Relation to the world· Philosophy of religion
Harmony
Axis: Faith and reason — How do faith and reason relate to each other: agreement, conflict, or indifference?
Faith and reason cannot contradict each other, for they proceed from the same source of truth. Reason can establish certain truths about God, and faith completes what reason begins.
Movements 2
Falsafaexplicit
Already for , religion expresses in symbols what philosophy establishes in concepts; turns this into an explicit legal and hermeneutical doctrine. Revelation and demonstration state one and the same truth to different audiences: the multitude is persuaded by images and rhetoric, the philosopher convinced by (, reasoning from certain premises). When a verse seems to contradict a demonstrated conclusion, it is the text that must receive a figurative interpretation, not reason that must yield. The "double truth" later ascribed to the Latin Averroists distorts this thesis, which on the contrary asserts the unity of truth.
Averroes, The Decisive Treatise · al-Fārābī, Book of Religion
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Kalāminferable
Kalām argues: all its schools grant reason the power to establish God's existence and to defend dogma, the even holding that reason knows good and evil before Revelation. The question is how far reason can go on its own: shows that the philosophers' metaphysical demonstrations fail by their own standards, while himself wielding logic, which he urges theologians to use; beyond reason he recognizes a knowledge by "taste" () granted by prophecy and mystical experience. Hence a dominant harmony, with a modest share left to what exceeds reason.
al-Ghazālī, Deliverance from Error · al-Ghazālī, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, introduction
Philosophers 8
Leibnizexplicit
The subtitle of the Theodicy announces the program: to show the conformity of faith with reason. For Leibniz faith and reason can never contradict each other, since they share the same author; reason can illuminate the mysteries without exhausting them, and defend religion against its detractors. This is in the proper sense, against all fideism as against all conflict.
Theodicy, Preliminary Discourse on the Conformity of Faith with Reason
Thomas Aquinasexplicit
Can reason and faith contradict each other? Thomas answers no, and his argument rests on a thesis about their shared source: one and the same God is the author of nature, which gives reason its light, and of Revelation; one truth therefore cannot belie another. Against the Averroist doctrine of double truth, which reserved an independent domain for philosophy, he distinguishes without opposing: reason establishes by itself the preambles of faith (the existence of God, the immortality of the soul), while the properly revealed mysteries, such as the Trinity, surpass reason without contradicting it. Where an argument seems to refute the faith, it is because it is badly conducted, and philosophy itself can expose the flaw.
Summa contra Gentiles, I, 3-9 · Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 1, a. 8
Hegelexplicit
Faith and reason do not oppose each other: religion and philosophy have the same object, the true, but under two forms. Religion grasps it in representations (Vorstellung), narratives and images; philosophy thinks it in the concept (Begriff). Philosophy therefore does not destroy religion: it raises its content to its highest form.
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §573 · Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Lectures)
Descartesexplicit
Dedicating his Meditations to the Sorbonne, Descartes argues that the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, truths of faith, can be demonstrated by natural reason. Faith and reason thus agree: far from contradicting each other, philosophy comes to confirm and rationally ground the teachings of religion.
Meditations on First Philosophy, Dedicatory Letter to the Sorbonne · Discourse on Method, IV
Lockeexplicit
For Locke faith and reason do not conflict: Christianity is reasonable, and reason is the last judge of what may count as divine revelation. Faith never contradicts the clear truths of reason but adds truths beyond its reach, which reason authenticates: a harmony with a measure of separate domains (the magistrate does not judge salvation, revelation does not overturn evidence).
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) · Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, ch. 18 (faith and reason, and their respective provinces)
Kantexplicit
Theoretical reason can neither prove nor refute God, but practical reason postulates a rational faith attuned to morality. Faith and knowledge thus occupy distinct domains while harmonising under the primacy of the practical, with a fideist nuance since faith remains a need of reason rather than a matter of proof.
Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to the Second Edition (B XXX) · Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
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Platoinferable
The divine is not the object of a faith opposed to reason but is grasped by intellect: the Good and the Forms serve as the divine principle, and the set out to prove the existence of gods rationally. The myths (the cave, Er, the chariot) do not contradict the logos but extend it where demonstration stops, in a continuity of the religious and the rational.
Laws, X, 893b-899d · Republic, VII, 517b-c
George Berkeleyinferable
A bishop as much as a philosopher, Berkeley sees no opposition between well-conducted reason and faith: his immaterialism presents itself as a rational demonstration that issues in the existence of God and defends religion against the free-thinkers. Reason, far from threatening faith, would be its natural ally once freed from matter, the mother of scepticism and irreligion. This confidence in the agreement of reason and revelation ranges him on the side of harmony, in the line of an , rather than of a fideism of the leap.
Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Preface · Principles of Human Knowledge, §§133-156
The disputed question: argue against yourself firstExerciseAttested · Thomas Aquinas
Before you answer, argue the opposing case better than its advocate would.
In the Summa Theologiae, never advances a thesis without first marshalling the strongest objections against it, then giving his reasoned position, then answering each objection one by one. This scholastic method of the quaestio turns disagreement into an instrument: a truth that holds withstands the best opposing reasons. Today, before settling a contested question, it keeps you from fighting a caricature and gives your position a tested foundation.
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