It is especially common in
academia that the words “reason” and “religion” are held to be opposites
that consequently cannot be conceptually harmonized. Yet assessing the truth of that charge rests
entirely on the specific religion under consideration. The naïve common suggestion that all religions are the same is
obviously false, as a survey of any text on world religions will clarify. Judeo-Christian theology (JCT) for
example stands apart from religions that have arisen out of Asia because
of the subject-object distinction it makes between our-selves on the one hand
and the other people and things around us. JCT also holds to both moral distinctions
between right and wrong and conceptual distinctions between the creator and the creature, the
self-existent and the dependent, and the eternal and the temporal. These categories are all related to each other
in that they are all grounded on the conviction that God is the creator of
absolutely everything while we by contrast are His created beings (Psalm 100:3). This then places us in the second half of
each of the three above couplets. For
these same reasons, JCT demonstrably affirms rationality as a valid mode of
thinking in general.[1]
The noun “rationality” describes one aspect of our
human capacity to employ logic and reason in our perception of external
reality. “Rationalism,” on the
other hand, describes not so much our possession of reason, but rather our
relationship to reason specifically as a master/ servant relationship. Whenever the suffix “ism” is attached
to any word, its root is reoriented into an over-arching ideological world-view. For example, communism means
more than just that the adherent happens to live in a commune; but instead that
society as a whole must be shaped into one all-reaching commune. Back then, to the concept of rationalism,
that term holds that autonomous human reason, that is, apart from revealed
religion, is entirely sufficient to think of and correctly assess, not merely
scientific problems, but also the biggest challenges of life. Philosopher David Hume, for example,
notoriously concluded his treatise, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
with the following directive, “If we take in our hand any volume; of
divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any
abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any
experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it
then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”[2] Yet notice that
renowned 20th Century Philosopher of Science, Karl Popper commented,
“Thus Hume…condemned his own Enquiry on its last page…”[3]
Rationality therefore consists not just of scientific
facts, but also of correctly ordering that data into meaningful and effective principles. JCT however doesn’t settle for a natural
order that is merely accidently meaningful and intelligible. It insists that those terms apply to nature precisely
because its Creator is Himself purposeful, intelligible, and the very source of
rationality (John 1:1). Although Scripture
decries the intellectually-disintegrative effects of sin on humanity (Romans
1:18-32); by virtue of being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), the liberating
gift of rationality brings us blessing if, but only if, we live a faith
relationship with His Son Jesus Christ (John 8:58). Yet to defy that purpose is to commit the
idolatry of rationalism.
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