A seminary student raises his hand in apologetics class. “I appreciate the arguments we’re learning about the textual reliability of the biblical manuscripts, their internal markers of historical authenticity, and so on. Without these arguments, our Christian commitment would be irrational. We’d just have ‘blind faith,’ right?” Is this student correct?
Recently, I picked up the new edition of volume 7 of the works of the 17th-century Puritan John Owen. This volume includes Owen’s treatise The Reason of Faith (1677), in which he argues for a distinctively Reformed view of the relationship between faith and reason.
His position is that our knowledge of the Bible as God’s Word depends neither on “the authority of the church” nor on “a moral persuasion from external arguments and considerations.” Scripture is divine testimony, faith “is an assent upon testimony, and consequently divine faith [or, faith from and in God] is an assent upon divine testimony.” In other words, the Scriptures reveal God’s own “authority and veracity,” and they provide the “formal reason of our faith.”
I’d just been writing about Alvin Plantinga, and the more I read Owen’s The Reason of Faith (particularly chapter 6), the more I saw that Owen’s view is remarkably like Plantinga’s model of how faith and reason relate.
Ultimately, this isn’t surprising, since Plantinga was deeply affected by the Reformed tradition in his upbringing and early education. His magnum opus on Christian epistemology (the philosophy of how we can know truth), titled Warranted Christian Belief (2000), relies on authors like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and Herman Bavinck, not to mention the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism.
Still, the parallels between these two kindred spirits are worth pointing out.
3 Components of a Faculty-Based Approach to Faith and Reason
According to Owen, there are at least three “distinct faculties and powers of our souls” by which “God is pleased to reveal or make known himself, his mind or will.”
These faculties are (1) “the light of reason” by which we may “see” the truth of claims like “The whole is greater than the parts” without making any inferences, (2) “reason in its exercise” by which we discursively reason from premises to conclusion, and (3) “testimony” by which we simply trust the claims of a testifier about matters we neither “see” the truth of personally nor reason to argumentatively.
The Scriptures reveal God’s own authority and veracity, and they provide the formal reason of our faith.
Similarly, Plantinga has a faculty-based approach to faith and reason. Like Owen, he distinguishes between the noninferential and inferential powers of reason. The noninferential powers deliver us beliefs by way of perception, memory, introspection, and rational insight. The inferential powers deliver us beliefs by way of deductive and inductive reasoning. Like Owen, Plantinga takes “testimony” to be an additional source of belief that goes beyond the other two.
7 Ways Faith Relates to Reason
But Owen and Plantinga aren’t only similar because they assert reason is composed of multiple cognitive faculties. Both authors go on to apply this position to the faith-reason relationship in similar ways, giving special attention to our faith in Scripture as God’s Word.
What follows is a series of moves in Owen I found eerily similar to Plantinga’s argument.
1. Faith is trust in divine testimony.
Full stop, no further arguments needed. Like our ordinary, rational trust in human testimony, divinely produced faith needs no supporting argument to be rational or to count as knowledge.
2. Faith and reason are two ways of knowing.
Faith isn’t an intellectually substandard source of belief. Rather, it’s a different way to get knowledge. I can acquire knowledge of how my wife’s day went by simply listening to her, reposing confidence in her testimony. Likewise, I can come to know “the great things of the gospel” (Plantinga’s phrase, taken from Jonathan Edwards), and much else besides, by simply listening to and assenting to divine testimony.
3. We have no reason to think there’s an inherent faith/reason conflict.
Rather, as Owen puts it, “there is a perfect consonancy” between the deliverances of faith and reason—“They never contradict.” Instead, they “harmonize and perfectly agree one with the other.”
4. We can learn some things by faith that we can’t learn by reason.
And vice versa. After all, some rational faculties (perception) can disclose things not disclosed by the others (memory). As Owen puts it, these faculties are not “equally extensive.” Likewise, faith can enable us to know things not knowable by reason. This is perfectly normal—indeed, to be expected.
5. Faith, as a distinct way of knowing, is just as authoritative as reason.
Faith and reason are on an epistemic par. Of course, there may not be any noncircular way to prove divine testimony is reliable. But the same goes for reason. One would have to appeal to sense perception to prove the reliability of sense perception, appeal to memory to prove the reliability of memory, and so on. But this doesn’t reveal anything improper about our reliance on perception and memory. Ditto for divine faith in the Scriptures.
6. The work of the Holy Spirit is necessary for producing faith in divine testimony.
There’s no true faith—what Owen calls “divine faith”—without this supernatural influence upon us. Of course, the Holy Spirit’s work is not the formal reason why we believe. Rather, we believe the Scripture because it’s God speaking to us. But without “the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit” (Plantinga’s phrase, from Calvin), there’s no saving faith in this fallen world.
7. Supernaturally produced faith can be strengthened by rational arguments.
Owen devotes chapter 3 of The Reason of Faith to “Sundry Convincing External Arguments for Divine Revelation,” and Plantinga is well known for his “Two Dozen (Or So) Arguments for the Existence of God.” The point both writers make is that rational arguments aren’t needed for faith, even if they strengthen the faithful.
Rational arguments aren’t needed for faith, even if they strengthen the faithful.
Both Owen and Plantinga tap into a deeply Reformed conception of how to do the “knowledge project” in a way that upholds the rationality and perfect propriety of faith in divine testimony apart from supporting arguments.
In a world that attempts to pit reason against faith in radical ways, the philosopher’s epistemological arguments combined with the Puritan theologian’s careful Scriptural exegesis may be just what we need. No Christian, including the seminary student with whom we began, is left with “blind faith.”
The Gospel Coalition