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11/08/2015 3:15 am  #11


Re: Protestantism and reason

Etzelnik wrote:

seigneur wrote:

In what sense did Luther and Calvin repudiate reason? In all sorts of Christianity, rationality is in a complicated perspective, because Scripture itself repudiates both empiricism and intellectualism, and it emphasises that thing called faith (which has its own pitfalls, if not defined carefully).

Would you care to elaborate? Perhaps in the Christian half of Scripture, but I am not familiar with any fideist necessity from scripture.

Since your question is about Christianity, I meant Scripture as Christians interpret them. Fideism has its pitfalls, but not everybody recognises this, and so fideism is fairly prevalent in Protestantism particularly. Historically, Catholicism is not clean from fideism either.

You might say there's no fideist necessity from Scripture - and I would agree - but the way Christianity in general has played out is not easy to accommodate to this.

Etzelnik wrote:

Why can't faith be conviction born of reason? That's how I always understood "The righteous shall live by his faith".

This is how Hebrews 11 reads, faith is "evidence" (KJV) and "confidence" (NIV). I wish there were less Christians agreeing with the atheist assertion that faith is the direct opposite of evidence and reason. Unfortunately, many Protestants (proper Protestants, e.g. evangelicals, Baptists, not arguable Protestants like Anglicans) easily equate all rational argument and scientific analysis with "men's wisdom" and shun it.

 

11/08/2015 4:41 am  #12


Re: Protestantism and reason

I'm not even sure it's proper to oppose πίστις to "reason". If you understand the word in a sense closer to "trust" then the opposition doesn't even seem coherent. I do not have, in a sense opposed to reason, "faith" that my father loves me, but I do have πίστις. Or, for a negative example, Othello has not lost "faith", in a sense opposed to reason, in Desdemona, but he has lost πίστις for her, and in that case reason become destructive of the marriage and the tool of Iago.


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11/08/2015 7:22 am  #13


Re: Protestantism and reason

Alexander wrote:

So it would seem that a Catholic might agree with you that faith can be "born of reason", as long as they don't start claiming that faith follows necessarily from rational argument, or that faith has to be born of reason.

What I want to know is why not? I would tend to the side that only that which can be reasonably (even if not mathematically) demonstrated by the intellect is obligatory. Otherwise, from whence springs this duty? How can a man be obligated to believe that which he cannot verify?

I asked this question some time ago in regards to trinitarian doctrine, and I do not feel that I have received an adequate response yet.
 

Last edited by Etzelnik (11/08/2015 8:21 am)


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11/08/2015 1:54 pm  #14


Re: Protestantism and reason

Alexander wrote:

As for an "obligation to believe", I think that might be too strong a way of putting it. We have reasons to believe what is revealed; given these beliefs, we have obligations to act in certain ways. I'm not sure we have an "obligation to believe" anything.

Is it possible to achieve salvation without belief in the doctrine of the trinity?

In any case, I'm not sure what your argument is against my two points.
(a) Faith does not follow necessarily from rational arguments. This is surely uncontroversial. Even if faith is reducible to "conviction in one's beliefs", such conviction does not always arise from even the best philosophical and scientific arguments. There is always a degree of subjective "assent" to an argument's conclusion. And if faith is not so reducible - perhaps including ideas like "trust in the authority of another" or "willingness to follow the commands of another" - it's even more obviously not going to follow from most forms of argument.

And I would assert that faith is only mandated insofar as the idea is rational, as opposed to arbitrary.

(b) Faith does not have to be born of reason. This seems again uncontroversial. Most people who have faith have not studied the philosophical arguments surrounding their beliefs, and it seems unusual to condemn them for this, especially if they are not capable of doing so.
 

While undeniably helpful, such uninformed faith is not that which is demanded of man. I simply don't see the difference between this and the Hindu who has faith because he trusts the Maharaja.


If your question was specifically "why should we believe Trinitarian doctrine?", the obvious (though unhelpful) answer is "because we take it to be revealed by God". If your question is more generally "how do we know that something is revealed by God?", this is certainly harder to answer, but it is faced by all putative revelations, not just Christianity.

It was the latter. And I recognise the problems that poses for all revelations, and as such I tend towards the (somewhat heretical) position that if a man does all he can to understand and yet still doesn't find the Mosaic revelation convincing he is not guilty in the eyes of God.
 


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11/08/2015 2:23 pm  #15


Re: Protestantism and reason

Etzelnik wrote:

It was the latter. And I recognise the problems that poses for all revelations, and as such I tend towards the (somewhat heretical) position that if a man does all he can to understand and yet still doesn't find the Mosaic revelation convincing he is not guilty in the eyes of God.
 

Out of interest what is Orthodox Judaism's position on the Noahide Laws? Can they be known via reason alone?

 

11/08/2015 2:28 pm  #16


Re: Protestantism and reason

DanielCC wrote:

Etzelnik wrote:

It was the latter. And I recognise the problems that poses for all revelations, and as such I tend towards the (somewhat heretical) position that if a man does all he can to understand and yet still doesn't find the Mosaic revelation convincing he is not guilty in the eyes of God.
 

Out of interest what is Orthodox Judaism's position on the Noahide Laws? Can they be known via reason alone?

 
Obviously, there is a range of opinions, but it's fairly mainstream to maintain that the Noahide laws are such precisely because they are quite self-evident by reason.


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