Faith and Reason
The study of the relationship between religious faith and rational justification, and of whether and how religious belief can be rational.
Definition
The branch of philosophy of religion concerned with the epistemic status of religious belief — whether faith requires, exceeds, or conflicts with evidence and reason.
Scope
This area covers the principal positions in religious epistemology: evidentialism, which demands proportioning belief to evidence; reformed epistemology, which treats belief in God as properly basic; fideism, which subordinates or opposes reason to faith; and the ethics of belief, including pragmatic arguments such as Pascal's wager and James's will to believe. It does not cover the substantive theistic arguments themselves, treated as a separate area.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- Must religious belief be supported by evidence to be rational?
- Can belief in God be rational without argument, as a properly basic belief?
- Is there a tension between the virtues of faith and the demands of reason?
- Are there legitimate non-evidential, pragmatic grounds for religious belief?
Key theories
- Reformed epistemology
- Plantinga argues that belief in God can be properly basic — rationally held without being inferred from other beliefs — because it can be produced by a reliable, God-given cognitive faculty, the sensus divinitatis, and so can enjoy warrant.
- Evidentialist requirement
- On the evidentialist view associated with Clifford, it is wrong always and everywhere to believe anything on insufficient evidence, so religious belief is rational only if supported by adequate evidence.
History
Medieval thinkers such as Aquinas sought to harmonize faith with reason, distinguishing truths of revelation from those of natural reason. The Reformation and Kierkegaard emphasized faith over rational demonstration. The nineteenth-century Clifford–James exchange framed the ethics of belief, and the late-twentieth-century reformed epistemology of Plantinga and Wolterstorff challenged the evidentialist demand directly.
Debates
- Whether religious belief needs evidential support
- Evidentialists hold that belief must be proportioned to evidence, while reformed epistemologists argue that belief in God can be properly basic and rational without argument.
- Whether pragmatic grounds for belief are legitimate
- James defends believing on non-evidential, prudential grounds when an option is live, forced, and momentous; Clifford and other evidentialists condemn belief beyond the evidence as a violation of intellectual duty.
Key figures
- Thomas Aquinas
- Blaise Pascal
- Søren Kierkegaard
- W. K. Clifford
- William James
- Alvin Plantinga
- Richard Swinburne
Related topics
Seminal works
- plantinga2000
- clifford1877
- james1896
Frequently asked questions
- Are faith and reason necessarily opposed?
- Most philosophers of religion deny that they must conflict. Positions range from full harmony, as in Aquinas, through reformed epistemology's claim that faith can be rational without argument, to fideism, which subordinates reason to faith.
- What does it mean to call a belief properly basic?
- A properly basic belief is one that is rationally held without being inferred from other beliefs, like ordinary perceptual or memory beliefs; reformed epistemologists argue that belief in God can have this status.