When Faith Goes Beyond Reason

In my previous post we discussed how faith is used both in daily life and in religious contexts as trusting in the word of another person. Reason helps us to know that a person is trustworthy, but only faith can ultimately accept what that person tells us. Placing your trust in someone (whether God or a friend) is a kind of “leap” of faith. 

This leap isn’t opposed to reason, but is in-line with it. As Kreeft and Tacelli put it, “Faith is a leap, but a leap in the light, not in the dark” [1] (see my previous post for more on this: Is Faith Reasonable?).

But what happens when we're asked to accept something that reason cannot verify? Is it even rational to believe something that cannot be verified with reason?

Faith is Intimidating

As a recovering control freak, I can attest that making a leap of faith can take us out of our comfort zone. It is easy to withhold belief until we see the proof for ourselves, especially when a claim is great. In that way, reason acts as a safety net. Sometimes it is our responsibility to verify things for ourselves, but sometimes it is healthy that we simply believe other people.

But what happens when you tell me something I can’t possibly prove?

I recall the first time my wife told me she loved me. We’d been dating for several months, and by that time I had the same feelings toward her. It seemed reasonable that I should believe her. But accepting love involves risk, opening oneself up to being hurt. Reason can tell me that her claim was reasonable, that there weren't any signs she was lying. But reason stops there, like a telescope trying to look through a brick wall. I couldn’t prove that she actually loved me. I would need to accept her words on faith, or remain safe and skeptical. You can’t be duped if you never trust anyone, but you’ll also miss out on a great deal of joy.

Spoiler alert. I trusted her.

Trust requires that we sacrifice some control.

And just as we cannot always prove things in this life, so too does God reveal things that we cannot prove on our own. That is, things that we can know only through faith.

Knowledge Beyond Reason

Here lies a dilemma. You see, some things that God revealed are things that man can reason to on his own, like the existence of the soul (Matt 16:26) [2]. But he also tells us things that are utterly beyond reason’s ability to verify, like that God is a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19). We simply cannot know this for ourselves unless God tells us about it. The safety net is gone.

If we’ve deemed God trustworthy, then we don’t get to decide to believe only some of what he tells us. This isn’t Burger King where you can have it your way. This requires that we relinquish some control and accept what he says on his authority, not on whether we want to believe it.

Reason has led us this far, but only faith can continue from here. If we deem God trustworthy, then it’s only reasonable that we take the leap and accept what he reveals, what reason can and can't prove. We can remain skeptics, safe and undecided. Or we can take the leap and assent our belief to truths beyond the horizons of reason.

A Contradiction?

Now some readers might be skeptical of what I’m saying. Saying that God reveals things that are beyond our ability to prove may sound like a contradiction. Afterall, if someone were to say that 2 + 2 = 5, we wouldn’t say that is above our ability to prove, we’d say that he’s speaking nonsense.

But this objection misses the point. Saying that something is beyond our ability to prove is akin to saying that Einstein’s theory of relativity is beyond a 2-year-old’s ability to prove.

God’s revelation builds upon the truths that we know through reason, much like calculus builds upon the principles of arithmetic learned in grade school. Just because a student isn’t yet capable of understanding concepts years above him doesn’t mean that the higher concepts contradict what he does know. In that way, divine revelation doesn’t contradict what reason can know, but shines a light beyond it.
 

"God’s revelation builds upon the truths that we know through reason, much like calculus builds upon the principles of arithmetic"
 

To this point, Pope St. John Paul II explained that “there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason” [3]. Put more bluntly, Bishop Barron says “if you are sacrificing your intellect in any way, you’re not dealing with authentic faith” [4].

Following St. Peter’s Lead

To anyone who struggles to make the leap of faith, we have a great example in St. Peter. In the famous Bread of Life discourse, Jesus taught his followers a very challenging lesson. With a crowd of disciples around him, Jesus explained something that drove most of his followers away: to eat his body and drink his blood.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you (John 6:53). 

Jesus lost many disciples after this teaching: “many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him” (John 6:66). They were willing to believe some of what he said, but this broke the camel's back.

You can imagine that this was an awkward moment for the twelve apostles. They’ve dedicated their lives to following Jesus, and he just taught a hard lesson that drove most of his followers away. Now it was their turn to decide. Would they follow him even now?

Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:67-69).

Though Jesus’ teaching was hard to accept, Peter clung to his trust in Jesus. Even when Jesus’ teaching was beyond his understanding, Peter knew Jesus to be the “Holy One of God,” and he trusted Jesus’ words even through his own confusion.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church echoes this, saying “revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives” (CCC 157).

What’s at Stake?

I find it disturbing how many people these days believe religious faith to be opposed to reason. I think many in our culture would agree with Mark Twain’s fictional character in saying that "Faith is believing what you know ain't so" [5].

But this is only a caricature of what we believe as Catholics. And it is a caricature that we must work to dispel. We live in a world that is becoming more and more hostile toward religion, especially Christianity. It is no longer cool to be religious anymore.

More and more people are disassociating themselves with organized religion. A 2017 study done by the Pew Research Center showed that the number of U.S adults that identify as “spiritual but not religious” rose to 27% in 2017 (8% higher than in 2012). That is one in every four people you meet, and that was back in 2017. This increase was largely fed by an 11% decrease in the number of people who describe themselves as both “spiritual and religious” (48% as of 2017) [6].

In our post-enlightenment era, our culture places a high degree of importance on human reason, while making religious faith look like something appropriate only for children. It’s adorable when a little boy has faith in Santa, but faith won’t cut it in the real world. Our culture would have us believe that religious faith requires an intellectual nose-dive. 

Yet so many people cling to a feeling that there is something more to this material world, something “spiritual” (just as long as it isn’t religious). Religion falls out of vogue, but humanity will never fully lose its sense that there is more to this material world, though it may not know what to call it.

I believe that this gives us an opportunity. By showing those around us that ours is not a naive faith, but a faith that embraces both faith and reason, we can straighten the stigmatized image of an outdated and superstitious church. As John Paul the Great reminds us: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth” [7]. Faith and reason were never meant to be pulled apart. I believe it is now our job to help those around us put them back together.

For further discussion on this topic, see my previous post: Is Faith Reasonable?

Sources

1. Peter J. Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, Handbook of Catholic Apologetics (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 24.

2. There are numerous ways that one might reason to the existence of the soul. Frank Sheed uses a simple example stemming from the fact that we produce ideas, which are non-material by nature: “If we are continuously producing things which have no attribute of matter [ideas], it seems reasonable to conclude that there is in us some element which is not matter to produce them. This element we call spirit.”

Frank J. Sheed, Theology for Beginners (Cincinnati: Servant Books, 1981), 11.

3. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, para 53
https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html

4. Bishop Barron, Bishop Barron on What Faith Is and What Faith Isn't, timestamp: 6:30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_4PSgFjtvI&ab_channel=BishopRobertBarron

5. Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" in Following the Equator, ch. 12 header (New York and London: Harper Brothers Publishers,1903), 132.

Note: In the context of his literary work, this saying is attributed to a boy in one of Mark Twain’s works. It is unclear whether Mark Twain himself would agree with this definition of faith. Regardless, this saying is often attributed to him as having said it himself.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Following_the_Equator/pHtNAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

6. Lipka, Michael, and Claire Gecewicz. “More Americans Now Say They're Spiritual but Not Religious.” Pew Research Center, 6 Sept. 2017, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/06/more-americans-now-say-theyre-spiritual-but-not-religious/.

7. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, Opening sentence
https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html

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