Reflection Paper on paper #8 It is often said that faith is one criteria and reason is another and that these two can never intertwine. While faith is involved with the supernatural, reason relates only with the natural; it is commonly noted that faith deals with fiction and reason deals with fact. Faith and reason are often thought of as incompatible with each other because they are thought to deal with different things. However, it would be practical to say that faith and reason can be entwined because they both deal with the same revelation of God.

My understanding of this comes from the idea that reason comes from an assumption of something and an assumption is basically a thought through faith, “thus all men conduct their scientific study according to Faith”. Neil Cullan McKinlay said, “If Faith were built upon Reason, and not the other way round, then man would be autonomous and Reason would be the measure of all things. This is, of course, the prevalent Philosophy in today’s West. Reason has become estranged from Faith and has filed for divorce.

If this divorce is permitted to come through man will effectively set up himself as his own god. It should be clear by now that unbelievers’ Philosophy, (i. e. , their life and world view) is built upon their Faith and not upon their Reason. Reason is simply the foxhole from which fallen man attacks the revelation of God, which constantly bombards him on all fronts. ”. In a lecture by John Culp, we learned that there are a variety of ways in which we can understand the relationship between reason and faith.

Professor Culp elucidated that in understanding the relationship between the two we must be aware of the strengths and the weaknesses of both. When attempting to understand “faith alone” it becomes a danger because without reason there is no way in evaluating the beliefs that are true nor those that are false. While this may seem remarkable because there is no limit to God there must be an immense commitment to living a life in relationship with God. Acknowledging that humans are limited and sinful would be impractical yet astounding to live a life through faith alone.

However, shortly after we learned about “faith seeking understanding” and it became more clear the importance of reason. Subsequently, we were introduced to “reason alone” and this idea seemed practical because, as stated by John Culp, this concept takes God’s gift of reason seriously. Reason controls everything that is believed because circumstances can be proved right or wrong. According to Clifford, you should not believe anything that does not contain adequate evidence. However, noted that this idea limits God, in a conflict with reason, faith always wins.

Thus, we come to the conclusion that in seeking faith through reason we may begin to limit what God can do by having limited expectations of what God will do. Understanding the relationship between faith and reason narrows down to both concepts “working together”. We came to the conclusion that if a person carefully thinks about the world they will recognize that it requires a first cause, that of which we know of as God. Thus far, we know that a specific individual comes to the understanding that God exists, through faith.

Nonetheless, it is apparent that people may come to know God through both reason and faith because they both come to a common conclusion. The bible addresses both topics clearly and throughout God’s word, the concepts intertwine with one another. John 17:3 states that everlasting life is dependent of “taking in knowledge”. Isaiah 1:18 says, “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. “. However, we cannot reason about God without the belief in, devotion to, or trust that God exists. “Faith without reason cannot understand what it has faith in, and reason without faith cannot understand why it exists. ”