Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts by Henry Rogers

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REASON AND FAITH; THEIR CLAIMS AND CONFLICTS.

[by Henry Rogers]

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW,

OCTOBER, 1849.

[Volume 90] No. CLXXXII. [Pages 293-356]

Art.I--1. Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte Eighth
edition, pp. 60. 8vo. London. 2. The Nemesis of Faith. By J. A. Froude,
M. A., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. 12mo. London: pp. 227. 3.
Popular Christianity, its Transition State and Probable Development. By
F. J. Foxton, B. A.; formerly of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Perpetual
Curate of Stoke Prior and Docklow, Herefordshire. 12mo. London: pp. 226.

'Reason and Faith,' says one of our old divines, with the quaintness
characteristic of his day, 'resemble the two sons of the patriarch;
Reason is the firstborn, but Faith inherits the blessing. The image is
ingenious, and the antithesis striking; but nevertheless the sentiment
is far from just. It is hardly right to represent Faith as younger
than reason: the fact undoubtedly being, that human creatures trust and
believe, long before they reason or know. But the truth is, that both
reason and Faith are coeval with the nature of man, and were designed to
dwell in his heart together. In truth they are, and were, and, in such
creatures as ourselves, must be, reciprocally complementary--neither
can exclude the other. It is as impossible to exercise an acceptable
faith without reason for so exercising it,--that is, without exercising
reason while we exercise faith*,--as it is to apprehend by our reason,
exclusive of faith, all the truths on which we are daily compelled to
act, whether in relation to this world or the next. Neither is it right
to represent either of them as failing of the promised heritage,
except as both may fail alike, by perversion from their true end, and
depravation of their genuine nature; for it to the faith of which the
New Testament speaks so much, a peculiar blessing is promised, it is
evident from the same volume that it is not a 'faith without reason' any
more than a 'faith without works,' which is approved by the Author of
Christianity. And this is sufficiently proved by the injunction 'to
be ready to give a reason for the hope,'--and therefore for the
faith,--'which is in us.'

____

* Let it be said that we are here playing upon an ambiguity in the
word Reason;--considered in the first clause as an argument; and in the
second, as the characteristic endowment of our species. The distinction
between Reason and Reasoning (though most important) does not affect our
statement; for though Reason may be exercised where there is no giving
of reasons, there can be no giving of reasons without the exercise of
Reason.

____

If, therefore, we were to imitate the quaintness of the old divine, on
whose dictum we have been commenting, we should rather compare Reason
and Faith to the two trusty spies, 'faithful amongst the 'faithless,'
who confirmed each other's report of 'that good land which flowed with
milk and honey,' and to both of whom the promise of a rich inheritance
there was given,--and, in due time, amply redeemed. Or, rather, if we
might be permitted to pursue the same vein a little further, and throw
over our shoulders for a moment that mantle of allegory which none but
Bunyan could wear long and successfully, we should represent Reason and
Faith as twin-born beings,--the one, in form and features the image of
manly beauty,--the other, of feminine grace and gentleness; but to each
of whom, alas! was allotted a sad privation. While the bright eyes of
Reason are full of piercing and restless intelligence, his ear is closed
to sound; and while Faith has an ear of exquisite delicacy, on her
sightless orbs, as she lifts them towards heaven, the sunbeam plays in
vain. Hand in hand the brother and sister, in all mutual love, pursue
their way, through a world on which, like ours, day breaks and night
falls alternate; by day the eyes of Reason are the guide of Faith, and
by night the ear of Faith is the guide of Reason. As is wont with those
who labour under these privations respectively Reason is apt to be
eager, impetuous, impatient of that instruction which his infirmity will
not permit him readily to apprehend; while Faith, gentle and docile, is
ever willing to listen to the voice by which alone truth and wisdom can
effectually reach her.

It has been shown by Butler in the fourth and fifth chapters (Part I.)
of his great work, that the entire constitution and condition of man,
viewed in relation to the present world alone, and consequently all the
analogies derived from that fact in relation to a future world, suggest
the conclusion that we are here the subjects of a probation discipline,
or in a course of education for another state of existence. But it
has not, perhaps, been sufficiently insisted on, that if in the actual
course of that education, of which enlightened obedience to the 'law
of virtue,' as Butler expresses it, or, which is the same thing, to the
dictates of supreme wisdom and goodness, is the great end, we give an
unchecked ascendency to either Reason or Faith, we vitiate the whole
process. The chief instrument by which that process is carried on is
not Reason alone, or Faith alone, but their well-balanced and reciprocal
interaction. It is a system of alternate checks and limitations, in
which Reason does not supersede Faith, nor Faith encroach on Reason. But
our meaning will be more evident when we have made one or two remarks
on what are conceived to be their respective provinces. In the domain
of Reason men generally include, 1st, what are called 'intuitions,'
2d, 'necessary deductions' from them; and 3d, deductions from their own
direct 'experience; while in the domain of Faith are ranked all truths
and propositions which are received, not without reasons indeed, but
for reasons underived from the intrinsic evidence (whether intuitive or
deductive, or from our own experience) of propositions themselves;--for
reasons (such as credible testimony, for example,) extrinsic to the
proper meaning and significance of such propositions: although such
reasons, by accumulation and convergency, may be capable of subduing
the force of any difficulties or improbabilities, which cannot be
demonstrated to involve absolute contradictions.*

____

* Of the first kind of truths, or those received by intuition, we have
examples in what are called 'self-evident axioms,' and 'fundamental
laws' or 'conditions of thought,' which no wise man has ever attempted
to prove. Of the second, we have examples in the whole fabric of
mathematical science, reared from its basis of axioms and definitions,
as well as in every other necessary deduction from admitted premises.
The third virtually includes any conclusion in science based on direct
experiment, or observation; though the belief of the truth even of
Newton's system of the world, when received as Locke says he received
and as the generality of men receive it,--without being able to follow
the steps by which the great geometer proves his conclusions,--may be
represented rather as an act of faith rather than an act of Reason;
as much so as a belief in the truth of Christianity, founded on its
historic and other evidences. The greater part of man's knowledge,
indeed, even of science,--even the greater part of a scientific man's
knowledge of science, based as it is on testimony alone (and which
so often compels him to renounce to-day what he thought certain
yesterday),--may be not unjustly considered as more allied to Faith than
Reason. It may be said, perhaps, that the above classification of the
truths received by Reason and Faith respectively is arbitrary; that
even as to some of their alleged sources, they are not always clearly
distinguishable; that the evidence of experience may in some sort
be reduced to testimony,--that of sense, and testimony reduced to
experience,--that of human veracity under given circumstances; both
being founded upon the observed uniformity of certain phenomena under
similar conditions. We admit the truth of this; and we admit it the more
willingly, as it shows that so inextricably intertwined are the roots
both of Reason and Faith in our nature, that no definitions that can be
framed will completely separate them; none that will not involve many
phenomena which may be said to fall under the dominion of one as much as
the other. We have been content, for our practical purpose, without
any too subtle refinement, to take the line of demarcation which is,
perhaps, as obvious as any, and as generally recognised. Few would say
that a generalised inference from direct experience was not matter of
reason rather than of faith; though an act of faith is involved in
the process; and few would not call confidence in testimony where
probabilities were nearly balanced, by the name of faith rather than
reason, though an act of reason is involved in that process. We are much
more anxious to show their general involution with one another than the
points of discrimination between them.
____

In receiving important doctrines on the strength of such evidence, and
in holding to them against the perplexities they involve, or, what is
harder still, against the prejudices they oppose, every exercise of
an intelligent faith will, on analysis, be found to consist; its only
necessary limit will be proven contradictions in the propositions
submitted to it; for, then, no evidence can justify belief, or even
render it possible. But no other difficulties, however, great, will
justify unbelief, where man has all that he can justly demand,--evidence
such in its nature as he can deal with, and on which he is accustomed
to act in his most important affairs in this world (thus admitting
its validity), and such in amount as to render it more likely that the
doctrines it substantiates are true, than, from mere ignorance of the
mode in which these difficulties can be solved, he can infer them to be
false. 'Probabilities,' says Bishop Bulter, 'are to us the very guide
to life; and when the probabilities arise out of evidence which we
are competent to pronounce, and the improbabilities merely from our
surmises, where we have no evidence to deal with, and perhaps, from the
limitation of our capacities, could not deal with it, if we had it, it
is not difficult to see what course practical wisdom tells man he ought
to pursue; and which he always does pursue, whatever difficulties beset
him,--in all cases except one!

Such is the strict union--that mutual dependence of Reason and
Faith--which would seem to be the great law under which the moral school
in which we are being educated is conducted. This law is equally, or
almost equally, its characteristic, Whether we regard man simply in
his present condition, or in his present in relation to his future
condition,--as an inhabitant only of this world, or a candidate for
another; and to this law, by a series of analogies as striking as any
of those which Butler has pointed out (and on which we heartily wish his
comprehensive genius had expended a chapter or two), Christianity,
in the demands it makes on both principles conjointly, is evidently
adapted.

Men often speak, indeed, as if the exercise of faith was excluded from
their condition as inhabitants of the present world. But it requires
but a very slight consideration to show that the boasted prerogative of
reason is here also that of a limited monarch; and that its attempts to
make itself absolute can only end in its own dethronement, and, after
successive revolutions, in all the anarchy of absolute pyrrhonism.

For in the intellectual and moral education of man, considered merely
as a citizen of the present world, we see the constant and inseparable
union of the two principles, and provision made for their perpetual
exercise. He cannot advance a step, indeed without both. We see faith
demanded not only amidst the dependence and ignorance in which childhood
and youth are passed; not only in the whole process by which we acquire
the imperfect knowledge which is to fit us for being men; but to
the very last we may be truly said to believe far more than we know.
'Indeed,' said Butler, 'the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence with
which we are obliged to take up in the daily course of life, is scarce
to be expected.' Nay, in an intelligible sense, even the 'primary
truths,' or 'first principles,' or 'fundamental laws of thought,' or
'self-evident maxims,' or 'intuitions,' or by whatever other names
philosophers have been pleased to designate them, which, in a special
sense, are the very province of reason, as contra-distinguished from
'reasoning' or logical deduction, may be said almost as truly to depend
on faith as on reason for their reception.* For the only ground for
believing them true is that man cannot help so believing them! The same
may be said of that great fact, without which the whole world would
be at a stand-still--a belief in the uniformity of the phenomena of
external nature; that the same sun, for example, which rose yesterday
and to-day, will rise again tomorrow. That this cannot be demonstrated,
is admitted on all hands; and that it is not absolutely proved from
experience is evident, both from the fact that the uniformity supposed
is only accepted as partially and transiently true; the great bulk
of mankind, even while they so confidently act upon that uniformity,
rejecting the idea of its being an eternal uniformity. Every theist
believes that the order of the universe once began to be; and every
Christian and most other men, believe that it will also one day cease to
be.

____

* Common language seems to indicate this: Since we call that disposition
of mind which leads some men to deny the above fundamental truths (or
affect to deny them), not by a word which indicates the opposite of
reason, but the opposite of faith,--Scepticism, Unbelief, Incredulity.
____

But perhaps the most striking example of the helplessness to which man
is soon reduced if he relies upon his reason alone, is The spectacle
of the issue of his investigations into that which one would imagine he
must know most intimately, if he knows anything; and that is, his own
nature--his own mind. There is something, to one who reflects long
enough upon it, inexpressibly whimsical in the questions which the mind
is for ever putting to itself respecting itself; and to which the said
mind returns from its dark caverns only an echo. We are apt, when we
speculate about the mind, to forget for the moment, that it is at once
the querist and the oracle: and to regard it as something out of itself,
like a mineral in the hands of the analytic chemist. We cannot fully
enter into the absurdities of its condition, except by remembering that
it is our own wise selves who so grotesquely bewilder us. The mind, on
such occasions, takes itself (if we may so speak) into its own hands,
turns itself about itself, listens to the echo of its own voice, and
is obliged, after all, to lay itself down again with a very puzzled
expression--and acknowledge that of its very self, itself knows little
or nothing! 'I am material,' exclaims one of those whimsical beings,
to whom the heaven-descended 'Know thyself' would seem to have been
ironically addressed. 'No!--immaterial,' says another. 'I am both
material and immaterial,' exclaims, perhaps, the very same mind at
different times. 'Thought itself may be matter modified,' says one.
'Rather,' says another of the same perplexed species, 'matter is
thought modified; for what you call matter is but a phenomenon.' But are
independent and totally distinct substances, mysteriously, inexplicably
conjoined,' says a third. 'How they are conjoined we know no more than
the dead. Not so much, perhaps.' 'Do I ever cease to think,' says the
mind to itself, 'even in sleep? Is not my essence thought?' 'You
ought to know your own essence best,' all creation will reply. 'I am
confident,' says one, 'that I never do cease to think,--not even in the
soundest sleep.' 'You do, for a long time, every night of your life,'
exclaims another, equally confident and equally ignorant. 'Where do I
exist?' it goes on. 'Am I in the brain? Am I in the whole body? 'Am I
anywhere? Am I nowhere?' 'I cannot have any local existence, for I know
I am immaterial,' says one. 'I have a local existence, because I am
material,' says another. 'I have a local existence, though I am not
material,' says a third. 'Are my habitual actions voluntary,' it
exclaims, 'however rapid they become; though I am unconscious of these
volitions when they have attained a certain rapidity; or do I become a
mere automaton as respects such actions? and therefore an automaton nine
times out of ten, when I act at all?' To this query two opposite answers
are given by different minds; and by others, perhaps wiser, none at all;
while, often, opposite answers are given by the same mind at different
times. In like manner has every action, every operation, every emotion
of the mind been made the subject of endless doubt and disputation.
Surely if, as Soame Jenyns imagined, the infirmities of man, and even
graver evils, were permitted in order to afford amusement to superior
intelligences, and make the angels laugh, few things could afford them
better sport than the perplexities of this child of clay engaged in the
study of himself. 'Alas,' exclaims at last the baffled spirit of this
babe in intellect, as he surveys his shattered toys--his broken theories
of metaphysics, 'I know that I am; but what I am--where I am--even how
I act--not only what is my essence, but what even my mode of
operation,--of all this I know nothing; and, boast of reason as I may,
all that I think on these points is matter of opinion--or is matter
of faith!' He resembles, in fact, nothing so much as a kitten first
introduced to its own image in a mirror: she runs to the back of it,
she leaps over it, she turns and twists, and jumps and frisks, in all
directions, in the vain attempt to reach the fair illusion; and, at
length, turns away in weariness from that incomprehensible enigma--the
image of herself.

One would imagine--perhaps not untruly--that the Divine Creator had
subjected us to these difficulties--and especially that incomprehensible
trilemma,--that there is an union and interaction of two totally
distinct substances, or that matter is but thought, or that thought is
but matter,--one of which must be true, and all of which approach as
near to the mutual contradictions as can well be conceived,--for the
very purpose of rebuking the presumption of man, and of teaching him
humility; that He had left these obscurities at the very threshold--nay,
within the very mansion of the mind itself,--for the express purpose of
deterring man from playing the dogmatising fool when he looked abroad.
Yet, in spite of his raggedness and poverty at home, no sooner does man
look out of his dusky dwelling, than, like Goldsmith's little Beau,
who, in his garret up five pair of stairs, boasts of his friendship with
lords, he is apt to assume airs of magnificence, and, glancing at
the infinite through his little eye-glass, to affect an intimate
acquaintance with the most respectable secrets of the universe!

It is undeniable, then, that the perplexities which uniformly puzzle
man in the physical world, and even in the little world of his own mind,
when he passes a certain limit, are just as unmanageable as those found
in the moral constitution and government of the universe, or in the
disclosures of the volume Revelation. In both we find abundance of
inexplicable difficulties sometimes arising from our absolute
ignorance, and perhaps quite as often from our partial knowledge. These
difficulties are probably left on the pages of both volumes for some of
the same reasons; many of them, it may be, because even the commentary
of the Creator himself could not render them plain to finite
understanding, though a necessary and salutary exercise of our humility
may be involved in their reception; others, if not purely (which seems
not probable) yet partly for the sake of exercising and training that
humility, as an essential part of the education of a child; others,
surmountable, indeed, in the progress of knowledge and by prolonged
effort of the human intellect, may be designed to stimulate that
intellect to strenuous action and healthy effort--as well as to supply,
in their solution, as time rolls on, an ever-accumulating mass of proofs
of the profundity of the wisdom which has so far anticipated all the
wisdom of man; and of the divine origin of both the great books which
he is privileged to study as a pupil, and even to illustrate as a
commentator,--but the text of which he cannot alter.

But, for submitting to us many profound and insoluble problems, the
second of the above reasons--the training of the intellect and heart of
man to submission to the Supreme Intelligence alone be sufficient.
For it; as is indicated by every thing in human nature, and by the
representations of Scripture, which are in analogy with both, the
present world is but the school of man in this the childhood of his
being, to prepare him for the enjoyment of an immortal manhood in
another, everything might be expected to be subordinated to this
great end; and as the end of that education, can be no other than an
enlightened obedience to God, the harmonious and concurrent exercise
of reason and faith becomes absolutely necessary--not of reason to the
exclusion of faith, for otherwise there would be no adequate test of
man's docility and submission; nor of a faith that would assert itself,
not only independent of reason, but in contradiction to it,--which
would not be what God requires, and what alone can quadrate with that
intelligent nature He has impressed on His offspring--a reasonable
obedience. Implicit obedience, then, to the dictates of an all-perfect
wisdom, exercised amidst many difficulties and perplexities, as so many
tests of sincerity, and yet sustained by evidences which justify the
conclusions which involve them, would seem to be the great object of
man's moral education here; and to justify both the partial evidence
addressed to his reason, and the abundant difficulties which it leaves
to his faith. 'The evidence of religion,' says Butler, 'is fully
sufficient for all the purposes of probation, how far soever it is from
being satisfactory as to the purposes of curiosity, or any other: and,
indeed, it answers the purposes of the former in several respects which
it would not do if it were as over-bearing as is required.'* Or as
Pascal beautifully puts it:--'There is light enough for those whose
sincere wish is to see,--and darkness enough to confound those of an
opposite disposition.'+

____

* Analogy, part 2. chap. viii. + Pensees. Faugere's edition, tom. ii. p.
151. The views here developed will be found an expansion of some brief
hints at the close of the article on Pascal's 'Life and Genius' (Ed.
Review, Jan. 1847), though our space then prevented us from more than
touching these topics. We may add that we gladly take this opportunity
of pointing the attention of our readers to a tract of Archbishop
Whately's, entitled 'The example of children as proposed to Christians,'
which his Grace, having been struck with a coincidence between some of
the thoughts in the tract and those expressed in the 'Review,' did us
the favour to transmit to us. Had we seen the tract before, we should
have been glad to illustrate and confirm our own views by those of this
highly gifted prelate. We earnestly recommend the tract in question
(as well as the whole of the remarkable volume in which it is now
incorporated, 'Essays on some of the Peculiarities of the Christian
Religion') to the perusal of our readers, and at the same time venture
to express our conviction (having been led by the circumstances above
mentioned to a fuller acquaintance with his Grace's theological writings
than we had previously possessed) that, though this lucid and eloquent
writer may, for obvious reasons, be most widely known by his 'Logic and
'Rhetoric,' the time will come when his Theological works will be,
if not more widely read, still more highly prized. To great powers of
argument and illustration, and delightful transparency of diction and
style, he adds a higher quality still--and a very rare quality it is--an
evident and intense honesty of purpose, an absorbing desire to arrive at
the exact truth, and to state it with perfect fairness and with the
just limitations. Without pretending to agree with all that Archbishop
Whately has written on the subject of theology (though be carries
his readers with him as frequently as any writer with whom we are
acquainted) we may remark that in relation to that whole class of
subjects, to which the present essay has reference, we know of no
writer of the present day whose contributions are more numerous or more
valuable. The highly ingenious ironical brochure, entitled 'Historic
Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte;' the Essays above mentioned, 'On
some of the Peculiarities of the Christian Religion;' those 'On some of
the Dangers to Christian Faith,' and on the 'Errors of Romanism;' the
work on the 'Kingdom of Christ,' not to mention others, are well worthy
of universal perusal. They abound in views both original and just,
stated with all the author's aptness of illustration and transparency of
language. We may remark, too, that in many of his occasional sermons,
he has incidentally added many most beautiful fragments to that ever
accumulating mass of internal evidence which the Scriptures themselves
supply in their very structure, and which is evolved by diligent
investigation of the relation and coherence of one part of them with
another. We are also rejoiced to see that a small and unpretending, but
very powerful, little tract, by the same writer, entitled 'Introductory
Lessons on Christian Evidences.' has passed through many editions, has
been translated into most of the European languages, and, amongst
the rest, very recently into German, with an appropriate preface,
by professor Abeltzhauser, of the University of Dublin. It shows
to demonstration that as much of the evidence of Christianity as is
necessary for conviction may be made perfectly clear to the meanest
capacity' and that, in spite of the assertions of Rome and of Oxford to
the contrary, the apostolic injunction to every Christian to be ready
to render a reason 'for the hope that is in him,'--somewhat better than
that no reason of the Hindoo or the Hottentot, that he believes what he
is told, without any reason except that he is told it,--is an injunction
possible to obey.
____

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