Good Faith And Reason Essay Example

Faith and reason are considered to be the sources of authority on which one can rest his beliefs. The reason could be defined as the principles for a methodological investigation that could be intellectual, moral or religious. Reasoning does not follow the experiences gained from traditions or higher authorities. On the other hand, faith, involves claims that cannot be explained through reasoning. Faith requires a complete trust from an individual. Believer of faith act on the will of authority that usually comes from the superior source such as the revelation that could be direct or indirect such as testimony from someone.
The problem between faith and reason arises from the fact that revelations, which are the authority in faith, are described in sacred pronouncements that are supported by the divine authority. These sacred pronouncements, oral or written, are usually in narrative or story form. Most of the times, these revelations cannot be evaluated or interpreted rationally or in the light of scientific facts. Thus the basic issue here arises that how the faith could be related to reason so it could be justified as the credible source of authority.
History of Christianity proves a relation between reason and faith and there had been an agreement that the two are compatible with each other. The Faith of Christianity is assumed to be reasonable for number of reasons that a person must understand in a similar way he understands the scientific facts.
Jacob points out, in his letter, towards the critical and intellectual capabilities that are rewarded by God to humans. He criticizes the faith on the fact that if man is to surrender blindly to the religion, then there is no use of these abilities and man is worse than the animals to do so. Here he seems to be confused or misunderstood exactly like many others on the issue of faith and reason. If he had read the sacred book analytically, he would have known that religion itself gives the importance to the reasoning and encourages the people to use their mental abilities since they are the signs of God. Bible, itself, requires the human being to gain knowledge and wisdom from different sources such as nature and history. Intellectual capabilities of human being are promoted by Bible as the reflection of God himself.
In his Letter, Jacob points out his finger to the historical events and calls them just fables that people made out on their own. He criticizes them for being irrational. , Christian faith agrees with the fact that there is an objective source of knowledge and rationality. Christian finds that source to be the God, who is rational, wise and all knowing. God created the universe and made the man with rational capabilities discover and identify the secrets of this universe. The reason is that Christian faith does not go against the laws of reasoning. Some of its doctrines and principles are though often regarded as surpassing the human rationality, but they are not irrational. Jacob refers to the story of Moses in this regard and raises a question as to how be it possible that people made a yoke an idol just because the Moses came down late from the mountain. It can be seen that he does not realize the fact that people at that time had the same problem of faith and went after material things rather than having a faith in the unseen God. It is because they were more inclined to the reasoning that they couldn’t find in having a faith on God who is unseen. Had they committed to their beliefs and remained on the righteous path, they would have acquired knowledge of true God. It is because an individual is required to believe in something before he knows about its truthfulness. In other words, knowledge without commitment is disbelief and commitment without knowledge is irrationalities. It means that faith is an inevitable component of reasoning, and hence it could be said that faith and reason are complementary to each other.
Jacob also seems unable to understand this very fact probably because of the events he went through in his life and different views that he came across during his studies, which made him confused about religion. Christian is required in his life to be what St. Paul called the renewing of the mind. It means that he should use his cognitive abilities at their full capacity to understand the signs of God through His creations. If a person expands his spiritual and mental abilities, it takes him from an initial stage of faith to the higher stage where he then becomes the reflection of God.
He concludes in his letter that it makes no difference to him whether he is Christian or a Jew and that he consider himself to be good as long as he adores God, in any way. He also does not believe Moses and Jesus to be the Prophets and called them mere orator. Here it could be explained with an example that if someone believes in a scientific law or fact such as e = mc^2, he do so on the basis of his faith in the authority and credibility of source from whom these laws have been learned. Faith on divine authority exactly follows the same proposition. The concept of Prophet Hood is also same but here the writer of this letter is unable to understand it.
It can thus be concluded that reasoning have a vital role in faith. A person can increase his faith by increasing knowledge since the faith increases more the person comes to know about the object. It could also be concluded that faith and reason are not opposed to each other, but they support each other. The faith of Jesus was not the lack of knowledge in fact it was based on the ultimate knowledge He had of God.
 

Works Cited

Nash, R. H. (1994). Faith and Reason. Michigan: Zondervan.