The Interdependence of Faith and Reason

Abstract

So writes Sir Arthur Balfour. Is either of these statements sound? Or must each, in some sense, be absorbed in the other? It is the thesis of this paper that always and everywhere faith is the life blood of reason. Without faith, reason could do nothing. And that tenable faith ought always to be guided, so far as possible, by the light of reason. In short, that in all our sound believing faith and reason are interdependent. This thesis is important for at least one theoretical and one practical reason. It is important in theory because, if a sound thesis, it undermines the position of irrational extremists, like Barth, who spurn reason, and the rationalist, empiricist extremists who overlook or minimize reason's dependence on faith or affirm the possibility of rational certainty. It is important, practically, because it destroys the dangerous illusion that science, because (it is said) it trusts nothing but empirically verified conclusions, is the only trustworthy source of knowledge, free from the farce of faith. And it underlines the positive importance and possibility of knowledge not only in physical science but in the realms that matter most, in ethics, politics, religion and philosophy. For the truth is that science, philosophy and religion all rest solidly on faith. But what do we mean by faith and reason? In this paper the term faith means belief not in contradiction but in excess of the precise degree of assurance warranted by the measure of probability implied by the evidence and critical thought about it. This conception of faith, then, in spite of other legitimate usages to which the term is often put, deliberately includes the concepts of religious belief, of scientific theory, hypothesis, postulate, presupposition and assumption. The thesis of this paper is clearest when these are all subsumed, since they are here conceived as forms of it, under the general termfaith as just defined. There are two conceptions of reason relevant here. One is the ideal of rational necessity as in mathematics and logic. The other is the ideal of coherence or adequacy in explaining and interpreting the given data. This paper affirms that, concerning matters of fact, reason does not attain certainty-and that some of our basic beliefs, while lacking certainty, are nevertheless held, in practice and as presuppositions of extended structures of belief, as though they were absolutely certain. That measure of belief which is precisely warranted by coherent interpretation of the evidence is what is attributed to the work of reason. At most then, only necessary truth might be defined as certain and free from faith (though some-Trueblood, Peirce, etc.-would significantly question even this). Any belief in excess of the warrant of evidence interpreted in terms of the ideal of coherence or adequacy is faith. Since rational necessity is not attained with regard to matters of fact (and since the ideal of coherence does not give certainty), any ma* WILLIAM E. KERSTETTER is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio. As a chaplain, he served in the Army Air Forces in the Arizona desert, Japan, and the Philippines. Author of Locke's Capitalistic Economy and Human Freedom, in The Philosophical Forum, 1943; Church that Makes a Difference, The Christian Century, October 3, 1945; Steps Toward Winning G.I.'s, The Christian Century Pulpit, November, 1945, and other articles. A Fellow of the National Council on Religion in Higher Education.