Reason and Faith

A reader writes:

Can reason lead us to faith in Christ or is it by the Grace of God and faith alone?  I ask this because of the big debate going on now with Intelligent Design.

Reason can allow us to know certain truths about God and his nature–the fact that he exists and that he has certain attributes, for example.

Reason alone cannot teach us the doctrine of the Trinity or that Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity or that we are to have faith in him.

Instead, reason can offer evidences or "motives of credibility" that make it rational for us to place our faith in Christ, but these do not compel or force us to place our faith in Christ. This is where the grace of God comes in.

God’s grace elevates will and allows it to respond to the call to place our faith in Christ. It is then that we either cooperate with or reject God’s grace as we make the decision to put our faith in Christ or not.

Thus one might be able to construct Intelligent Design arguments sufficient to show the existence of God and certain things about him (e.g., he is intelligent, he is a designer). These arguments (with others) then can make it rational to embrace faith in Christ, but they do not prove the Christian faith in the same way that the existence and certain attributes of God can be proved.

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Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

One thought on “Reason and Faith”

  1. I think it’s important to distinguish natural reasoning from scientific reasoning. Scientific reasoning tries to figure out is physical observable “A” can be explained by physical model “B”. Nothing that transcends physical phenomena is part of scientific reasoning, strictly speaking. Scientific reasoning is a small subset of natural reasoning. Natural reason can indeed allow us to know some things about God. The subset of natural reason called science doesn’t deal with anything transcendent.

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