Faith and reason need each other

WITH hot-button issues popping up these days, we need to understand that the proper way to handle them is to use both our faith and reason. Not just faith alone without reason, nor reason alone without faith.

We have to avoid both fideism and rationalism. The former can be typified by what we call as the ¨Catolicos cerrados¨ in the sense of people who just have faith alone without articulating, explaining or defending it through reason.

The latter, rationalism, can refer to those who are closed to any appeal to faith, and depends solely on reason. Those with secularized attitudes, or with exclusively scientific frame of mind can fall under this category.

Both faith and reason have to be together, because actually one cannot be without the other. Our nature, our human condition demand it that way. We are beings meant for believing and for reasoning.

Our thoughts and desires, even our feelings, should learn to blend faith and reason together, without confusing them. We have to respect both the legitimate distinction between the two, and the mutual need for each other.

Faith needs reason because, first of all, it is a supernatural gift. It´s God sharing his knowledge about himself and ourselves with us. It is the beginning of our life in God, since we have been made in his image and likeness and as adopted children of his in Christ.

Faith needs reason because it needs to be lived and expressed in accord to our nature, and that is, to be rational. We cannot articulate that faith, express it, develop and spread it, nor can we defend it, if it is not put in terms of reason, and of course, in the other aspects that define our humanity, like our psychology, emotions, sociability, etc.

Our reason also needs faith, because it would just be floating around on a vast and seemingly endless ocean if it is not grounded on faith. It is in the core of our heart that though we do not and cannot know everything, we somehow presume a stable reference point for our reason to work. And that is supplied by faith.

Of course, our reason can choose to ground itself on many other possibilities—simply on what are perceptible by the senses, or what are understood by our intelligence, or by itself. I must say though that in these options, reason could not rest contented but would still look for a more stable reference point. This is what faith does.

Christian faith is a gift, a result of God revealing himself to us not only in some images or ideas or signs, but in God himself coming to us by becoming man, Jesus Christ, who took up all the condition of humanity without committing sin, just to be with us, to fully reveal God to us and make God available to us all the time.

This is the distinction of the Christian faith. It is initiated by God himself. It is not a human construct. It is God who from eternity entered into our time and history to give us the fullness not only of revelation, but of his very own self, as St. Paul says when he used the terms ¨fullness of God¨ and ¨fullness of Christ¨ to refer to the goal meant for us.

And so, when we talk about the RH, or divorce, or other issues likely to come, like abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, and others that have an eminently moral, ethical and spiritual character, we should see to it that we use both faith and reason.

Especially in these issues, we cannot use reason that is based and developed along social, economic or political lines alone. That would not be enough. That would frame the whole discussion improperly, restricting it from its most important foundations.

We should be wary of the dangerous inputs from ideologies that disregard if not ridicule the religious angle of these issues. We are not lacking in proofs to say that contraception leads to abortion, that divorce generates more divorce leaving behind most pitiable victims of helpless children and women, etc.

Our leaders—whether in civil society or government or schools, etc.--should start realizing more deeply that they just cannot anymore remain in the purely temporal, material and natural aspects of the issues, because the issues emerging these days now heavily involve eternal, spiritual and supernatural considerations.

They have to realize that no one can completely ignore religion in many of our public issues. They need to raise their leadership to the next level.