Posts
1. Faith Completes Reason - The Thomist view. The view of Aquinas and many Catholic philosophers/theologians today. Faith and reason are both forms of warranted belief but they exist in their own spheres. Faith is something extra added to reason. E.g. the existence of God may be shown true or probable by philosophy but it requires faith to know about doctrines such as the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Trinity.
2. Faith Justified by Reason - The Lockean view. The view of most modernists. Faith can only be accepted in so much as reason confirms it. Reason is the bar to which all else must bend. Doctrines such as the existence of God, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Trinity are to be believed only to the degree that reason shows them to be rational. E.g. One can only believe Scripture if one has good proofs that Scripture ought to be believed.
3. Faith Complements Reason - The Augustinian View. The view of Augustine, Anselm, and the Reformed thinkers (both modern and pre-modern). It takes the deliverances of faith on the same ground as the deliverances of reason and does philosophy (or any other discipline for that matter) on the assumption that both are reliable sources of knowledge. Faith is a priori knowledge and therefore needs no argument from reason just as sense perception needs no argument from reason (nor is a non-circular one even possible). Faith and reason are seen to complement one another.
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I personally see the third as the best choice because I see the deliverances of faith on the same epistemic grounds as reason and sense perception. Just as I perceive, say, a tree, so I also perceive that God exists or that God speaks to me through Scripture and Sacrament.
