Theme
Faith and reason
33 philosophers, 5 traditions
How do truths claimed from revelation or scripture relate to what reason can find out for itself? Islamic, European and Indian thinkers gave strikingly different answers.
Theistic religions typically claim an authoritative source of revealed truth, and philosophers within them have asked what revelation adds to what reason can discover, and what to do when the two seem to disagree. In Baghdad al-Kindi welcomed Greek philosophy as truth “from wherever it comes”. Al-Ghazali and Averroes later argued over how far the philosophers’ demonstrations should govern the reading of the Qur’an. In the Latin West Augustine saw faith as seeking understanding, and Aquinas divided truths about God into those reason can prove and those only revelation can teach.
In India the question took a different shape. For the Vedānta thinkers Śaṅkara and Madhva, scripture itself gives knowledge that perception cannot reach, and the argument was over how it fits with perception and inference. Śaṅkara accepted nonduality on the authority of the Upaniṣads, while Madhva insisted that scripture be read in keeping with everyday experience.
In modern Europe Spinoza set faith and philosophy in separate spheres, Kant restricted knowledge “to make room for faith”, and Kierkegaard held that faith centres on a paradox that reason cannot understand, and that reason cannot fully justify it.
Through time
4th century CE
Augustine
Faith comes first in time but understanding ranks higher: “faith seeks, understanding finds”. Left to itself reason can go astray, so it relies on the authority of Scripture and the Creed; but deciding which authority to trust is a rational choice.
6th century CE
Boethius
Boethius brought the logic of Aristotle to bear on Christian doctrine, and in the Consolation let pagan Philosophy, not revelation, console a Christian in prison, reasoning about providence, fortune and God’s foreknowledge without appeal to scripture.
7th century CE
Kumārila Bhaṭṭa
The Vedas are authorless and eternal, free of any finite human perspective, and they alone can tell us our duty (dharma). Kumārila defended this with a general theory of knowledge on which trust is the default and doubt needs specific grounds.
8th century CE
Śaṅkara
The nonduality of self and brahman can’t be proved by independent reasoning; Śaṅkara accepted it on the authority of the Upaniṣads alone. Reasoning still has work to do: making sense of the scriptures, harmonising their passages, defending their teaching and refuting rivals.
Drew on Kumārila Bhaṭṭa
9th century CE
al-Kindi
Truth should be welcomed “from wherever it comes”, even from foreign peoples, so Greek philosophy is no threat to Islam. Al-Kindi used it to defend and explain Islamic teaching, reading Qur’anic verses on creation from nothing and on the heavens through philosophical argument.
John Scottus Eriugena
True philosophy and true religion are the same. He met a dispute over predestination with dialectical argument rather than a list of scriptural texts, which his critics held against him.
10th century CE
Abu Bakr al-Razi
God gives reason to everyone equally, so each person can work out for themselves what to pursue. Hostile reports say al-Razi rejected prophecy altogether; other evidence has him reading the Qur’an as agreeing with his philosophy. At the least, he held that revealed truth must accord with reason.
Saadia Gaon
Reason and revelation agree. Some commandments could be reached by reason alone, and reason can prove beliefs such as creation and the unity of God; others are known only through revelation, received as reliable tradition.
11th century
Anselm of Canterbury
Faith comes first, but it seeks understanding. Anselm believed in order to understand, and then tried to show by reason alone that God exists and has the attributes Christians ascribe to him, and even why God had to become human.
Drew on Augustine
al-Ghazali
A valid demonstration is never wrong, so where one disproves the literal sense of revelation, the text must be read allegorically. But the philosophers’ arguments for an eternal world and two other doctrines fell short of demonstration, so revelation stood, and teaching them was unbelief.
12th century
Judah Halevi
Faith does not rest on reason. Philosophy succeeds in logic and mathematics but not in the questions that matter for religion, where its arguments are balanced by equally strong counter-arguments; God is known through the signs of his presence in history, tradition and prophecy.
Peter Abelard
Reason has a real but limited role in matters of faith: it can clarify what doctrines mean and expose bad arguments. Abelard opposed both those who, like Bernard of Clairvaux, gave reason no place, and those who gave it too much.
Averroes
Philosophy belongs at the heart of religious reflection, because demonstration can’t disagree with the religious law: “truth does not oppose truth”. Philosophers alone can bring out scripture’s hidden meanings, while rhetoric and dialectic lead others to the same truth by other paths.
Argued against al-Ghazali
Maimonides
Reason and scripture agree once scripture is read correctly: passages that seem to give God a body must be read figuratively. But reason has limits; it cannot settle whether the world was created, and Maimonides prefers creation from nothing on the balance of arguments.
13th century
Ibn Arabi
Reason is a fetter: it defines and analyses, and grasps only God’s transcendence. Imagination and mystical unveiling must complete it, and full realisation comes only by walking the path the prophets walked.
Bonaventure
The philosophers are worth studying for understanding truth and refuting error, and many questions of faith need them. But all his philosophy was written inside works of theology and devotion, and he sharply criticised philosophical errors such as the eternity of the world.
Drew on Augustine and Anselm of Canterbury
Thomas Aquinas
Natural reason can prove that God exists, but not truths such as the Trinity and the incarnation, which had to be revealed for our salvation. The two can’t truly conflict: anything in philosophy contrary to the faith is “an abuse of philosophy, due to a failure of reason”.
Drew on Augustine and Boethius; drew on and argued against Averroes; argued against Anselm of Canterbury
Madhva
The Vedas reveal a realm beyond the senses, but we could not know even them unless perception and inference were valid in themselves. So scripture must be read in keeping with everyday experience, and it can’t teach that the self and brahman are one, which experience contradicts.
Argued against Śaṅkara
Meister Eckhart
Faith and philosophy grow from one root of truth, so the philosophers’ accounts of nature can be found hidden in the literal sense of Scripture. Moses, Christ and Aristotle teach the same thing in different modes.
Drew on Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Maimonides, Averroes and John Scottus Eriugena
14th century
Ibn Taymiyya
True revelation and sound reason never conflict: the prophets complete and perfect what people already know through reason and their inborn nature. Ibn Taymiyya accused the philosophers and theologians of subjecting scripture to mistaken systems of reason.
Argued against Ibn Arabi
John Duns Scotus
Natural reason can prove that God exists, as a first and infinite being. And because “being” means the same when said of God and of creatures, the concepts we form from creatures can be applied to God; theology is not cut off from ordinary language.
Drew on Anselm of Canterbury; drew on and argued against Thomas Aquinas
Gersonides
Reason and the Torah are coextensive, and reason is competent to reach every essential truth. Where the two seem to conflict, scripture is to be interpreted in line with reason, which leads Gersonides to argue, against tradition, that the world was made from eternal matter.
Drew on Averroes; drew on and argued against Maimonides
Hasdai Crescas
Aristotelian philosophy, as Maimonides and his followers adopted it, contradicts both Jewish tradition and a true rational and empirical understanding of the world. Crescas defends tradition by attacking Aristotle’s physics on its own ground, on infinity, place and the void.
Drew on and argued against Maimonides and Gersonides; drew on John Duns Scotus
16th century
Michel de Montaigne
Because reason cannot demonstrate religious dogmas, some read Montaigne’s scepticism as clearing the way for faith and revelation. On this reading he was a leader of the “new Pyrrhonians”, who used doubt to loosen philosophy’s grip on religion.
17th century
Blaise Pascal
Faith is the proper judge of revealed and supernatural truths, as reason is of natural ones and the senses of facts. Reason, corrupted by the Fall, cannot reach God or morality unaided; the true faith is a gift of God.
Drew on Augustine and Michel de Montaigne
Baruch Spinoza
Scripture teaches obedience, not knowledge, and the prophets were pious rather than gifted philosophers. Reason and faith occupy separate spheres, so the freedom to philosophise does no harm to true religion, and the Bible should be interpreted from itself, as nature is studied.
Drew on Maimonides and Hasdai Crescas
18th century
Immanuel Kant
Speculative reason can’t give us knowledge of God or immortality, since our knowledge reaches only appearances. “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith”: belief in God, freedom and immortality is justified, but on strictly moral grounds.
19th century
Søren Kierkegaard
The incarnation, the “Absolute Paradox”, is something human reason can’t understand, so it confronts us with a choice between faith and offence. Neither can be fully justified by reason, though it is doubtful he meant that faith believes a logical contradiction.
William James
Where a question is forced and momentous and the evidence cannot settle it, we have the right to believe, including in God. Religion is best studied through the experiences of individuals, which may reach beyond what science can.
Drew on Immanuel Kant
20th century
Tanabe Hajime
Reason relying on its own power meets contradictions it cannot resolve, and must die to itself to be reborn through “Other-power”. Philosophy and faith are joined in this act of repentance (metanoesis), and a genuine philosophy of religion needs faith.
Simone Weil
Weil’s turn to God came through her attention to reality and her contact with the world, yet she held that knowledge demands rigorous, balanced thought. Her late metaphysics was both Christian and Platonic, drawing also on Greek tragedy, Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism.
Drew on and argued against Immanuel Kant
Albert Camus
Reason cannot answer our questions about the meaning of existence, but neither should we leap into faith. Camus chose to live without God, and criticised the existentialists whose “forced hope” makes a religion of what crushes them.
Argued against Søren Kierkegaard
Jürgen Habermas
Philosophy after metaphysics offers no picture of the good life, so modern societies should “translate” ethical insights from religious traditions into terms that all citizens can share, as philosophy has long done with religious ideas.
Drew on Immanuel Kant
Sources
- Daniel J. McKaughan, Faith, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Mats Wahlberg, Divine Revelation, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy