I was looking inside my Omnibus III book, as I know all of you do, and I came across a discussion question that was asked:
"Since the rise of Christianity, one of the great tensions in Western culture has been framed as 'faith v. reason.' How do faith and reason fit together?"
Especially after I was exposed to the philosophers when I started high school, that dilemma has been on my mind pretty often. There's a lot in the Bible that makes sense to anyone who thinks about it long enough, but when you get to doctrines like Christ's Incarnation or Resurrection, the only way we can possibly accept it is through faith.
When reading church history, one thing I've noticed is how often people try to resolve the dilemma. The church fathers spent much of their time reconciling Platonism with New Testament doctrines. Later on in Medieval Europe, Scholasticism, with its most famous adherent, Thomas Aquinas, picked up where our Ancient forefathers left off, producing several different hermeneutical techniques (whether they were good or not, well, that's another post ;-) which clearly show the influence of philosophy. When the Reformation came around, Protestant scholars like Luther or Calvin often used the sophisticated rules of logic to aid their Biblical studies. And likely the most recognizable to us today, the liberals of the 19th and 20th centuries often compromised such doctrines as 6-Day Creation and the Virgin Birth in order to make the Bible fit neatly into their scientific theories.
With all that in mind, I think of one of my favorite parts of the Bible, Acts 17. Here, Faith (Paul) and Reason (the Greeks) meet. I find Paul's approach to witnessing to the very-philosophical Gentiles interesting. Instead of completely dismissing reason and philosophy, he uses both to argue his case. That isn't to say that he embraced their philosophies himself, but it does show that we can arrive at truths taught in the Bible simply by thinking rationally about things around us, i.e. the depravity of man, the basic moral law, etc.
But where reason falls short is when you try to explain why man is fallen or prove that Christ is God. If we were able to explain away every difficulty in the Bible, there would be no place for faith. "But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised." (1 Corinthians 2:14)
In the end, it appears that reason is best used when it is the servant of faith. Nothing should dissuade us of what we believe is taught in the Bible. But when witnessing, teaching, or studying, reason helps us arrive at conclusions or forcefully present an argument. In church history, when orthodox Christianity is embraced, intellectual pursuits don't diminish, but flourish. Take a look at all the books written in the Reformation, Puritan era, Great Awakening, etc. On the other hand, when a culture abandons Christ, things go downhill. Ever heard of Postmodernism, anyone?
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