Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T07:49:54.690Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Reason and Faith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2010

Martin Warner
By
Renford Bambrough  and
Roger Trigg
Get access

Summary

What is the difference between reason and faith? The question is framed in what I would call ‘the treacherous singular’. The structure of the question implies a particular form of answer and makes other assumptions about notions that occur in the same region of our network of thoughts and understandings. If I were happy to play this game I might reply in kind by offering a simple formula purporting to sum up my own answers to the cluster of questions that are implicit in the simple form given above. The form makes the question and the answer appear more straightforward than they are. Perhaps I might answer in the questioner's style by stating the conclusions of my paper in these words:

A simple idea is at the heart of my paper, but one that is hard to absorb and to live by in one's wider thoughts about reason and faith. The simple idea is that faith is itself a mode of reason. This means that there cannot be a sharp distinction between reason and faith, whether or not one tries to express such a distinction in the treacherous singular, or perhaps in the impoverished plural, a mode of expression in which a few separate but simple factors are identified as what faith is or what reason is.

If we pursue the initial question in the more complicated style that the varieties and pluralities now promise, we seem to be in danger of saying that there is no distinction at all between faith and reason, except that faith is only a species of the genus reason.

Type
Chapter
Information
Religion and Philosophy , pp. 23 - 44
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×