Faith Transcends Reason

Some shameless promotion of my new book here. Some observations from the book's intro:

First, there is an insight articulated by both James and Augustine. Even though an unbeliever may avoid the risk of holding a religious belief in error, there is another risk to which he commits himself: the risk of not believing the truth about God, if there is a God.

Second, there are the close links between empiricism and traditional religion; modern culture accustoms us to ignore these connections, and even to doubt the very possibility of their existence! Yet the Dalai Lama (representing Buddhism), Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Hinduism), Allama Iqbal (Islam), and Eliezer Berkovits (Judaism) along with C. S. Lewis trace the core doctrines of their religions to empirical origins. And that does not even cover James’ integration of religion with empiricism, or any number of other thinkers who did the same or who have developed an empirical natural theology. Moreover, there are central traits of empirical thinking which may easily be taken up by Christian thinking. Contrary to popular belief, key points of Christian theology are even verifiable or falsifiable!

Third, an insight about the verifiability of religious belief was discovered independently by James and Lewis. Not every belief can be tested by experiments that are under the experimenter’s control; a belief about a person is difficult to test through experiment without some cooperation or assistance from the person. James develops this insight while making an argument for the rationality of faith, Lewis by explaining how we know the Trinity through the holy life of the church.

Fourth, the crucial distinction in the New Testament between “faith” and “sight” is not a distinction between faith and knowledge, nor between faith and reason. It is a distinction between knowledge that comes by trust and firsthand knowledge.

. . .

Finally, and once again, the relationship between faith and reason must be understood to be multifaceted. Faith transcends reason in that it is more than reason alone can contain or fully guarantee. Yet it is neither unreasonable nor something to which reason is irrelevant—and reason says some pretty fine things about it!

This stuff is cool. And important.

Another distinctive characteristic of my research is how it includes different ideas not often considered together. One of these is that belief in God and in Christian theology specifically may be knowledge even without evidence—an idea associated with Plantinga. Another is that the same beliefs are also supported by some good evidence—whether or not they need it. A third is that faith transcends reason—even if we have knowledge of some articles of faith, faith is a total commitment beyond what the evidence alone can guarantee, and some articles of faith are beyond human comprehension, even if we do have evidence that they are true.

We don't have to choose between the propositions "Faith is reasonable" and "Faith is not the same thing as reason."

Also, the book is cheap on Kindle.