In working on DTC, I’ve had to spend some time considering the interplay between rationality and faith. I wrestled with this topic for some time before writing the preface. The strange thing is that, upon close inspection, I found that faith and reason may not be different at all. Now, I understand that this is probably one of the least popular views that I can hold. But hold your stones for just a moment—at least let me state my case first! I am not ignorant of the nuances and contours of the typical ways of addressing this idea. There are those who believe that faith and reason may both lead to truth, but the areas or types of truth to be found through each method are different. There are others who think that truth can be found only through one of these ways, and that the other way is hostile to their preferred method. Still others take a more subtle view, stating that truth can be discovered through all sorts of methods, faith and rationality being among them. In any case, the view that faith and reason are the same thing is virtually unheard of. Am I off my rocker? They’re different words, with different connotations! Of course they’re different! Let’s begin by taking a look at what these words mean, and judge for ourselves what’s going on here.
If you ask a typical Christian what faith is, you may receive a confused look or an incredulous, “What?” in response. At least, that’s what I found; your mileage may vary. At best, they will say something like “belief” or maybe quote some translation of an isolated phrase in Hebrews, saying “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proof of things unseen”. This is all very confounding. If we go with something simpler and more colloquial, faith is akin to trust or confidence in something—belief. Perhaps that belief is even “strong” or “unwavering”. This is all fine and well, but what about the content of its belief, or perhaps the reasons or motivation for such belief? No, I don’t think faith has much to say about that; not in a definitional way, anyways. Surely that can’t be all there is to faith, though, right? Isn’t there something more?
I think so. Faith also has an aspect of earnestness to it—something genuine and whole-bodied that desires its object (what it believes or believes in). In this way, I find faith to include in its connotation the concept of an ideal. The object of faith is, for the person who has such faith, an ideal. It is a good and desirable thing in their judgement.
Rationality, on the other hand, has no such affective connotations at first glance. Rationality is only objective and distinctly dispassionate. It uses well-established, neigh-inscrutable methods to arrive at facts about reality. It has no notion of love or trust or even reasonless belief—it must have logic for its conclusions. That’s all there is to it, right?
No, I don’t think so. Rationality without a cause or purpose cannot exist. It would not do anything. It could not be anything. At best, it might be described as an abstract set of methods which, when analyzed ad-nauseum, boil down to something akin to mathematics. These methods would not be substantially different than raw facts, like 2 + 2 = 4. What’s the point in that? Well, there is some point… rationality is, at least, true.
Rationality qua rationality is truth. But beyond this, its definition really should include some statement of purpose to assuage the ever-present “why?” question. I see no reason why this shouldn’t be, “the pursuit of truth”; this isn’t objectionable in the least. If the methods are, themselves, truth, then positing that they can be used to discover more truth is actually quite satisfactory.
So this is what we’re working with. Faith and reason. The only thing missing is to characterize their relationship, if any. What I have come to notice is exactly this: When you insert “truth” as the object of faith, it becomes synonymous with reason. Truth becomes, for the one who has faith in it, a desirable objective to be pursued as an ideal. The means within faith are unspecified definitionally1—but here I might note that means must be suitable to their ends. In this case, the end is truth, so it seems good for the means to already be some smaller part of the truth that you are pursuing. At least, for the one who has faith in truth, adopting and believing in whatever discoverable truth they can find is exactly what accords with such a faith. If we accept the definition of rationality as outlined above, then someone with faith in truth will adopt the methods of rationality quite readily. Indeed, I dare say that the methods and goals of someone embodying rationality and someone embodying faith in truth are exactly the same. Even if there remain some preconditions (belief in God, for example) that differ, the pursuit and end goal of these supposedly distinct methods are the same.
Just to be clear, let’s examine this from the other side: When you consider rationality in its fullness, it implies a sort-of pursuit of the truth. This is the purpose for its existence! It has idealized the truth as a predicate of its own existence. This seeking and idealizing of the truth is, in my view, the same as faith’s earnest pursuit of its object, at least when that object is “truth”.
But what about the idea that the object of faith is, or even can be, “truth”. That is, all I have argued thus far is that in this special case, in setting the object of faith to be truth, faith and rationality are the same. Yet, I do not believe that many will find this objectionable. Truth is among the most central of the transcendentals; ideas that belie transcendence—existence which is beyond the physical realm. Christians have discussed these for as long as they have been discussing. They are well established to be worthy topics of philosophy and of deep thinking in general. A typical medieval list may begin with “being” itself and include truth, goodness, beauty, and unity. Clearly, these are things that are closely associated with the very nature of God. If Christians object, saying that the object of their faith is a person, namely, God or Jesus Christ, then I might ask: is this person truth? At worst, their conclusion should be that truth is a part of the object of their faith. The doctrine of simplicity takes care of the rest.
Theological discussion aside, I find it baffling that this idea, that rationality and faith are synonymous, is not something commonly found in the (Christian) literature, nor in the philosophical discussions of rationality and of faith. No doubt, you still do not actually believe me, because it has been so ingrained in you that faith and reason are at odds or at least very different by nature. In the very least, they must be distinct! No. Put your biases and brainwashing aside, and think rationally. Argue against me if you have the conviction to do so. Show me how this line of reasoning is wrong.
Else, consider that we may have all been victims of a particularly nasty case of Russell conjugation. Faith and reason are terms that have been taken up by cultures which, for many reasons beyond the scope of this post, have been at odds for centuries. Of course these cultures have differing terms for their pursuit of The Good! Of course they use these terms to refer to the exclusive means of discovering the truth! In contra, I say, these terms truly refer to the same thing, and thereby, faith and reason should be thought of as the same thing.
There is some disagreement to my assertion here. Some say that Faith's means, or the knowledge acquired therein, necessarily include the notion of non-testability. That is, the knowledge received by faith is not something that you, personally, can verify in any meaningful way. This suggests some entity that you trust, or have faith in, is providing you with the data. On the surface, I admit that this looks different from the methods of rationality which attempt to minimize doubt. Indeed knowledge “gained” by such faith would introduce doubt to the extent that you do not trust this oracle that you have faith in. But in the case of faith having an object such as what is suggested in Christianity: God, there is no room for doubt by definition. Any transcendental, including truth, will function in the same way. It's not that we have totally provable, rational reasons to believe in these transcendentals (this is an improper way of talking about transcendentals), but rather, that the same transcendental is assumed by both rationality and (Christian) faith, namely truth.