Today and tomorrow I am posting tastes of two very interesting pieces by my friend Steven Greydanus. Today’s piece tackles the relationship of faith and reason in his very Catholic mind.
***
Question from a young Catholic correspondent:
What’s the difference between faith and reason, if we reasonably believe in the Faith? Or what’s the relationship? Like, why do we need faith if we’re reasoning though what we believe?
Which is a question, on one level, for a book, or even a library section, rather than a short essay! Still, how can we at least begin to answer such a question?
I’m inclined to begin here: It seems to me that some kind of faith or trust is involved in knowing almost anything at all. We are fallible, finite knowers, and our senses and our intellect offer, at best, a narrow window onto reality. Using this window entails some level of trust regarding both the knowability of reality itself and the access to reality afforded by our cognitive toolset.
Most of us—particularly if we ever took a philosophy class, or stayed up late enough at night chatting with friends (perhaps in high school or college), or read books of a certain type, or possibly even if we’ve done none of these things—have at some point entertained questions like these:
Advertisement
