standing at the precipice of reason

It's hard to get rid of the reason/faith distinction that proliferates in the these late modern debates over religion and its place in the societies of the world. From the atheist or agnostic view faith has no place in relation to reason. Faith is a sign of something completely irrational, or something non-rational at best. Reason, being that faculty of the human mind that can control the variables of experience with material evidence, is the end of humankind and the greatest good. For out of reason springs the good. On the other hand, for the religious faith is at the heart of what it means to be human for only faith is what leads to God. If God is the highest good and faith is the means to receive the revelation of God, then faith itself is a perfectly rational means to a perfectly rational end.

Often what I have seen is that for those who argue for reason alone, the notion that unconscious judgments and non-rational decisions are made in the service of empirical and material ends that seem rational seems to be a worthless claim. An example of this is the basis of placing reason on such a high plane of cognition that other forms of thinking, believing, and doing are of less value, less important, or not worth basing something as vital as a society in which human beings flourish. That societies flourished long before this Enlightenment understanding of reason is often seen as irrelevant. Thus there is a certain kind of non-rational judgment here that this particular form of rationality is a preferred one for what are largely preferential ends.

On the other hand, many who observe the "faith alone" perspective come at it with the idea that reason is a failed and sinful practice that deserves attention only inso far as it is redeemed by faith itself. Reason is useful only in terms of such activities as supporting the truth of Scripture, crafting apologetic arguments for faith, or rooting out the inconsistencies of reason when applied to faith and religious traditions. The various arguments from creationism, doctrinal debates, and even the core assertions of biblical literalism all employ reason for their specific ends of disproving the validity of a secular reason itself.

What we find is that both reason from the materialist perspective and faith from the supposedly non-rational perspective both have elements of faith and reason embedded in the assumptions inherenet to them. While the distinction works on some levels, it falls apart when we look to both perspectives' first principles. Both have value laden ends that drive their purposes and ways of talking about the world. Reason is used for those judgments of faith and faith is used for those judgments of reason.

While reason was mixed with a kind of Victorian idea of human progress and perfection in the 19th century, there was also an enhanced sense of beauty that was non-rational and subjective. One had to live in beauty even if truth was a rational end. But even here it is as if truth cannot be an end or a component of beauty.

So what is a Christian who abides by that old belief of Anselm of Canterbury that faith seeks understanding? For this faith comes before one can understand the meaning of God and truth. Here belief precedes reason and without faith in God first, reason is empty. But perhaps in this day and age where reason has scooped up the highest stock price in the marketplace of knowledge, we would do better to follow Kierkegaard and flip this idea around. For Kierkegaard reason was not an empty prospect for truth and one could engage the world with reason alone and get along just fine. However, the ultimate meaning of life was something that escaped reason's limits. This was not for him a conclusion like Kant where at the edge of reason nothing was to be known. For him at the edge of reason lay the font of ultimate truth which was found in nothing other than the God-man, Jesus Christ. Standing at the precipice of all that reason can accomplish is the paradoxical wisdom of the ineffable God to become human so that we may become more like God. Faith is at the edge of reason's limits and completes any end of reason that is even suggestive of the meaning of life and the end of humankind to seek the good, which is found only it its Source.

May our reason not suffer at the hands of faith, but may faith complete the end to which our rational activity points.

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2. jesus the heretic
3. we cannot change unless we mourn
4. finding my bliss
5. becoming post-human christians