Reason and Faith—I

Extract

What is the difference between reason and faith? The question is framed in what I would call ‘the treacherous singular’. The structure of the question implies a particular form of answer and makes other assumptions about notions that occur in the same region of our network of thoughts and understandings. If I were happy to play this game I might reply in kind by offering a simple formula purporting to sum up my own answers to the cluster of questions that are implicit in the simple form given above. The form makes the question and the answer appear more straightforward than they are. Perhaps I might answer in the questioner's style by stating the conclusions of my paper in these words:

A simple idea is at the heart of my paper, but one that is hard to absorb and to live by in one' s wider thoughts about reason and faith. The simple idea is that faith is itself a mode of reason. This means that there cannot be a sharp distinction between reason and faith, whether or not one tries to express such a distinction in the treacherous singular, or perhaps in the impoverished plural, a mode of expression in which a few separate but simple factors are identified as what faith is or what reason is.