The Rational Basis of Faith

I am an engineer by training. Scientific research and teaching are my bread and butter. My faith does not hinder me in my scientific work, although there are those who would doubt that faith and reason can be reconciled. Many people seem to see Christianity as a collection of irrational dogmas that are to be accepted without reflection, blindly, without resort to reason or common sense. I do not think that this is so, for in the Bible at least–the primary document of Christian belief–I have been unable to find any grounds for such a conviction. Quite the contrary. Holy Scripture is fraught with passages urging the reader to examine the facts, to analyze them with the aid of reason and then to draw the appropriate conclusions. Christianity does not promote blind faith. But is there another kind of faith–one that is not blind? Does the very notion of “faith” not contradict the notion of “reason”?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines faith as “an act or attitude of intellectual assent to the traditional doctrines of one’s religion.” The OED defines it as “reliance, trust; belief founded on authority,” where “belief” is understood as the “acceptance as true or existing of any fact, statement, etc.” Neither of these definitions contradicts St. Paul’s understanding of faith as the certainty of things that are unseen on the basis of evidence of visible things (cf. Rom 8:24-25; 2 Cor 5: 6-8; 1 Cor 15: 17-20; Heb 11: 1-2). St. Paul did not see faith as a rejection of reason, but rather as a completion or perfection of it.