WHAT IS THE RIGHT DISTINCTION BETWEEN FAITH AND REASON.
Philosophy is essentially a reflective activity,
it therefore means that to be a philosopher one must reflect on human experience in order to provide answers to the fundamental questions that has troubled him. The issue of faith does not need to apply reasoning to it, this brings us to the subject matter, what is the right distinction between faith and reason.
The medieval philosophers or Christian thinkers brought about the problem of faith and reason in
philosophy about 300-1500AD. These groups of people are not really philosophers, but are theologians or religious thinkers who saw philosophy as a basic tool to explain some difficult concept in the religious sphere. They placed theology before philosophy, there by applying faith before reason, they claim that faith is the basic tool of religion, while reason is the basic tool of philosophy. They are of the opinion that some fact must first be accepted by faith before we can apply reason to it or
understand it, i.e., “credo ut intelliegum”, meaning “I believe in order understand.
These religious thinkers maintain that some things cannot be proved with rational arguments, but only through faith, what these group fails to understand is that what we believe need not to be proved since we have accepted the conclusion already by believing it, e.g. the existence of God. Martin Luther once said “reason is the greatest enemy that faith has, it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God”, what this means is that faith and reason cannot agree unless faith is properly regulated by reason.
The lexicon meaning of reason “a faculty of the mind by which it distinguishes truth from falsehood, while faith is “the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another”. For a better understanding I shall explain what is theology and philosophy. Theology is the science and nature of God and the foundations of religious beliefs, therefore its main tool is faith, philosophy on the other hand is an attempt to understand all things in the light of what is basic and ultimate from the stand point of reason, thereby making reason its basic tool.
A philosopher cum scientist once said I do not feel obeyed to believe that the same God, who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect, has intended us to forgo their uses. This statement means that it would be foolish to accept fact without applying reasoning to it, the side effect is that we cannot learn any new thing. The truth is there are many things in our society masquerading as faith, what many sees as faith may actually be just forces of patriotism, intellectual laziness or effect of brain wash.
Faith that is not regulated by reason leads to destruction, every concept should have an explanation that follows logically with proof and not assuming or believing that it is so, an historian once said that I believe the death and restoration of Christ because there are enough historical facts to back it up.
The only reason why the medieval philosophers tries to place faith that is not controlled by reason is that they where living according to the thought pattern of their time, this period was characterized by a new religious experience where everything is being explain through religion. The right distinction between faith and reason is that every thing we believe by faith must be subjected to reason and its workability in order for us to be able to understand and give a vivid explanation to it.