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When Truths Collide-Part 2

by William Ryzek  
7/04/2009 / Christian Living

Some think, and quite adamantly, that the very joining of the words ‘reason’ and ‘rational’ in conjunction with the Christian ‘faith’ is contradictory. This prejudice against reason, even though it is indispensable to thinking and communication, is really about two issues: how much credence should we to give it as people of faith and can we depend on it too much?

There are two words that will help us address these questions. The first word is “rational’ which means in general usage to be sensible, to have sound judgment, to be sane, clear headed and to think logically. Put another way, being ‘rational’ is related to being ‘reasonable’. Usually, when we think someone is reasonable we characterize them as being approachable, not given to flights of fantasy, able to argue not merely to win an argument but to persuade an opponent to change their minds, quick to listen, slow to speak, and able to appreciate another’s point of view while disagreeing with it. It seems to me these are worthy characteristics that all people of faith should embrace.

Of course the opposite of ‘rational’ is ‘irrational’ and most of us know someone who makes little sense, sometimes given to hysteria, bombastic, argumentative, thinks truth is their sole possession and tries to make their case with volume rather than logical disputation.

The point here is that reason is a part of the operations of the mind that God has given us in order to be lucid in a world that is not and, furthermore, without it we could not make sense of either what we hear or what we read. And this, or course, is important because hearing and reading have to do with the Word. And, in fact, part of the meaning of ‘logos’ used to refer to the Word Incarnate includes ‘reason’ and ‘rational’. God is not irrational nor unreasonable so we shouldn’t be either.

What Christians really should object to is the second term, namely ‘rationalism’, because it rejects any truth-claims as genuinely true if they don’t stand up to the rigors of logical discourse and might otherwise ‘defy’ reason. Rationalism arose during the Enlightenment when science and the scientific method were becoming the new standard for ‘truth’ while, at the same time, all things religious (particularly religious authority) were being severely scrutinized and, for the most part, rejected including anything supernatural, miraculous or spiritual.

One influential theological movement that grew out of this new world view, and incorrectly called ‘Christian’, is Deism that, among other things, dispenses with all things supernatural by describing Deity as a ‘clockwork’ God that merely creates the universe, sets it into motion and then promptly leaves it to its own devices. In the place of any supernatural dimension to Christian thought, rationalism became married to naturalism and the only real truth is what is found and explained by natural processes and science.

Not surprisingly, the proverbial baby gets thrown out with the bathwater when, because of rationalism, reason itself becomes suspect and a kind of anti-intellectualism sets in regarding matters of faith. The result is a kind of dumbing down of the sophisticated and profound aspects of the Christian faith so as to not make it too difficult nor require much effort to understand and this plays right into the hands of those who think our faith is for simpletons. The fact is when the spread of Christianity brought it into contact with Greek philosophy and the Greco-Roman mystery religions, it had to not only understand them but provide a persuasive answer, all of which had the issue of truth at center. While the truth of Christianity didn’t rely on reason, its presentation of the Truth over and against these other colliding truths did.

Now, some might object to all this and say that the Gospel is so simple even a child can understand it, and this is true. But, the ‘deep’ things of God and the ‘meat’ of the Word of which Paul spoke are not for the intellectually lazy. Nor are the problems we face in the world that await answers from us. The Lord Himself invites us to “come reason together…” and the stories of Paul in the book of Acts presenting the Gospel and ‘disputing daily’ show that reason employed by the Spirit can convince people that the our truth is the Truth for all human beings.

But, there is another aspect to this, as there will be throughout this series, and that is the polemical side that deals with the colliding truths that various Christian’s argue over. (I hope you caught that most of this article has to do with the apologetic side.) For example, when certain theological issues threatened to tear early Christianity apart, like the Christological debates prompted by the teachings of Arius, only careful, studied and reasoned responses eventually won the day for what would become orthodoxy. (By the way, even after deemed heretical, Arianism is alive and well in our day disguised in certain theologies). It is dealing with this particular problem that reason needs some help, not with obviously irrational and misguided arguments, but the more subtle and dangerous ones that are dividing Christianity; more on this in the next installment.

William Ryzek, PhD has been both a pastor and academic for several years. He has published articles in various magazines and newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected]

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