Roses Fuschia Pink Cliparts

relationship between faith and reason: The impasse rationalism

Let's start by defining what rationalism. The Rationalism is defined by an attitude which, a priori, determined that God can not exist, be or act as presented by religion. In its most radical form, rationalism deny anything supernatural or any truth that will not bend to human reason. For example, a person could read the Gospels rationalist trying to explain it all the miracles of Jesus in a purely natural or psychological. It could even attempt to read the Bible while ignoring the passages that contain miracles. What I just described should remind some of the approach of many thinkers of the time "Enlightenment". For example, who has not heard of exegetes explain the miracle of the loaves and fishes by the fact that the crowd would simply shared their food with each other. You know, this loaf of bread and fish that are still lagging behind in his pocket, just in case ...

In a somewhat more moderate approach to the rationalist will be more interested in reusing the concepts contained in the Gospels, but the interpretants in the field of reason. What they reduce to an ideology or as it seemed in earlier times, a certain gnosis (knowledge higher). For example, rather to interpret this rule contained in the Church (Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium), it will rather try to recover what "works" with his ideology (be it Marxism, trade unionism, pacifism ...) and any just ignore the rest that he likes or less opposed to its ideology.

can find many examples of rationalist principles that have been condemned in the syllabus of Pope Pius IX in 1864:

• § I, III: Human reason, considered unrelated to God, is the sole arbiter of true and false, good and evil : It is itself the law, it suffices by its natural powers to procure the good of men and peoples.
• § I, IV: All the truths of religion derived from the native strength of human reason, from which it follows that the reason is the sovereign rule by which man can and must acquire the knowledge of all the truths of all kinds.
• § I, V: Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress corresponding to the development of human reason.
• § I, VI: Faith of Christ is opposition to human reason and divine revelation not only is useless, but it also affects the perfection of man.
• § I, VII: The prophecies and miracles recounted in the Scriptures are poetic fictions, and the mysteries of the Christian faith are the summary of philosophical investigations, in the books of both Testaments are contained mythical inventions and Jesus Christ himself is a myth.

What is the problem of rationalism that deserves that I define as a dead end? The problem of rationalism is, if only he allows to exist, the Deity (Deism), he locked him in a purely human and natural often. God then can not even be God, he becomes human and is reduced to merge with nature. Resulting in the end, by bringing God to the measure of man, man becomes God.

Does that mean that Christians should not be any way to reason? Absolutely not. Before attempting to define a suitable place to reason, I would like in the next article about another impasse is the opposite: fideism.