I guess I do believe that reason has the final word, if you will, on these matters. And i think that Christianity stands up very well, agianst this standard.

The problem, or one of the problems, is that honest, intelligent people, throughout the world, believe, based largely on faith, that Hinduism, or the Koran, in Islam, represent the truth. Who’s right? One can say, that one has been given special faith, by the Holy Spirit, and I in no way discount that. However, it’s also more than conceivible, that one is, and I in no way say this disparagingly, or condescendingly, delusional, or misinterpreting one’s thoughts, and/or feelings. Therefore, reason, which all must submit to, strikes me as being the final artiber.

Blessings to both of you, as well.

Bret said:
“It sounds to me, that you accept the notion that reason is what one must submit the Bible to, and if reason finds the Bible trustworthy, one can accept it. That makes sense to me.”

Steve Drake: Well, no, just the opposite. Man’s autonomous reason will never find the Bible trustworthy. Because man (beginning with himself) reasons from his own autonomous nature, vain and futile in his thinking, angry at God, even a God-hater, he will find all sorts of problems with accepting or believing what the Bible says. Yet he knows that God exists. He is in denial of course, but Romans 1 makes this clear that ‘no one’ is without excuse, but that they ‘suppress’ this truth in unrighteousness.

So, what is man to do? He knows that God exists through what has been made, and through his own inner constitution (using his rational, cognizant mind) but must seek further to know more about this God. What is this God’s requirements? How am I supposed to be in relation to Him? Why am I here, and what is the ‘why’? For this he needs Special Revelation. The self-attesting, self-authenticating Word of God in Scripture. Because it is this God who speaks propositionally about who He is, what His character is like, and what are the requirements to be in relation to Him, he must go to Special Revelation for this source of ‘knowledge’. He can’t find it anywhere else.

So, as Christian apologetes, we start with the self-attesting, self-authenticating Word of God (if God can’t tell us accurately who He is and what His character is like, and if he can’t speak propositionally about what He did or how he acted in history then really what kind of God is He?) and submit all our ‘reasoning’, both philosophically and scientifically, to this self-attesting, self-authenticating, propositional word from God to us as ‘created’ ‘finite’ humans.

Dear Bret: I didn’t get this from what Steve was saying, but we’ll see what he says. I don’t really submit the Bible to reason as a reading approach; what I would hold to is that the same Logos Who gave us the Bible, gave us logic and reason. Both are a type of revelation: the light of Scripture and the light of natural reason. Fides et Ratio, in briefer terms.

One of the steps one must take, and I have not yet, been able to do so, in a way that satisfies me, is be able to properly incorporate all of one’s knowledge: sensory, religious, scientific, mathematical, that makes sense, and is coherent. I like Aquinas’s approach, but I haven’t wedded myself completely to it; I’m certainly open to other approaches.

One of the difficult problems, is determining if religious beliefs, must “submit” themselves to reason, or science. I’m tempted to say yes, at least concerning reason.

You mention, correctly, that science presupposes the uniformity of nature. I agree, and consider it to be a good indicator of God’s existence.

One finds, at least how I see it, through sensory experience, that nature is not haphazard; it’s regular, and stable. One uses this uniformity as a basis for making scientific predictions, and as a basis for formulating hypotheses that can be tested.

One also uses this to reason that, a being with tremendous power created the uniformity, in nature, since it cannot account for its own existence.

This is sufficient to show that Theism, of some sort, is reasonable. Then, one examines the Gospel accounts, and finds that Jesus’s resurrection, withstands the rigors of reason. Form there, one can make deductions, about the Bible. One can determine whether or not, any, or all, of its contents, withstand reason.

It’s my view, that all of them cannot, if one is trying to interpret them literally. For example, I don’t believe that God literally turns people into salt. This would contradict His Justice.

Any human being, finds herself, intially, in the world of sense perceptions. The latter provide the raw materials, for knowlege. I don’t claim, certainly, that Aquinas got the epistimology absolutely correct, but it does seem to me right that, subsequent to sense perceptions entering the mind, the mind goes to work, on generating knowledge, as Aquinas said.

Of course, the rationalist, more or less, believes that knowledge is obtained in the opposite way: we reason from self evident axioms, to deduce knowledge, and find a way to somewhat reluctantly incorporate sensations, into this picture.

On the basis of autonomous reasoning, man cannot give an adequate and rational account of the knowledge we gain through science and logic (especially as it relates to origins). Scientific procedure assumes that the natural world operates in a uniform fashion, in which case our observational knowledge of past cases provides a basis for predicting what will happen in future cases. However, autonomous reason has no basis whatsoever for believing that the natural world will operate in a ‘uniform’ fashion. For that we need Special Revelation. The self-attesting, self-authenticating Word of God.

This might be what separates us as Protestants and Catholics, among other things, including the Protestant belief in the noetic effects of sin, but starting with autonomous or unaided reason has several flaws I think which I alluded to above. First, I think that Scripture is made one’s final authority only after it has been authorized by one’s own reasoning (which is then, the real ‘final’ authority). So, in effect, every teaching or action of Christ, for example, could then be required on its own to pass the scrutiny of human reason. Second, the autonomous thinker using unaided reason mistakenly assumes himself to be capable of right reason, contrary to the testimony of Scripture that he abuses his mind and becomes ‘vain’ and ‘futile’ in his reasoning (note the references to Romans 1 that I cited in an earlier post).

I realize that we are not the only ones to grapple with this, as better minds than ours I think, have gone before us in this pursuit. I look forward to interacting with you on a future thread. Blessings to you both.

At any rate, you are right, the thread is about ready to move to Page 2, and so I’ll bow out for now. Best regards, Craig

P.S. Of course, I reserve the right to jump back in anytime!

The problem, that I see, is what to have faith IN. For example, people, in India, have faith in Hinduism. But, without reason, as one’s guide, how does one know that one;s faith is not misguided? That’s why, in my limited judgment, faith and reason must exist TOGETHER, and feed off each other, to prevent either one from going astray.

The problem is, people can and do, start with faith, and they end up wrong.

I’m not sure that reason takes a “privileged place along side faith”, I think that they have different duties. If we knew everything, there would, obviously, be no need for faith. But it’s important, I believe, to take reason as far as it can go.

As Craig pointed out, Aquinas believed that Aristotle was an excellent example, of reason going very far, without Christianity. Indeed, Aquinas often, out of great respect for the brilliant greek, referred to him, often, as “The Philosopher”. But Aquinas considered the incarnation, and the trinity, to be doctrines, that only faith could answer.

Somewhat ironically, although Augustine did believe that faith comes first, he believed that, once one received the proper “illumination” from God, one could use reason, to prove all of the Christian doctrines, and it;s Aquinas, who says, in effect, wait a minute, we need faith here, to beleve these things!

I would say yes to the second sentence, no to the first. Yes, humans are capable of proper reasoning prior to Christian faith–Aristotle being Aquinas’s primary example. But no, reason is not the foundation to faith in God. It can be seen as a “preamble” to faith in God; for example, reason could give good reasons to believe that there is a God, but that is not the same as “faith in” God, in the sense of a religious commitment. One’s Christian faith does not need to be “founded” in reason in order to be genuine. In fact, as Augustine notes, it is usually the other way around: One finds faith in God and later finds rational certainty as well.

Reasoning about Creation is also Christian, in that Christ is the Creator. I am probably sticking my neck out here, but when Scripture in Genesis speaks of God in Creation, I have no problem in accepting both that account and a scientific account of the origins of the universe, because the Genesis account is completely, as far as I can see, non-scientific.

That’s not a pejorative at all, nor is it meant as such. It just seems to me to be a fact. Creation, and God as Creator, is first of all a theological category. We can learn all we can from science without compromising the idea that behind every scientific fact, God is both ontologically and logically necessary and prior.

Here’s a paragraph that will maybe irritate a few folks as well: Because of what I just stated, the interesting argument seems to me to be the philosophical one: Is the universe contingent in nature, and if so, does it require a sustaining and necessary Cause behind it? (Aristotle, via reason, thought of this as the Uncaused Cause; Christians go even further via revelation and say, “That’s Jesus Christ.”) The BORING argument, on the other hand, is the typical “science vs. religion” one: Did evolution occur?

I’d answer “Yes” to both questions, without a qualm.