Criticisms of Faith and Reason

We may summarize the objections of rationalism and fideism in a concise manner: Rationalism suspects the commitment to “faith seeking understanding” as being no philosophy at all, for it assumes faith up front and therefore possesses something that it will not question. Fideism complains that “faith seeking understanding” causes reason to crowd out faith with the march of demonstrations.

Let us first look at the Enlightenment criticism of faith. Constraints of this essay compel me to use the term “rationalism” as a shorthand. I will only briefly touch upon the technical distinction between the rationalist and empiricist schools of early modern philosophy, and then move on to use the term “rationalist” in the more general sense. Here “rationalism” is that modern illusion of supposing that the life of faith is opposed to the life of the mind. In this general sense “rationalism” is the opposite of fideism.

Now about that more technical distinction, the early modern philosophical schools sought one thing at first: some foundation to replace divine revelation. For this sort of rationalist (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz), only analytical, self-evident truths can be foundational. In the words of the Cartesian maxims, some “clear and distinct idea” which was “indubitable,” would need to ground all contingent propositions. As bodies are “extended things” from thought, so all that we know that is contingent, must answer to that which we know as necessary. By contrast, the empiricist began by saying that only sensory, testable facts can be foundational. Yet a quick evolution in the empiricist school was necessary, as Berkeley exposed flaws in Locke’s synthesis of building from simple to complex ideas with merely external sensation.

As a matter of fact, the two schools were both driving at something true, yet erroneously treating their question as if it were the whole. The rationalist was correct that there are necessary truths without which no contingent truth would be worthy of the name; and the empiricist was correct that one would never come to know such things except that its “data” first passes through the senses. It is when the modern mind positioned the a priori against the a posteriori “methods,” as if they were competing for the same job description, that Christians should have more confidently called these fractional models back to their true, unifying source. 

Now if Hume was inconsistent in his skepticism, he was at least indicative of what common sense would come to mean in the modern world. His attack on the necessary connection between cause and effect did not disturb his expectation that the sunrise and rooster’s crow would coincide tomorrow morning. In the cases of ascribing design to the universe or miracle to the Christian proclamation of resurrection — in these cases, we do not have the same thing before us. At least the rooster’s crow tends to correspond to sunrise every day and for all parties. Such can only be said through tortuous reasoning of the design analogy, and such cannot be said at all of dead men coming to life.

But there are several ways to show that Hume had actually not been skeptical enough about that common sense approach that remained. Lewis masterfully dissects Hume’s circular reasoning regarding the “uniformity of nature.”1 In essence, Hume presupposed a functional equivalence between “uniform experience” against x miracle, on the one hand, and the laws of nature which are “firm and unalterable,” on the other, so that the very necessary connection between cause and effect that he buries to push away natural theology, he must resurrect in order to avoid an evidential consideration of miracles. 

That said, it was his final statement in the Enquiry that set up the kind of “modernist rationalism” I have in mind.

There he wrote, “If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”2

Let the skeptic more skeptical than Hume ask only one further question: Does Hume’s maxim here contain either 1. Nothing but abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number, or else, 2. Nothing but experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or existence? Not in the least! This criterion for the meaningfulness of any statement is neither purely analytical nor purely empirical. By Hume’s own stipulation, we ought to have committed it to the flames as sophistry and illusion. But this is not what the modern rationalist has done. He has held on to this faith in the meaninglessness of metaphysical propositions and called this “reason.”

The crown epistemological jewels of twentieth century analytic philosophy were the Verification and Falsification Principles. The extreme versions of these (which were the only ones given much ink) had advanced past Hume only in exact verbiage and precise targets. The main proponents of these principles either missed the Humean contradiction entirely, tried and failed to resuscitate the principle without replicating its fallacy, or else knew about the contradiction perfectly well and hoped no one else would notice. My concern here is not with their own insight or motives. Rather, it is simply to point out that nonsense remains nonsense, even when it is paid for by a government grant.

Whereas Hume demanded that all rational beliefs express themselves either in pure analytical terms or else in pure empirical terms, those of the Verification Principle demanded that all meaningful propositions come in those same forms. That this was self-contradictory for the same reason that Hume’s criterion was, took some time to dawn on the philosophical class. Falsification, while a hallmark of valid science, collapses on itself when hardened into a necessary principle of mind.

If all statements of fact need to be, in principle, falsifiable, then either there is a possible world (many in fact) where the falsification principle is false, or else the falsification principle is not itself falsifiable. But if the principle is not falsifiable, then it reveals that the principle is not a necessary truth, but rather its necessity is only axiomatic for contingent matters of scientific method, examining things that may either be or else not.

Consequently, given that these two principles are incoherent when applied to the arena of metaphysics, then it cannot be said that faith in supernatural realities has any epistemic duties to answer to them. 

Having examined the typical rationalist criticisms of faith, what is meant by the fideist objections to the role of reason? Note that I will be using the term “fideism” as a shorthand in the same way as I did for “rationalism.” It is almost certain that not everyone surveyed here will appreciate being labeled a fideist. However the term, while admittedly general, is quite appropriate given what we will see as a set of principles on guard against the use of reason especially at the foundations of faith. These principles are often so unexamined that it would be fair to even call them an impulse of fideism. 

What the fideist impulse in each participant always has in common is the suspicion of impiety wherever faith is “built upon” this or that aspect of nature. Something of the supernatural essence of Christianity is thought to be compromised the moment that God is made to “borrow” from the created world. For the fideist, faith is conceived as a bolt of lightning from the spiritual realm, in which no category of the natural can be given.

Even mighty Christian intellects like Jonathan Edwards can speak like this, for instance in his sermon “A Divine and Supernatural Light.” Profound though the sermon was, the irresistible inference for many is the notion that the truths of special grace must reinvent every conceptual wheel in order to make good on their claims. Whether Edwards himself would have wanted to be interpreted this way is another matter. If faith in spiritual truths is constructed of the building blocks of nature, then proud reason has set itself up in the judgment seat in matters of faith.

Who all has been truly guilty of this extreme? It was Tertullian who posed the questions: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians?”3 More strikingly he declared, “I believe it because it is absurd!” The early modern period had its own brilliant proponent of a kind of fideism. Pascal wrote that “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing,”4 and “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.”5 There is truth in this hyperbole, but which of Pascal’s faculties had perceived what lies beyond reason’s last step but reason? And about that “reason” of the heart? We can get a sense that what is poetically true here has its own limits in stricter philosophy. 

The fideism of Soren Kierkegaard is worth noting because it blames reason for an additional vice. That is the tendency to systematize and form a universal (or mass) that makes actual individual faith unintelligible. The value of Kierkegaard’s philosophy is his emphasis on virtues such as integrity and passion. However both of these are entirely relative. If we were to ask which faith requires maximal integrity, or why one’s passion should be devoted to Christ rather than to Buddha, his idealized “knight of faith” is at a loss. 

Whereas for Karl Barth there is no true knowledge of God back behind Christ, for Cornelius Van Til, there is no true knowledge of God back behind Scripture. While the locus of pure revelation differs in each view, the same emphasis of “revelation-against-nature” can be discerned in both.

If we “give reason” for our belief, then reason is thought to become the authority by which unbelief judges divine truth. Presuppositionalists following Van Til call this “autonomous reason.” Nature is seen to be a kind of neutral field in the granting of rationale to come to faith. Nature is the gatekeeper of Scripture; reason of revelation. What “came first” is “final authority.” However, this is not the way that the Bible itself seems to divide things. In the relevant texts, such as Psalm 19:1-3 or Romans 1:19-20, it is general revelation that grounds all natural theology and evidence. Therefore, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an act of right reason that is “outside” of revelation. And if that is true, then it follows that reasoning rightly about the nature of God, in response to “the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20), is both possible and virtuous. 

One more strand of fideism must be explored because it has been the most celebrated variety of Christian thought in academic philosophy over the past generation. That is the Reformed Epistemology school, and in particular the thought of Alvin Plantinga. In this view rational justification of faith is unnecessary for warranted belief. Now some background is needed here. Plantinga has put his own reservations for classical apologetics in the extreme: “I think it must be conceded that the theist has no very good answer to the request that he explain his reasons for believing in the existence of God.”6 

Here we must be familiar with the language of basic beliefs, that is, any beliefs not based upon others. These can include certain a priori truths, immediate sensation, or even memories. By contrast, non-basic beliefs are any beliefs that do depend on others for their justification. The way these terms cash out in Plantinga’s view is that “the foundation of S’s noetic structure is the set of propositions S accepts but does not accept on the basis of other propositions … And now the central question is this: why shouldn’t the existence of God be in the foundations of my noetic structure?”7 No major Christian belief falls under the classical foundationalist definition of those basic beliefs, so all such beliefs will have to be justified on the basis of others. Perhaps no Christian argument can do so. At the very least, most Christians who do not think about such things will be rationally unjustified in their beliefs. Indeed all unsubstantiated Christian belief would turn out to be immoral.

In response to this, Plantinga borrows from Calvin’s notion of the sensus divinitatis to formulate his criteria of a properly functioning faculty of reason. This faculty does not imply innate knowledge but rather a natural capacity.

Now herein lies the difficulty. What matters is that the knowledge obtained by this faculty “is not arrived at by inference or argument … but in a much more immediate way.”8 When the knowledge of God arises in us, upon viewing the grandeur of nature, it is important to Plantinga that we do not think of this as an inferential act—premises to conclusions. What matters is that the belief is basic, and thus it must spontaneously arise. This is not the place to assess Plantinga’s model as a whole. It is only to show that this is one more model driven by the fideist impulse to minimize or exclude a “foundation in reason” to Christian thought.

What can be said by way of general evaluation? Three main common threads apply sufficiently to each of these brands of fideism.

First, these are all guilty of some form of Double-Truth Theory. What may be rationally justifiable from unbelieving presuppositions is no authority over matters of faith. But if a proposition is rationally justifiable at all, then it is simply true. It is not true for the unbeliever while false for the believer. Supposing the fideist affirms this point. Then what is to prevent him from affirming the same of all such true propositions? If we were to come to the end of those and begin examining the point where unbelieving propositions are false, would it not be the case that the unbeliever has failed precisely in the use of reason and in the realm of nature? It is not simply that the unbeliever has failed to measure up against the standard of one’s faith. Unfortunately, the fideist is defined by his reticence in affirming this point about a common, or universal, harmony between reason and nature. 

Second (and following from the first point), these fideist models all wind up conceding reason and nature to the unbeliever. In other words, all of these assume that “Athens” or “rationality” or what is “common” really do not “have to do” with their counterparts in “Jerusalem” or “faith” or what is “holy.” Penelhum clearly discerns both the motive and consequences of fideism in modern theology: “On the whole Protestant theologians and the few philosophers influenced by them have been the ones who have tried to separate religion from metaphysics in order to free it from the criticisms that natural theology has drawn upon itself.”9 

Third, these all delay the inevitable. Fideism has nowhere to turn but back to giving a reason. If we ask which thing to “leap” in faith toward, the fideist must give a reason even for this. If he says it doesn’t matter, we might ask him: Why not? If he appeals to the authority of a book—Which book? He must always give a reason. Even Kierkegaard’s anti-apologetic was an apologetic. Even Pascal’s Wager is subject to the “many gods” objection. And there is no prima facie reason why the Christian God must be wagered upon, since one has refused to give a reason that he has any just grounds to punish since we do not know if he has been clear in his revelation.

Aside from these three problems, the intellectual energy of the fideist fails to do the work of an evangelist.10 For example, does assuming “proper basicality” in Reformed Epistemology have us fulfilling all our intellectual duties? Here I do not mean answering to what the modernist means by that. What if bringing epistemic obligation to the unbeliever is our duty? Plantinga has carved out epistemic permission for the believer to be considered rational, or “warranted,” in his faith. But Reformed Epistemology positively eschews the clarity of God’s truth. The whole approach is designed to give a reason why no reason is required. After all, the whole point of Christian apologetics has traditionally been to give a reason for which all ought to believe, not merely a justification that one individual is “within his reason” to have his own faith. 

However much fideists over the past two centuries have criticized Kant’s agnosticism, they have often failed to notice that they share the Kantian impulse to make religion (or faith) safe from reason. One basic trouble in settling for a religion safe from reason in the watching world, is that it begets a theology safe from reason in the reading and reflecting church.

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1. Lewis, Miracles, 134-35

2. David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993), 114.

3. Tertullian quoted in Anderson, The Clarity of God’s Existence, 49.

4. Pascal, Pensées (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 127.

5. Pascal, Pensées, 56.

6. Plantinga, The Analytical Theist, 97.

7. Plantinga, The Analytical Theist, 98.

8. Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief. 35, cf. 64-65

9. Penelhum, Religion and Rationality, 92.

10. 2 Timothy 4:5