Faith and Reason

In the course of explaining an answer he gave in a recent debate, Senator Sam Brownback (R, Kansas) made a distinction that is quite common:

The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.

Robert Miller disagrees:

The distinction between faith and reason, correctly understood, is based not on a difference in subject matter but on a difference in epistemological warrant, that is, on the kinds of reasons a person may have for assenting to a particular proposition. On this view, a person holds a proposition in faith if he believes the proposition because he thinks it has been revealed in history by God—for example, on Mount Sinai through Moses or on the shores of the Lake of Tiberias by Jesus Christ. A person holds a proposition as a matter of reason if he thinks he has for that proposition the kinds of arguments properly accepted in a discipline such as natural science or philosophy, neither of which accept arguments based on purported divine revelation. Any one proposition, therefore, may be divinely revealed, or be knowable by reason in science or philosophy, or both of these, or even neither.

To say that there is no conflict between faith and reason, therefore, is to say that the propositions one holds to be divinely revealed do not contradict the propositions knowable according to the standards of science or philosophy. Whether this is really the case depends, obviously, on just which propositions one thinks were divinely revealed and which are knowable in science or philosophy. If it turns out that a proposition one holds in faith is contradicted by a proposition known by reason, then one must either rework one’s theology, giving up on the idea that God revealed the proposition in question, or else show that the scientific or philosophical arguments that contradict that proposition are in fact inconclusive by scientific or philosophical standards.

Also, it’s quite possible for one person to hold a proposition as a matter of faith while another holds the same proposition as a matter of reason. Take the existence of God. I think the philosophical argument for the existence of God is very strong, and so I think I know by reason that God exists. Other people, either because they don’t think the argument is very strong or perhaps because they’ve never studied philosophy, may believe in faith that God exists without knowing it by reason. Furthermore, it’s possible that there are some propositions that have been divinely revealed on which science and philosophy are simply silent, such as whether there are three persons in God. So too it’s possible that there are some propositions on which divine revelation is silent but about which science or philosophy can teach us much, such as whether copper is a good conductor of electricity or whether universals exist independent of the particulars that instantiate them.

Source: First Things: Brownback's Faith and Reason