reason for believing that p unless you also believe three other
propositions: (1) Whatever follows from another belief should be believed. (2) Whatever does not follow from another
belief need not be believed. (3) Whatever contradicts or is inconsistent with another belief should not be believed
(must not be believed when the contradicted belief has been demonstrated or strictly proven—that is, has been
deduced from true premises). But these three beliefs are third order ones and are therefore not rational in the defined
sense; they are not records of immediate experience and they do not follow by logical rules from other accepted
beliefs. Yet they are absolutely necessary to second order beliefs and therefore also to rationalism as defined.
If some one were now to claim that these three beliefs do indeed follow from other accepted beliefs, then what I am
now
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saying would simply be true of those other accepted beliefs from which my three are claimed to follow. Or if, again,
those other accepted beliefs were in turn claimed to be derivable, then what I am now saying would simply be true of
whatever beliefs would be taken to be first premises. And of course some beliefs or others would have to be taken as
first premises; one must start somewhere. In any case, therefore, second order beliefs require other beliefs which are
neither second order nor first order ones.
So here, at a deeper level, Margenau's thesis contains a truth: rational enterprises, even the sciences, rest on beliefs
which are not rational in the sense intended within those enterprises. Let us use the term ''principles'' to refer to these
apparently non-rational beliefs which are presupposed by rational beliefs as we have defined them, and by the
"rational" enterprises they compose. Principles, then, are those third order beliefs which are presupposed by or are
necessary to second order beliefs. Now the question again rises, but this time
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more specifically and fundamentally: Are principles articles of faith? Must principles be accepted on faith?
II
Principles are certainly like articles of faith in two respects: they are underivable, and they are also foundational. That
principles are underivable and foundational we have just seen. That articles of faith are underivable seems obvious,
for if they were derivable (by logical rules) we would call them rational inferences rather than articles of faith. That
they are also foundational follows from their underivability so long as other beliefs are derived from them; and this
certainly seems to be true of at least most of the major revealed tenets of the great western religions—for example, the
incarnation of God in Jesus. From this belief may be derived, for instance, the belief in the infallible authority of
Jesus. Furthermore, it is very tempting to regard principles as articles of faith because this yields the comforting
position which Margenau espouses. It solves the problem of the relation of science and re-
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ligion and the problem of the relation of fact and value by grounding them all on faith—albeit on different kinds of
faith. It permits us to say that everyone has a faith—indeed that everyone must have a faith—and this puts us all in
the same boat.
Yet in another and very important way principles are also quite unlike articles of faith. Principles can be seen
(intellectually) to be necessarily true, whereas articles of faith can not be; "faith is the evidence of things not seen."
This of course does not mean that principles are always and by everyone seen to be necessarily true, any more than it
means that everyone accepts articles of faith which cannot be seen to be necessarily true. It means only that a
principle is the kind of thing which is capable of being seen to be necessarily true, whereas an article of faith is the
kind of thing which is incapable of being seen to be necessarily true.
To see this point clearly, let us contrast the principle of non-contradiction with the article of faith that Jesus is divine.
As principle and as article of faith, respectively,
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neither is derivable from other beliefs and many other beliefs are derivable from each of them; they are alike, that is to
say, in being both underivable and foundational. In the case of the principle of non-contradiction, however, the very
meanings of the constituent terms require that the principle be true: "Being is being", "A particular being is the
particular being that it is", "A thing cannot be other than it is'', "A thing cannot both have and not have a given
property at the some time and in the same respect," etc. But this self-verification is certainly not the case with the
belief that "Jesus is divine" or that ''Jesus is God." Here the meanings of the terms certainly do not require the truth of
the belief; it is perfectly possible, semantically or logically, for Jesus not to be God. Indeed, rather than the meanings
of the terms requiring the truth of the belief, here the very opposite might seem more likely to be the case. Certainly
not self-evident or necessarily true, the proposition that "Jesus is God" seems more likely to be self-evidently or
necessarily false, since it seems to identify
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the finite with the infinite, the imperfect with the perfect, etc. So Tertullian for one understood it: "I believe because
it's absurd," he boasted. "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" 4 What does logical necessity or analyticity have to
do with the Judaeo-Christian faith?
The logical or semantical status of principles is therefore quite unlike that of articles of faith, even though principles
are like articles of faith in being unprovable and foundational. Principles can be seen to be necessarily true by virtue
of the meanings of their terms, but articles of faith cannot. Even if a principle is not seen to be true self-evidencingly
by virtue of the meanings of its terms, however, it can still be seen that the rejection of such a foundation would cause
the intelligibility of the world to come crashing down on our heads. "If we should be forced to realize that nothing in
our experience possesses any stability," C. I. Lewis points out, "—that our principle, 'Nothing can both be and not be',
was merely a verbalism, applying to nothing more than momentarily
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—that denouement would rock our world to its foundations." 5 Hence the foundational character of a principle is also
a very strong reason for believing in it, even if it should not be seen to be self-evidently true in itself. This is an
important point to which I will return later.
Thus principles cannot be abandoned without intellectual suicide, while articles of faith can be—even though it may
be that they should not be abandoned. If principles are rejected, life loses all intelligibility, meaning, and sense; we are
then reduced to the vegetative state, as Aristotle said.6 Articles of faith, on the other hand, may be rejected without the
world's thereby losing its intelligibility, its meaning and sense—although it may be the case, as we shall see later, that
if articles of faith are rejected life loses ultimate meaning and purpose.
Hence articles of faith may be abandoned, but rational principles cannot be. This means that one need not accept any
belief other than ones of the rationalist's three kinds: first order beliefs, second or-
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der beliefs, and principles. There may also be third order beliefs which are not principles, but if so these, if accepted,
must be accepted on faith; and if this is done, the rationalist is to this extent no longer a pure rationalist. But this need
not be so. The rationalist need not accept any third order beliefs other than principles. Thus a pure rationalism is
possible—though only when its meaning is seen to include principles as well as first and second order beliefs. And
thus rationalism is vindicated, and Margenau's view is shown to be wrong. Reason need not have recourse to faith.
Now, however, we must see that this vindication of rationalism is also on its own terms a vindication of religious
belief—or rather, as we shall see, a vindication of certain kinds of religious belief. The first and most important thing
to understand in order to see that this is true is that some religious beliefs are rational as first order beliefs, that is, as
ostensible records of immediate religious experience. Such experience is usually called "mystical experience" or
"direct revelation." This does
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not mean, we must here again be reminded, that such religious first order beliefs are always or necessarily true, any
more than non-religious first order beliefs are always true. A first order belief was defined, it will be remembered, as
one which seems to be a record of immediate experience; but such seeming may be a mere seeming and the belief be
actually false. Moses' belief that God spoke to him from the burning bush was a legitimate first order belief, although
it might be the case that it was false. Yet it was also a religious belief because it was about God. Hence, again, some
religious beliefs are rational as first order beliefs; and such religious beliefs must therefore be acceptable to the
rationalist if he is to be faithful to his position.
Here the rationalist might object that such mystical experiences or immediate revelations are not legitimate first order
beliefs on the ground that they purport or attempt to record experiences which are essentially inexpressible or
ineffable. In reply to this objection I do not here want to
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go into the question of the extent to which this allegation is true. I am inclined to think that it is partially but not
wholly true that mystical experiences are inexpressible. The only point I want to make now, however, is that to
whatever extent this charge is true against beliefs which seem to record mystical experiences or personal revelations it
is also true to that same extent of all first order beliefs. The reason for this is simply the diversity which always exists
between immediate experience and expressions of it. This paper as it is immediately experienced here and now by me
with my perceptual idiosyncrasies is certainly different from and not completely expressible in the reports of it which
I give to myself and others, and this is no less true of my experience of the paper than it is of Moses' experience of
God speaking from the burning bush. Hence my belief that this is paper before me is no more legitimate—and only a
lunatic would say that it's not legitimate—than Moses' belief that God is speaking to him from a burning bush. The
two types of belief therefore stand or fall
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together; they are equally legitimately rational—though of course not thereby necessarily true. Hence if the non-
religious belief is rational as a first order belief, so is the religious belief. Hence, again, religious beliefs may be
rational without ceasing to be religious.
At this point, however, the rationalist might again object—this time arguing that if religious beliefs are, by the above
argument, rational, then by that very fact they cease to be religious, because it belongs to a religious belief to be non-
rational. Religious beliefs are matters of faith, the rationalist thus objects; and that is, wholly or party, what is meant
by a belief's being religious. Surely, however, it is easy to see that this objection begs the whole question. All that is
necessary is that there be some real distinction between religious and non-religious beliefs; it is not necessary that this
distinction consist in the rationality of the latter and the non-rationality of the former. That distinction has now been
shown to be mistaken, and all that we now need is some other legitimate distinction be-
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tween the two kinds of belief. This distinction can easily be supplied in terms of the difference in the objects of the
two kinds of belief. God is not the same as paper, so a belief about God is different from a belief about paper.
This particular distinction is of course not sufficiently general, since there are non-religious first order beliefs which
are not about paper and there are religious first order beliefs which are not directly or primarily about God. But such a
generalization of the difference between the objects of religious and the objects of non-religious first order beliefs can
surely be made, at least in principle, even if any given generalized difference may be questionable. Let us say, for
example, that a religious belief (and a fortiori a first order religious belief) is one whose object is, directly or
indirectly, man's affective or effective relation to God. A non-religious belief is then simply any other belief, of
whatever order. If someone should differ with this characterization of a religious belief, preferring to describe it as an
expression of Tillich's "ul-
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timate concern" or Schleiermacher's feeling of absolute dependence or whatever, I would not here have any quarrel
with him. All I am concerned to point out here is that religious and non-religious beliefs may be distinguished in some
legitimate way without the former thereby ceasing to be rational. Of course it should again be noted that religious
beliefs, even if rational, are not thereby true, any more than non-religious ones are. But the important point here is that
religious beliefs are, as religious, different from non-religious ones without any sacrifice of their rationality; and some
of these religious beliefs are first order ones. Thus some religious beliefs are rational as first order beliefs—as much so
as any non-religious first order belief.
Having laid this foundation we now need only to note that there are also rational second order religious beliefs,
because from first order religious beliefs (or even from third order ones, as we shall see), we seem to be able to derive
other religious beliefs by means of logical rules, just as we can derive non-religious second
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order beliefs. For example, from the first order religious belief that God himself personally gave Moses the ten
commandments can apparently be derived the second order religious belief that the ten commandments should be
obeyed by all the Israelites. Or, from the third order religious belief that Jesus is divine I seem to be able to derive the
second order religious belief that I should follow his teachings. And so on. Different supplementary premises are of
course needed in these religious cases than in non-religious ones, but so far as I can see the rules of inference which
may legitimately be used in the two cases are the same—or at least they overlap. Of course the rules of inference
employed in deriving second order religious beliefs presuppose principles, such as the principle of non-contradiction.
But once again this is also true of non-religious second order beliefs, as we have seen. The important point in all this
is that there are second order religious beliefs which are fully as rational as second order non-religious beliefs are.
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III
Religious beliefs have thus been vindicated as rational, for the logic of religious beliefs may be exactly the same as
the logic of non-religious beliefs with only their objects being different. Beliefs having to do with man's affective or
effective relation to God—or with whatever else is taken to be the religious object—may be just like beliefs about
anything else in the world. The rationality of such religious beliefs does of course presuppose the consistency of, or
absence of contradiction in, the religious idea or object, whatever that may be decided to be. But this is also true of
non-religious beliefs: their rationality also presupposes the consistency of, or absence of contradiction in, their objects.
Hence once again religious and non-religious beliefs stand or fall together. If their objects are coherent, then they may
be equally rational—either as first order beliefs or as second order beliefs derivable from first order ones.
However, this rationality of religious beliefs does require (in addition to prin-
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ciples) the presence of first order religious beliefs and thus the presence of immediate religious experience. A belief
may be a second order religious belief in the sense that it has a religious object and is derivable from other accepted
religious beliefs, but if one or more of these other beliefs is neither a first order belief nor a principle—neither a
record of immediate religious experience nor a third order belief which can be seen to be true in itself—then such a
second order religious belief is not fully rational. It is rationally derived, but its foundation is not rational in either of
the two required senses: either as a first order belief or as a principle. Thus, again, the rationality of religious belief
requires immediate religious experience. But this is just exactly what is so often lacking and unavailable to the
believer. Indeed, people whose religious beliefs are adequately based upon their own immediate religious experiences
surely constitute a very small minority of the total number of religious believers—at least in the history of the western
world. And when first order reli-
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gious beliefs, and thus immediate religious experiences, are lacking, then the believer can derive his second order
religious beliefs only from third order religious beliefs. And these, as we have seen, are not principles (or at least most
of them are not); their truth is not guaranteed by the meanings of their terms. Such foundational religious beliefs, then,
must be articles of faith.
Here finally arises, then, the crucial problem: Can there be any reason at all for accepting something on faith? Can it
ever be rational to accept an article of faith? And if so, how?
It is clear by the very nature of the case that there cannot be any reason for accepting an article of faith in the standard
senses of ''reason'' which we have been talking about. This is so simply because, as we have seen, articles of faith are
not principles, they are not first order beliefs, and they are not second order beliefs which follow from first order
beliefs. Or, to put the matter more obviously tautologically, there cannot be any reason in our rational-
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ist's sense of reason for accepting an article of faith because if there were it would then be a rational belief, albeit a
religious one, and not an article of faith at all. Hence if there is to be any reason for accepting something on faith, it
must be a reason in a broader and looser sense than any given to that term by our rationalist — a broader sense
perhaps better expressed by the word "justification" than by the word "reason." Furthermore, any such reason or
justification for accepting an article of faith must somehow lie within the context of faith itself, since we have seen
that we cannot justify accepting an article of faith by means of any consideration which falls properly within the
context of reason, as the rationalist conceives reason. And this conclusion seems to be confirmed by the traditional
view that there is no merit in the believer's faith if it is accepted only for some external, extraneous reason. But what is
there within the context of faith which could be a reason or justification for accepting an article of faith? How can the
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nature of faith itself provide a reason for its own acceptibility?

In the first place, we should be reminded that an article of faith does not provide a reason for its own acceptibility by
being self-justifying, simply as an isolated proposition, as a rational principle does—for instance, the principle of non-
contradiction. A principle is self-justifying, we saw, because it may be seen to be self-evidently or necessarily true, its
truth being guaranteed by the very meanings of its terms without reference to anything beyond it. Of course this is
sometimes not seen to be so, but it always can be. But an article of faith—for example, the belief that Jesus is divine
—is the sort of thing, we also saw, that is not capable of being seen to be self-evidently or necessarily true, just by
virtue of the meanings of its terms, taken just in itself without reference to anything beyond it. Hence articles of faith
are not self-justifying, not self-evidencingly or semantically true simply as propositions taken in themselves without
reference to anything beyond them, as principles are. So how then
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can the very nature of faith provide a justification for its acceptance?
The answer to this question which I would like to suggest can be brought out by remembering the ways in which
articles of faith are like rational principles, and with that by broadening our view from articles of faith taken just as
isolated propositions to the total logical context of faith in which articles of faith appear. Even though articles of faith
are quite unlike rational principles by virtue of the fact that the latter are capable of being seen to be necessarily true
whereas the former are not, as we have just again seen, still articles of faith are like rational principles in being
foundational and underivable. Each is underivable simply because each is a third order belief. Neither an article of
faith nor a rational principle, that is to say, is either a putative report of immediate experience or something which
follows from any such report by logical rules. More importantly, however, articles of faith are like rational principles
in being foundational; each is an underivable
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foundation upon which other beliefs (second order beliefs) are founded, or from which these other beliefs are derived.
It is true, of course, that articles of faith are foundational in a different way than principles are, as we also saw, for
rational principles cannot be abandoned without intellectual suicide, and this is not true of articles of faith. Perhaps
they shouldn't be abandoned, but they can be. Although articles of faith are thus not foundational in exactly the same
way that rational principles are, however, their foundational characters, are analogous. And this, finally, is the key to
understanding the way in which belief in articles of faith may be justified.
Let me first put the analogy this way: Without principles life has no sense; without faith life has no meaning or
purpose. Without principles the world would be unintelligible; without faith the world is pointless. Or, again, this
analogy between the foundational character of articles of faith and that of rational principles comes out nicely in the
word "impossible": With-
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out principles life is impossible (literally or conceptually); without faith life is "impossible!" (figuratively or morally).
Or, finally, this analogy between faith and principle may also be fittingly expressed by exploiting the ambiguity—
which is by no means a total equivocation—contained in the word "meaningless": Without principles life is
meaningless; without faith life is meaningless. Without principles life is meaningless in the way that the Jabberwocky
Song in Through the Looking Glass is (until its words are assigned meanings)—"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe . . .'' Without faith life is meaningless in the way that it was for Ecclesiastes, the
Preacher—"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" The word "meaningless" is indeed used somewhat differently in these
two cases, but I submit that we do not have here two completely different meanings or uses of the word. Rather these
uses are analogous; they share a common core of meaning differently applied. Articles of faith are not the same as
rational principles, nor is the
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foundational character of faith identical with that of principles. But they are analogous: as principles stand in relation
to intelligibility, so faith stands in relation to purpose, point, or meaning.
Belief in articles of faith may thus be seen to be justifiable or reasonable in a way which is analogous to, though
different from, the second of the two ways in which belief in rational principles is justifiable or rational—by virtue,
that is, of their foundational character. In this sense there can be a reason, a justification, for accepting something on
faith—namely, whenever such acceptance on faith is seen to be a necessary condition for one's life to have meaning,
point, or purpose. Of course this is not a strictly rational justification in the sense in which I have been using the term
"rational," for we have seen that there can by definition be no strictly rational reason or justification for accepting
something on faith. It is always possible to ask meaningfully: "Why shouldn't life be meaningless, "impossible,"
purposeless? What rational evidence is there for the belief that life
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and the world have meaning, point, and purpose?" Although this is not a strictly rationally compelling reason,
therefore, I believe that it is entirely analogous to a strictly rationally compelling reason—or at least that it may be for
many people and that in fact it probably is for most of those who accept a faith. Why may I reasonably believe the
Christian story, for instance? Because it gives life and the world a meaning and point which they otherwise lack. This
reason, which is the foundational character of faith, seems entirely analogous to the foundational character of rational
principles as a reason for accepting them. Why must I believe that there are stable meanings, for example? Because if
that were not so, I would be unable to speak, or even to think. It is of course true that many people reject faith in the
Christian story. But it is also true that some people—Cratylus, for instance—have rejected the principle that there are
stable meanings. This fact does not make us think that we are not justified in accepting that principle, however. And in
like fashion the
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fact that many people reject the Christian faith should not make us think we are not justified in accepting it.
So it is, I suggest, that there may be a justification, a reason in a somewhat relaxed sense of that word, for accepting
something on faith, since the foundational character of an article of faith is analogous to the foundational character of
a rational principle. Such reasonableness of faith, such justification for accepting an article of faith, does not mean that
that article of faith is thereby true, however. Here again faith is exactly parallel to reason. In both cases accepting the
belief does mean accepting the belief as true, of course; to believe a proposition is to believe that it is true. But this
does not imply that the belief which is accepted or the proposition which is believed is in fact really true; it may
actually be false. We saw before that the rationality of accepting a first or second order belief or a principle does not
imply that any of those accepted beliefs is true. A belief which it is rational to accept and irrational to reject—such as
that
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there will be too many Ph.D.'s during the next ten years—may still be false. In like manner the reasonableness or
justifiability of accepting an article of faith as true does not imply that that accepted article of faith is true. It may be
reasonable to believe that the world has a purpose even though that belief may in fact be false. Thus it is the
reasonableness or justifiability of faith which I am talking about, not the truth or falsity of the belief which is accepted
on faith.
Moreover, in talking about the reasonableness of believing—be it a rational belief or an article of faith—I am not
quite talking about motives for believing or causes of actually believing something. That is, I am talking about the
logic of belief (in the broad sense of "logic") rather than about the psychology of belief. If a person believes that it is
reasonable or justifiable to accept a certain belief, then that fact does indeed usually incline him in the direction of
accepting that belief, since most people are reasonable; and it sometimes causes him actually to
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accept it. However, as we all know, it is too often the case that we do not accept a belief even though it seems
reasonable for us to do so, and it is also too often the case that we accept a belief even though it seems unreasonable
for us to do so. But this just means that people are not always reasonable, that they sometimes—perhaps usually—
believe something because of their emotions or passions; and that comes as no surprise. Yet people ought to be
reasonable even if they're not.
It is just precisely here that the view I am suggesting differs from Blaise Pascal's famous religious wager 7 and
William James' very similar and equally famous ''will to believe."8 Both Pascal and James held that religious beliefs
are totally beyond the bounds of reason, and they therefore had to offer a non-rational justification for accepting
religious beliefs—the believer's happiness, in the case of Pascal, and the demands of the believer's "passional nature,"
in the case of James. The view I am suggesting comes closer to making the justification for accepting
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articles of faith a matter of reason rather than of passion, though of course it does so by stretching "reason" or
"reasonableness" to cover somewhat more than it does in the rationalism of the rational man I have described. My
view, that is to say, makes it reasonable, if not narrowly rational, to accept an article of faith, for my view claims that
the foundational character of an article of faith is analogous to the foundational character of a rational principle. And
even the rationalist will allow that the foundational character of a rational principle is a good reason for accepting that
principle. By reason of parity, therefore, the foundational character of an article of faith should likewise be admitted to
be a good reason for accepting that faith.
To conclude this lecture I want to put this last point somewhat differently. That life should be meaningful, that the
world should have point and purpose, seems to me to be an intellectual matter, whether or not it is also an emotional
or hedonic one. A faith that life and the world are
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meaningful may indeed increase one's happiness or satisfy certain of one's emotional needs; and this fact may, in some
people, be an effective cause of their accepting that faith. In addition to this, however, there is the cognitive sense that
life and the world make when that faith is accepted; and this is a matter of the head rather than of the heart or belly.
Whether or not such a faith increases one's happiness or satisfies one's passional nature, therefore, reason too, in a
broadened sense of reason, says that such a faith is reasonable and justifiable. The mind's eye then sees a more
meaningful world.
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Notes
1. Henry Margenau, The New Faith of Science, Northfield, Minn.: Carleton College, 1953, pp. 9-10.
2. The view that there is an experience or intuition of being has been defended perhaps most notably by Jacques
Maritain, especially in his A Preface to Metaphysics (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1939). An interesting defense of
this view is given by Stanford K. Pritchard in his "Metaphysics and the Metaphysical experience," International
Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. VI, No. 2 (June, 1966), pp. 214-229; and Pritchard here also discusses the views of
Maritain, Heidegger, and others on this question.
3. For example in my essay "Insight," Chapter I of Patterns of the Life World (edited by James Edie, Francis H.
Parker, and Calvin O. Schrag), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970.
4. Tertullian, On Prescription Against Heretics, Chapter 7.
5. C. I. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929, p. 306.
6. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. IV, Ch. 4, 1006a 14-15.
7. Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, number 233.
8. William James, The Will to Believe, and Other Essays on Popular Philosophy, New York: Longmans, Green and
Company, 1917, pp. 1-31.
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The Aquinas Lectures

Published by the Marquette University Press Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53233
St. Thomas and the Life of Learning (1937) by John F. McCormick, S.J., (1874-1943) professor of philosophy, Loyola
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St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil (1942) by Jacques Maritain, Ph.D., professor emeritus of philosophy, Princeton
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Humanism and Theology (1943) by Werner Jaeger, Ph.D., Littl.D., (1888-1961) University professor, Harvard
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The Nature and Origins of Scientism (1944) by John Wellmuth.
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Cicero in the Courtroom of St. Thomas Aquinas (1945) by E. K. Rand, Ph.D., Litt.D., LL.D., (1871-1945) Pope
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St. Thomas and Epistemology (1946) by Louis-Marie Regis, O.P., Th.L., Ph.D., director of the Albert the Great
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St. Thomas and the Greek Moralists (1947, Spring) by Vernon J. Bourke, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, St. Louis
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History of Philosophy and Philosophical Education (1947, Fall) by Étienne Gilson of the Académie française, director
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The Natural Desire for God (1948) by William R. O'Connor, S.T.L., Ph.D., former professor of dogmatic theology, St.
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St. Thomas and the World State (1949) by Robert M. Hutchins, former Chancellor of the University of Chicago,
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Method in Metaphysics (1950) by Robert J. Henle, S.J., Ph.D., academic vice-president, St. Louis University, St.
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Realism and Nominalism Revisited (1954) by Henry Veatch, Ph.D., professor and chairman of the department of
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Imprudence in St. Thomas Aquinas (1955) by Charles J. O'Neil, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, Villanova University.
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The Truth That Frees (1956) by Gerard Smith, S.J., Ph.D., professor of philosophy, Marquette University.
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St. Thomas and the Future of Metaphysics (1957) by Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., Ph.D., professor of philosophy,
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Thomas and the Physics of 1958: A Confrontation (1958) by Henry Margenau, Ph.D., Eugene Higgins professor of
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St. Thomas and Philosophy (1964) by Anton C. Pegis, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, Pontifical Institute of
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The University In Process (1965) by John O. Riedl, Ph.D., dean of faculty, Queensboro Community College.
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Religion and Empiricism (1967) by John E. Smith, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, Yale University.
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The Subject (1968) by Bernard Lonergan, S.J., S.T.D., professor of Dogmatic Theory, Regis College, Ontario and
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Beyond Trinity (1969) by Bernard J. Cooke, S.T.D.
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Ideas and Concepts (1970) by Julius R. Weinberg, Ph.D., Vilas Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin.
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Reason and Faith Revisited (1971) by Francis H. Parker, Ph.D., head of the philosophy department, Purdue
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The Aquinas Lecture, 1971

Reason and Faith Revisited

By Francis H. Parker, Ph.D.

MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 79-154285

Reason and Faith Revisited

phers may decide to let count as an immediate experience or as a logical rule.

this second type I will shortly consider as "third order beliefs."

concerned with, not with the truth of the proposition itself.

nature of faith itself provide a reason for its own acceptibility?

The Aquinas Lectures

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