Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck. But through thought I grasp it

Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck. But through thought I grasp it.

Pascal

How can we prove that we shall die, or that there will be a tomorrow? Yet what could be more obvious?

Indeed, how little we really do prove. For proofs only convince the mind. But habits provide us with more effective and widespread proofs, modifying the mind without ever being conscious of it. For example, how can we prove that we shall die, or that there will be a tomorrow? Yet what could be more obvious? It is habit that really tends to convince us, and indeed, it makes us either Christians, or even Turks, or pagans, or merchants, soldiers or anything else. In all of these we have to act upon some faith that lies beyond where ‘bare proof’ will take us…

…so we have to rely upon faith when the mind is convinced of the direction in which truth lies, or to influence the mind when truth seems to evade us. We would be overdoing things if we insisted upon having proofs for everything we did, all the time.

Blaise Pascal, The Mind on Fire (from the works of Blaise Pascal), ed. James M. Houston (Bethany House Publishers, 1997) pp46-47

A man that sets himself to reason without divine light is like a man that goes in the dark into a garden full of the most beautiful plants

Ratiocination, without·spiritual light, never will give one such an advantage to see things in their true relations and respects to other things, and to things in general. A man that sets himself to reason without divine light is like a man that goes in the dark into a garden full of the most beautiful plants, and most artfully ordered, and compares things together by going from one thing to another to feel of them all, to perceive their beauty.

Jonathan Edwards, “Miscellanies #408,” 249

If leaderless chaos be all, rest content that in the midst of this storm-swept sea Reason still dwells and rules within thee

The universe must be governed either by a fore-ordained destiny, an order that none may overstep, by a merciful Providence, or by a chaos of chance devoid of a ruler. If the theory of an insuperable fate be true, why struggle against it? If Providence watches over all and may be inclined to mercy, render thyself worthy of celestial aid. But if leaderless chaos be all, rest content that in the midst of this storm-swept sea Reason still dwells and rules within thee. And if the tide swirl thee away, let it take thy flesh and spirit, with all the rest ; for Reason it cannot take.

…if there be a God all is well ; if chance governs all, see that it govern not thee.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.14; 9.27

But if all is chaos, then reason is meaningless because it implies reason assumes the laws of logic. Laws of logic cannot pertain in a chaotic universe. If chaos is all then Reason goes to the wall. Why believe in an island of rationality when all we see is sea of chaos? But our belief in reason suggest another One who is Reason itself, the grounding all rationality, who became flesh and dwelt among us.

Why thinking people may abandon the faith

When John Hick was eighteen and a law student at University College, Hull, he says:

(I) underwent a spiritual conversion in which the whole world of Christian belief and experience came vividly to life, and I became a Christian of a strongly evangelical and indeed fundamentalist kind….I accepted as a whole and without question the entire evangelical package of theology — the verbal inspiration of the Bible; Creation and fall; Jesus as God the Son incarnate, born of a virgin etc..

But after the war at Edinburgh University he became uncomfortable in the Evangelical Union. He had questions about the faith, but felt that the questions themselves were unwelcome. Thus, he says, ‘I drifted away from the evangelical student movement’.

in Harold Netland, Encountering Religious Pluralism, Apollos, 2001, pp.159-160

Unfortunately, all too many Christians have a, ‘don’t think about it, just believe’ mentality. An approach to faith completely foreign to the New Testament which invites scrutiny and is held up to rational enquiry.

The futility of running from God

…the only creature that can prove anything cannot prove its own insignificance without depriving the proof of any proof-value. Any radical depreciation of man involves an equally radical depreciation of the scientific thinking which supplies the supposed evidence. (T.E. Jessop)

In other words, if you reduce man to a beast, If the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile, then all his theories – including this one – are worthless

R.Abba, nature and Authority of the Bible, p.109

Rejecting God’s revelation and starting with reason, man is left undermining the very possibility of any knowledge at all. Faith in the God of Scripture is the precondition of any knowledge

Irrational Faith

The only knowledge I and all men possess that is firm, incontestable, and clear is here, and it cannot be explained by reason — this knowledge is outside the sphere of reason.

Levin, in Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy, p.832

see also pp.741, 74, 830 for similar sentiments perhaps representative of Tolstoy’s own view of the relationship between faith and reason.

Here is another section:

Would reason ever have proved to me that I must love my neighbour instead of strangling him? I was told that in my childhood, and I believed it gladly, for they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law demanding that I should strangle all who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one’s neighbour reason could never discover, because it’s unreasonable.

I would argue that love of neighbour is not irrational. But I agree it is not discovered through reason as if it were some natural law. That is why we need God’s revelation.

Reasonable Faith

We are told again and again that faith is irrational. In fact, the more one can believe despite the evidence, the more this is seen to be genuine faith. We are called upon to believe against reason and to accept the paradoxical, to take a blind leap and leave our minds behind.

So we must pour scorn on Peter and the other disciple when told by Mary that the body was gone from the tomb for being so unbelieving that they went to see for themselves. We must, if we are to people of our day and age, disapprove of their desire to check the linen that once covered Jesus’ dead body. They should have just believed; and not believed after seeing.

So we think, but not so Scripture which invite us to consider the evidence and believe on the basis of it, rather than contrary to it. The facts are clear: the best explanation for the empty tomb, the most reasonable hypothesis for the abandoned linen, the rolled stone and the church’s faith is the resurrection of Jesus. Faith is not mere intellectual assent, but neither is it contrary to the facts.

Jim Gourlay 8/6/98

Aquinas on Faith and Reason

Faith must take reason by the hand and lead it along the right way.

Aquinas, De Veritate XIV, in, Alan Richardson, Christian Apologetics, p.227

Faith is against reason – so they say

…faith is not rational. You either believe or you don’t.

Tony Parsons, The Times, June 24th 1996, p.14 Features

The less you know the more you believe

Bono, Last Night on Earth, Pop, 1997, Island Records

Faith, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion.

Richard Dawkins, Is Science a Religion? Published in the Humanist, January/February 1997

(Faith) cannot mean being rationally persuaded of something. If we had a reason for faith, then it would not be faith at all, it would be logic. Faith can only be unreasonable.

Brian Appleyard, Understanding the Present, Pan, 1993, p.99

Beliefs surface when the facts run out, or when the facts are not yet proven.

Charles Handy, Hungry Spirit, p.81