Listening to: Blue Roses on Myspace
Dave Bish and Tom Price have both posted brief thoughts on reason/logic. The reasonable and logical thing for me to be doing right now is to be studying law, so I'll have to be brief myself, but while agreeing that there is an important place for reason and logic I think there are two reasons (flowing from my faith which has priority) we should be a little suspicious of them:
1. Our old heart (the source of our reason) invents, borrows and distorts logic and concepts to make reality seem to fit our desires. You cannot reshape that distorted reason with more reason. It requires a changing of the heart from which our reason flows. We need to put to death our old hearts and at the same time break with our reason which grew from it. All of Christian life is killing the independent self-serving person and making alive the dependant and self-giving person. That includes reason.
2. Our old world (the data of our reason) is what we know by our senses. But we are caught between the times. Things are not what they appear. What we think is alive is dead, what looks weak is strong and what we reason to be bad is good. If reason is working with the wrong data, it can be the enemy of truth. If I am using 1997 polling results to predict the upcoming general election, thinking they are up-to-date, then I will hinder rather than help understanding of the true situation. Most people when they think of reason are thinking of reasoning-from-the-old-world. If that is what they think reason is then we have to talk about the limits of reason, or even of going against reason. But if we are able to redefine reason to take into account how we are caught between two worlds then we would not have to talk that way - but that requires a paradigm shift.
Following from those two thoughts, it is clear that 'reason' can be positive or negative; it depends on the source shaping it, and the data it is working with. But we should be suspicious and let it be judged by the written, spoken and sacramental word (i.e. the Bible, our church, and the sacraments). We are in no place to evaluate our reason, because we'll be using our reason to do so. It would be letting the accused bank robber be prosecutor, witness, and judge in his own case.
Sorry, those are not very coherent thoughts, but I must get back to the cold hard reality of the Sale of Goods Act 1979. I think its a particularly difficult topic because everyone means something different by 'faith' and 'reason'. Perhaps every bit of writing on the subject should start by defining terms.
