Faith and Reason
fideism · reason and revelation
The relationship between religious belief and rational justification — fideism, evidentialism, and everything between.
In practice
The structure recurs wherever a commitment precedes the evidence for it: the question is whether the commitment is defective for that, or whether some commitments can only be made in advance.
The common mistake
Assuming the debate is only between believers and non-believers. The sharpest attacks on rational proofs of religion have come from within religious traditions, Kierkegaard among them.
The relation between faith and reason is the question of whether religious belief can be established, supported or overturned by argument — and what follows for belief if it cannot.
The positions
Three broad answers recur. Faith and reason may be in conflict, so that accepting one means limiting the other. They may be compatible, with reason establishing some claims and revelation supplying what reason cannot reach. Or they may be independent, answering different questions and unable to contradict each other.
Aquinas's synthesis
Thomas Aquinas built the most influential compatibilist account in the thirteenth century, after Aristotle's works re-entered Latin Europe through Arabic commentators including Averroes and Avicenna. Reason can demonstrate that God exists — that is what the Five Ways attempt — while doctrines such as the Trinity are known only through revelation. Grace perfects nature rather than replacing it, so philosophy and theology cannot ultimately conflict.
Anselm had earlier described the program as faith seeking understanding: belief comes first and reason explores what is already held.
The dissenting lines
Tertullian's question about what Athens has to do with Jerusalem marks the oldest objection: the content of faith is not the kind of thing argument reaches. Kierkegaard gave the sharpest modern version, arguing that faith involves a leap that no argument can perform for you, and that treating belief as the conclusion of a proof misunderstands the commitment it is.
From the other direction, evidentialism holds that beliefs should be proportioned to evidence and that religious belief fails the standard. Reformed epistemology replies that belief in God may be properly basic — held without inference, in the way belief in other minds is — which shifts the dispute to what a rational belief must rest on.
The question connects to epistemology, since both sides need an account of what justifies a belief.
Concept web
Open the full webQuestions
What is the relationship between faith and reason?
Philosophers have described them as conflicting, compatible or independent. Compatibilists such as Aquinas held that reason establishes some religious claims while revelation supplies what reason cannot reach.
What did Aquinas say about faith and reason?
That they cannot ultimately conflict, since both come from God. Reason can demonstrate God's existence, while doctrines such as the Trinity are known only through revelation. Grace perfects nature rather than replacing it.
What is fideism?
The view that religious belief rests on faith rather than reason and does not require rational justification. Kierkegaard's account of faith as a leap beyond what argument can establish is the best-known version.