Abstract
How do religious faith and human understanding relate to each other? On this question there is no consensus, nor has there ever been in the past. The history of Western philosophy confronts us with a complex diversity of views that grew into more or less indisputable standard positions. These positions are not the strict result of theoretical reflection. Their acceptance is largely based on pre-theoretical considerations, the self-evidence of a spiritual intuition or religious motivation. The different views of the realtionship of religion and reason can be grouped into a limited number of basic models or motifs. This essay will discuss seven of them as they arose in the Christian tradition. I will name them as follows: identification, conflict, subordination, complementarity, foundation, authenticity and transformation. For the sake of brevity the text focuses on the origins and first manifestations of these models. But we will add again and again fragments of further developments to make clear how resilient these models are. They continue to assert themselves even in new periods of time. Their diversity keeps on challenging us, up to the present day, to reconsider the self-evidence of our own position in the debate on religion and reason.
Highlights
The different views of the relationship of religion and reason can be grouped into a limited number of basic models or motifs
This essay will discuss seven of them as they arose in the Christian tradition
Abelard, too, embraced the continuity between human intellect and Christian faith. Historia calamitatum, he writes that I am of the opinion “that nothing could be believed unless it was first understood”
Summary
How do religious faith and human understanding relate to each other? On this question there is no consensus, nor has there ever been in the past. When one consults history carefully, according to Niebuhr (1956:xii), one will discover that Christians have given five types of answers to the problem of religion and culture. He calls these five main types respectively: Christ against culture, The Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox and Christ the transformer of culture. In many cases our deepest intuitions and motivations seem to be so self-evident that they function as an unchallenged point of departure for our analyses; in a sense we all are held captive by the ground motive It is more often than not a paradigmatic framework within which the person involved discusses subjects concerning faith and science
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