If we stopped our reflections with chapter 1, we might conclude that Socrates, the patron saint, as it were, of reason, and Abraham, the faithful one, have almost nothing in common. The one is always seeking to grasp reasons with the powers of his human intellect; the other seems not to care much about human reasoning, but places his trust in One whom he considers to be higher than human reasoning. The first questions; the second obeys. Based on these distinct postures, chapter 1 seemed to leave us with a very difficult choice: arbitrarily pick one! We have to live our lives following one of these two paths, the conclusion seemed to be saying, but we can follow only one. To be sure, there are other paths—the path of loving bodily pleasure and the path of loving honor and glory are both paths commonly trodden, but for those who are noble, for those who want to live the best life possible, there are really only two worthy choices: the choice of Socrates and the choice of Abraham. Two roads diverge, and while we might long to travel both and yet be one traveler, such is not an option presented to man. Love human reason, or love God. That is our choice. And while we might look down each path as far as we can, until we see where it disappears into the undergrowth, we cannot simply say at the outset which path is preferable. Indulging the desire to understand by means of our own rational capacities is intoxicating, but indulging the desire for God, the desire for the greatest thing of all, is at least equally so.
But within the noble human soul, there is always resistance to choosing one good thing if one has to forgo another good thing in so choosing. The question immediately arises for the truly desirous or erotic soul: Is it really impossible to travel down both paths? If the material metaphor is left behind, the question becomes more sensible: Rather than choosing either a life of reason or a life of faith, is it somehow possible to combine or integrate the two? There have been plenty of people who have answered this question with a resounding “NO!” Indeed, in our time, it seems that a great many people think that the human situation is one that cuts off the possibility of following both reason and faith. But perhaps this “judgment” is only the prejudice of the age in which we happen to live.
A. On the Similarities between Socrates and Abraham
Let us begin chapter 2 by reflecting on the figure with whom we began chapter 1. After all, if we think further upon the figure of Socrates, we have to ask ourselves, “Why did Socrates decide that the pursuit of truth through his rational capacities was the best life for man to live?” If he should appeal to human reason to establish that the life based on human reason is highest and best, he could be accused of circular reasoning. There is something almost “religious” in Socrates’ unwavering commitment to a life of reason; in fact, he must have had an implicit faith, it seems, in the power of human reason to find truth and wisdom and knowledge, and when he started out on the quest for those things, he must have believed that such things were worth spending his whole life in acquiring without really knowing that such things were worth spending his whole life in acquiring. In loving wisdom, he had to have had a certain trust that wisdom really was worth loving.
And if we think further about Abraham, we remember that sometimes he did ask questions. He asked a whole string of questions of God in the story about the destruction of Sodom, for example. And even if he did not openly state questions in the story about Isaac, it is entirely possible that he may have been asking reflective questions of himself as he and Isaac set out for Moriah. From the fact that Abraham obeyed a commandment that was hard if not impossible to understand, it does not follow that Abraham did not pose questions to himself, to his own human powers of reasoning.
In the New Testament, a figure similar to Abraham is Mary, who is also credited by believers for her great faithfulness. When the angel approaches Mary and announces to her the incredible thing that God has planned for her, Mary gives a response that may be termed “Abrahamic”: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). Yet, Mary is also said to have “considered in her mind” the angel’s greeting and indeed to have asked questions about the possibility of his message even being true (Lk 1:29, 34). Within the Catholic tradition, she is viewed as the patroness of philosophy—indeed, as the very personification of wisdom.
It seems, then, that the portrayal of Socrates and Abraham offered in chapter 1 may have been something of a caricature—of an exaggeration. Upon further reflection, it seems as if they may each have indulged somewhat in the activity of the other (although certainly they did not indulge in the other’s activity to the degree that the other did). If we consider the matter still more closely, we also notice at least two very important things that Socrates and Abraham have in common. First, both are great lovers; that is, both are extremely erotic or desirous. Socrates loves knowing, the experience of knowing, the process of coming to know through discussion and questioning. He is always on the trail of wisdom, pursuing her through thick and thin. Abraham is likewise a great lover, following God even when he does not understand, trusting God no matter what. The primary command for the believer according to Deuteronomy is that one must love the Lord (Deut 6). This incredible desire and longing for something greater than oneself is common to both great thinkers and great believers. The vulgar notion that thinking and believing are boring or uninteresting only seems plausible to the person who has never really experienced either.
Secondly, in pursuing their respective activities, both Socrates and Abraham think they are finding truth—the truth about what really is the case, the truth about the way things are. In giving reasons for claiming the things he claims, Socrates is engaging in what might be termed a “truth-generating activity”. But in accepting the word of God even without giving merely human reasons for doing so, Abraham thinks he is also finding out about the way things are, for God is the source of his coming to find out what is the case. If we define “to know” as knowing the reasons why one’s claims are true through the processes of natural human understanding (as we did in chapter 1), then it is correct to say that Socrates knows or at least seeks to know and that Abraham does not. And if we define “to believe” as to accept what is true on the basis of God’s authority in making such things clear to us through revelation, then it is correct to say that Abraham believes and Socrates does not. But notice that both Abraham and Socrates claim to be finding or discovering truth through their respective activities.
B. Why Both Rationalism and Fideism Are to Be Rejected
In chapter 1, we presented an exaggerated and hence distorted portrait of Socrates and Abraham, implying that Socrates was almost a rationalist like Clifford and that Abraham was a fideist like Kierkegaard. And we noted that in fact there are very real advantages to both positions. Now we have suggested that perhaps Socrates and Abraham were more subtle than we previously noticed and that indeed they share at least some features. We have to qualify, too, what was said about the advantages of extreme rationalists like Clifford and extreme fideists like Kierkegaard, for in the end it seems that neither position is even possible, which would mean that neither is ultimately defensible.
It is quite impossible for people to live their lives as rationalists, for there just is not time and opportunity to examine every one of one’s beliefs in order to find out what the reasons for those beliefs are. Consider, for example, the common human activity of consulting a road map. One does not have time to check out for oneself whether Route 66 really goes where the map says it does or whether it is really forty-seven miles between two towns whose positions are marked on the map. One is forced to trust that the people who put the map together were careful and that someone has checked out the claims made by the map. One acts, in other words, on the conclusions of others. One has an opinion, and in following maps one is confident that one’s opinions are true. But, according to our definitions, one cannot say that one really has knowledge if one does not know the reasons for one’s claims.
Perhaps one can try to respond by saying that, “Well, maps have been followed by many people, and if there had been any mistakes they would have been cleared up long ago.” This may well be the case, but notice that all we are saying is that there is a certain plausibility in believing the views adopted by others: a number of people have done the same calculation, and so it is likely to be accurate; the people working on the map would seem to have no reason to be dishonest (although people are often careless), so their authority should probably be trusted. The fundamental issue still remains, however: if knowing means knowing the reasons why something is true, then the simple fact that the duration of our lifespan is limited makes it impossible for us to know everything we would need to know if we were to live as the rationalist would have us live.
The problem is compounded by the fact that there are plenty of situations in which we have to rely on the authority of a single person whose work may not have been checked by others. Perhaps a friend, Susan, has made the claim that a particular chicken dish at a restaurant is “excellent”, or even “to die for”. And perhaps one goes there and, on Susan’s recommendation, orders the dish. Notice that here one is making a decision based on the authority of one person at one time. Our implicit claim that the chicken dish we ordered will be “excellent” may still turn out to be a true claim, but can we really be said to have knowledge that it will be? Would we normally not just say that we “believe” it will be good, based on the authority of Susan? The more one thinks about it, the more one realizes that we are forced to live and act on a whole heap of claims for which we do not really know the truth but which we believe anyway.
But even if we could somehow resolve these relatively unimportant questions, the decisive weakness in the rationalist’s position is that it necessarily assumes that human reason can resolve the most important questions about human existence. Let us set aside the question of God for the moment; let us think about another important human problem, the problem of whom to marry, or, indeed, whether to marry. Perhaps Samantha has received a proposal to marry a certain William. Perhaps Samantha has known Will for quite a while, and perhaps she even knows some of Will’s friends. As a result, she has developed the claim or opinion that Will would be a good marriage choice for herself. Can the rationalist really claim that she “knows” that Will is the person for her? If people waited to marry until they knew everything about their potential marriage partners that the rationalist would want us to know prior to marriage, no one, it seems, would ever get married. The rationalist seems to have set the bar too high for even the most important human decisions—perhaps especially for the most important human decisions. And if we cannot have complete knowledge even about whom we should marry, can we possibly ever have complete knowledge about God? Will we not be in a state of perpetual limbo with respect to the God question? People cannot always put their lives on hold while they try to figure everything out—that is why opportunities for reflection are especially to be cherished.
The very example that Clifford uses in “The Ethics of Belief” turns out to be extremely misleading. According to the example, we start out on a shore where we are safe and secure and apparently happy. Everything is fine on the shore. The problem is that we are tempted to get onto a ship. According to Clifford, we should not get into one of these boats unless we know that (that is, have the reasons why) the boat is seaworthy. According to Clifford, we get to choose whether to get into a boat, and the supposition is that we had best not get into any of the boats unless we know that we are getting into the right one. But, of course, this analogy just does not correspond to the human experience. We do not start out already on the shore where everything is fine and secure. Rather, we are born, as it were, on one of the ships. Perhaps our boat is filled with atheists, but it is still a boat, and at first we have no idea whether it is seaworthy or not. Perhaps we have the opportunity to change to a different boat—one that we think might be more seaworthy—but we will in any case still be in a boat. There is no “not deciding” about getting into the boats. The shore—far from being the place from which we start out—is where we are trying to go. But we can only know with the confidence and certitude that the rationalist seeks that the boat will indeed get us to the safety of the shore when we finally, actually arrive there!
Fideism, as our readers probably anticipated some time ago, has problems of its own. The obvious one is that if one makes choices “blindly”, one’s choices will sometimes turn out badly. There are a great many claims abroad about God, and they cannot all be true. And, indeed, history is replete with examples of people who made blind leaps for God that later turned out rather obviously to be false. We can think of all sorts of cult leaders and false prophets who have asked for unthinking faith and then led their followers into ruin. Jim Jones and David Koresh come to mind.
A second problem with fideism is that, while reason may not be able to answer all questions about whom to trust, it would still seem to be able to give some information on whom we ought not to trust. Let us go back to the analogy regarding marriage. To be sure, people about to be married never know for sure that the person they are marrying is trustworthy. Still, reason would seem to give us real guidance about the wisdom of not marrying, say, axe murderers. If we should receive a marriage proposal from someone who is rude and mean and stubborn, we can reasonably determine that a marriage to such a person is unlikely to be happy. The conclusion to be drawn would seem to be that, while reason may not be able to be our sole guide in life, it does not follow that it cannot be helpful at all. With respect to God, perhaps reason cannot tell us just which claims about God are true and to be trusted; but it does not follow that reason cannot tell us that certain claims are false and not to be trusted. A Christian might plausibly claim that accepting the doctrine of the Incarnation is ultimately a matter of faith that transcends reason; it does not follow that reason can give no guidance regarding a claim that God is a giant purple cow in the sky.
The question raised at the conclusion of chapter 1 was whether, given the differences between faith and reason, a life that integrates the two is possible; the question raised by chapter 2 is whether, given the necessity of both faith and reason, a life that integrates reason and faith is not the only possibility. Putting the two together, we would seem to be in a position wherein it has become clear that a life integrating faith and reason is surely desirable, but perhaps logically impossible and hence not attainable. Beginning with chapter 3, however, we will turn to a series of chapters designed to show how the integrative position is indeed logically possible after all—a conclusion that would imply that the integrative position may turn out to be attainable as well.