Faith and Reason

Traditionally, faith and reason have each been considered to be sources of justification for
religious belief. Because both can purportedly serve this same epistemic function, it has been a matter
of much interest to philosophers and theologians how the two are related and thus how the rational
agent should treat claims derived from either source. Some have held that there can be no conflict
between the two—that reason properly employed and faith properly understood will never produce
contradictory or competing claims—whereas others have maintained that faith and reason can (or
even must) be in genuine contention over certain propositions or methodologies. Those who have
taken the latter view disagree as to whether faith or reason ought to prevail when the two are in
conflict. Kierkegaard, for instance, prioritizes faith even to the point that it becomes positively
irrational, while Locke emphasizes the reasonableness of faith to such an extent that a religious
doctrine’s irrationality—conflict with itself or with known facts—is a sign that it is unsound. Other
thinkers have theorized that faith and reason each govern their own separate domains, such that
cases of apparent conflict are resolved on the side of faith when the claim in question is, say, a
religious or theological claim, but resolved on the side of reason when the disputed claim is, for
example, empirical or logical. Some relatively recent philosophers, most notably the logical positivists,
have denied that there is a domain of thought or human existence rightly governed by faith, asserting
instead that all meaningful statements and ideas are accessible to thorough rational examination. This
has presented a challenge to religious thinkers to explain how an admittedly nonrational or
transrational form of language can hold meaningful cognitive content.
This article traces the historical development of thought on the interrelation of religious faith and
reason, beginning with Classical Greek conceptions of mind and religious mythology and continuing
through the medieval Christian theologians, the rise of science proper in the early modern period, and
the reformulation of the issue as one of ‘science versus religion’ in the twentieth century.

St. Thomas Aquinas

Unlike Augustine, who made little distinction between explaining the meaning of a theological
proposition and giving an argument for it, Aquinas worked out a highly articulated theory of
theological reasoning. St. Bonaventure, an immediate precursor to Aquinas, had argued that no one
could attain to truth unless he philosophizes in the light of faith. Thomas held that our faith in eternal
salvation shows that we have theological truths that exceed human reason. But he also claimed that
one could attain truths about religious claims without faith, though such truths are incomplete. In
the Summa Contra Gentiles he called this a “a two fold truth” about religious claims, “one to which
the inquiry of reason can reach, the other which surpasses the whole ability of the human reason.” No
contradiction can stand between these two truths. However, something can be true for faith and false
(or inconclusive) in philosophy, though not the other way around. This entails that a non-believer can
attain to truth, though not to the higher truths of faith.
A puzzling question naturally arises: why are two truths needed? Isn’t one truth enough? Moreover, if
God were indeed the object of rational inquiry in this supernatural way, why would faith be required
at all? In De Veritate (14,9) Thomas responds to this question by claiming that one cannot believe by
faith and know by rational demonstration the very same truth since this would make one or the other
kind of knowledge superfluous.
On the basis of this two-fold theory of truth, Aquinas thus distinguished between revealed (dogmatic)
theology and rational (philosophical) theology. The former is a genuine science, even though it is not
based on natural experience and reason. Revealed theology is a single speculative science concerned
with knowledge of God. Because of its greater certitude and higher dignity of subject matter, it is
nobler than any other science. Philosophical theology, though, can make demonstrations using the
articles of faith as its principles. Moreover, it can apologetically refute objections raised against the
faith even if no articles of faith are presupposed. But unlike revealed theology, it can err.

Aquinas claimed that the act of faith consists essentially in knowledge. Faith is an intellectual act
whose object is truth. Thus it has both a subjective and objective aspect. From the side of the subject,
it is the mind’s assent to what is not seen: “Faith is the evidence of things that appear not” (Hebrews
11:1). Moreover, this assent, as an act of will, can be meritorious for the believer, even though it also
always involves the assistance of God’s grace. Moreover, faith can be a virtue, since it is a good habit,
productive of good works. However, when we assent to truth in faith, we do so on the accepted
testimony of another. From the side of what is believed, the objective aspect, Aquinas clearly
distinguished between “preambles of faith,” which can be established by philosophical principles, and
“articles of faith” that rest on divine testimony alone. A proof of God’s existence is an example of a
preamble of faith. Faith alone can grasp, on the other hand, the article of faith that the world was
created in time (Summa Theologiae I, q. 46, a. 2). Aquinas argued that the world considered in itself
offers no grounds for demonstrating that it was once all new. Demonstration is always about
definitions, and definitions, as universal, abstract from “the here and now.” A temporal beginning,
thus demonstrated, is ruled out tout court. Of course this would extend to any argument about
origination of the first of any species in a chain of efficient causes. Here Thomas sounds a lot like Kant
will in his antinomies. Yet by faith we believe the world had a beginning. However, one rational
consideration that suggests, though not definitively, a beginning to the world is that the passage from
one term to another includes only a limited number of intermediate points between them.
Aquinas thus characterizes the articles of faith as first truths that stand in a “mean between science
and opinion.” They are like scientific claims since their objects are true; they are like mere opinions in
that they have not been verified by natural experience. Though he agrees with Augustine that no
created intellect can comprehend God as an object, the intellect can grasp his existence indirectly. The
more a cause is grasped, the more of its effects can be seen in it; and since God is the ultimate cause
of all other reality, the more perfectly an intellect understands God, the greater will be its knowledge
of the things God does or can do. So although we cannot know the divine essence as an object, we can
know whether He exists and on the basis of analogical knowledge what must necessarily belong to
Him. Aquinas maintains, however, that some objects of faith, such as the Trinity or the Incarnation, lie
entirely beyond our capacity to understand them in this life.

Aquinas also elucidates the relationship between faith and reason on the basis of a distinction
between higher and lower orders of creation. Aquinas criticizes the form of naturalism that holds that
the goodness of any reality “is whatever belongs to it in keeping with its own nature” without need
for faith (II-IIae, q.2, a.3). Yet, from reason itself we know that every ordered pattern of nature has
two factors that concur in its full development: one on the basis of its own operation; the other, on
the basis of the operation of a higher nature. The example is water: in a lower pattern, it naturally
flows toward the centre, but in virtue of a higher pattern, such as the pull of the moon, it flows
around the center. In the realm of our concrete knowledge of things, a lower pattern grasps only
particulars, while a higher pattern grasps universals.

Given this distinction of orders, Thomas shows how the lower can indeed point to the higher. His
arguments for God’s existence indicate this possibility. From this conviction he develops a highly
nuanced natural theology regarding the proofs of God’s existence. The first of his famous five ways is
the argument from motion. Borrowing from Aristotle, Aquinas holds to the claim that, since every
physical mover is a moved mover, the experience of any physical motion indicates a first unmoved
mover. Otherwise one would have to affirm an infinite chain of movers, which he shows is not
rationally possible. Aquinas then proceeds to arguments from the lower orders of efficient causation,
contingency, imperfection, and teleology to affirm the existence of a unitary all-powerful being. He
concludes that these conclusions compel belief in the Judeo-Christian God.

Conversely, it is also possible to move from the higher to the lower orders. Rational beings can know
“the meaning of the good as such” since goodness has an immediate order to the higher pattern of
the universal source of being (II-IIae q.2, a.3). The final good considered by the theologian differs from
that considered by the philosopher: the former is the bonum ultimum grasped only with the
assistance of revelation; the latter is the beatific vision graspable in its possibility by reason. Both
forms of the ultimate good have important ramifications, since they ground not only the moral
distinction between natural and supernatural virtues, but also the political distinction between
ecclesial and secular power.
Aquinas concludes that we come to know completely the truths of faith only through the virtue of
wisdom (sapientia). Thomas says that “whatever its source, truth of is of the Holy Spirit” (Summa
Theologiae,  I-IIae q. 109, a. 1). The Spirit “enables judgment according to divine truth” (II-IIae 45, q. 1,
ad 2). Moreover, faith and charity are prerequisites for the achievement of this wisdom.
Thomas’s two-fold theory of truth develops a strong compatibilism between faith and reason. But it
can be argued that after his time what was intended as a mutual autonomy soon became an
expanding separation.

 Aristotle and Plato

Both Plato and Aristotle found a principle of intellectual organization in religious thinking that
could function metaphysically as a halt to the regress of explanation. In Plato, this is found in the
Forms, particularly the Form of the Good. The Form of Good is that by which all things gain their
intelligibility. Aristotle rejected the Form of the Good as unable to account for the variety of good
things, appealing instead to the unmoved mover as an unchangeable cosmic entity. This primary
substance also has intelligence as nous: it is “thought thinking itself.” From this mind emerges
exemplars for existent things.
Both thinkers also developed versions of natural theology by showing how religious beliefs emerge
from rational reflections on concrete reality as such. An early form of religious apologetics –
demonstrating the existence of the gods — can be found in Plato’s Laws. Aristotle’s Physics gave
arguments demonstrating the existence of an unmoved mover as a timeless self-thinker from the
evidence of motion in the world.