One of the biggest misunderstandings about belief in God is that it demands supernatural faith. This is untrue.

Many people throughout human history have believed in God before this gift of faith was offered through the Bible, Jesus, or the Church. Christian history has long taught that we can know God exists “with certainty…by the natural power of human reason.”

Reason

When we search for “the reason” something is the way it is, we are searching for its cause. We can use our five exterior senses, but we also have to use our mind or more specifically, our reason. Reason is our mind’s ability to find the cause of something even when we cannot discover it with sight, smell, hearing, or touch.

These exterior senses help us experience and know the world around us. They provide essential information about things outside of us. Because most of us experience our senses similarly, they enable us to share this information with others. However, the scope of the exterior senses encompasses the physical realm; they give us insight into what something is like, also known as the “accidents.” They cannot give us information about what something is – its essence.

The interior senses – memory, imagination, estimative power, and common sense – help us understand essences based on the accidents that our exterior senses experience. Although they rely on the exterior senses, the role of the interior senses is vastly different. The memory stores sensory impressions, the imagination forms images in the mind, the estimative power assesses value, and common sense brings all this information together to form a definition of something.

Faith

Many equate the phrase “just have faith” with being told to stop thinking. But in reality, faith allows our minds to see more clearly.

Thomas Aquinas considered faith an act of the intellect, by which the intellect accepts a truth about God that is beyond reason to better understand it. This means that the will, or our ability to choose, must also be involved. Both the intellect and the will must be open to God’s grace.

The Limits of Reason

Like the exterior and the interior senses, reason and faith are intimately connected. In both cases, the former is insufficient without the latter but still informs it with vital information gathered from the external world. Reason cannot know God, but it can help communicate knowledge to our faith.

Faith vs. Reason?

Because reason helps us understand the world around us by teaching us of its causes, it can be tempting to think that one does not need faith. This creates division and contradiction between faith and reason for those who believe that the two faculties are in opposition.

However, to rely solely upon reason without faith is like only using the exterior senses. They provide helpful information that would be accurate, but incomplete. Although you might understand the accidents of something, you could not enjoy full knowledge of it.

Two Wings

Faith and reason have been described as “two wings” that raise us to the contemplation of truth. Each is useless without the other. Our wings both need to be strengthened so that our spirit can fly more easily to the one who is Truth itself.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

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