By Bob Pratico
Ironically, one of the charges against the early church during the multiple persecutions by the Roman Empire was that of “atheism” because the Christians had abandoned the pagan gods. In 112 A.D., Pliny the Younger, then Roman governor of Bithynia, wrote the Emperor Trajan seeking counsel on how to best handle the growing and frustrating movement of Christians. In his letter, Pliny refers to the pagan temples “which have been almost deserted” as a result of Christian evangelization.1
In his book Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World, Tim Whitmarsh, professor at the University of Cambridge, acknowledges there is limited evidence describing atheism within antiquity. In a related blog post in 2016, entitled The Archaeology of Atheism in Ancient Athens, Whitmarsh points out that “Epicurus, who came to Athens from the island of Samos in the late fourth century B.C.E., was absolutely insistent that you would have to be ‘mad’ to propose a philosophical system without gods.”2 While there unquestionably were atheists in the ancient world, it was not nearly as prevalent a worldview as today. Both Romans and Greeks worshipped a plethora of pagan gods whom they believed were regularly active in the affairs of men. While faith, albeit misplaced by many, was indeed evident in the ancient world, reason had yet to play a significant role in the exercise of that faith. That would change with the advent of Christianity which also opened the door to stunning transcendent truth.
The rise of the apologists starting in the Second Century (i.e., Athenagoras, Aristides, Justin Martyr, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, etc.) signaled the beginning of a merger of reason with faith. Through the centuries, Christian theologians such as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas and Anselm of Canterbury brought reason alongside faith, making both powerful allies in the acquisition of truth and unraveling the mysteries of existence and creation. Reason became an ally to faith. While reason was an ally, it was also subservient to faith. As reason began to cooperate with faith, the popular culture began to move away from superstition into a rational understanding of reality. This was a good development.
But as reason assumed a more predominate role with the advent of modern science, something else also happened. Phenomena which had previously been ascribed to an omnipotent and omniscient God began to assume merely natural causes independent of God. Newtonian physics opened the door to a new and more powerful grasp of reality, gradually and deceptively eliminating any need for a sovereign, transcendent God. As reason became more vigorous in elucidating reality, God was slowly and foolishly relegated to the background. Instead of being active and intimately involved in creation, God was now consigned to an inactive, supervisory role. While he may have “wound up” creation in the beginning (like a clock) to initiate everything, the Cosmos was now perceived to function perfectly on its own. God was viewed in the background as an absentee landlord. God merely set creation spinning like a top on its own after release. However, while there are indeed physical laws that accurately describe and control the Universe, Scripture is also adamant that God remains intimately active and involved with His creation (i.e., Heb 1:3; Ps 104, 135, 145; Matt 10:29-30; Col 1:17; etc.)
As reason became more and more powerful through the scientific revolution and subsequent Enlightenment, the balance between faith and reason began to shift further. The effect on faith was devastating as evangelical faith slowly gave way to a generic and fatal Deism. Rain was no longer viewed as the gracious blessing of a benevolent God, but merely the natural effect of water droplets condensing out of clouds. A spectacular rainbow was no longer seen as the beautiful promise of God to never again judge the world with a universal cataclysmic flood, but simply an optical phenomenon caused in water droplets by the dispersion, refraction and internal reflection of light. Ultimately, God became superfluous and reason began to reign supreme.
There is no question that reason has led to fantastic accomplishments. Consider Voyager 1 and 2. After a 47 year journey in space, both are now well beyond our solar system traveling in interstellar space. They are currently more than 15 billion miles from Earth, moving at well over 35,000 mph.3 Voyager is the furthest and fastest object created by man to date. While light takes an astounding 22 hours to reach Voyager 1, incredibly NASA is still in contact with both of these probes that continue to operate and have unbelievably withstood the harsh environment of space for almost five decades.
Truth is whatever accords with reality. If we hold a distorted view of reality, we possess a faulty understanding of truth. Contrary to the view of many today, faith and reason are not in opposition with each other, but are in fact potent allies in the search for and acquisition of truth. Combining faith with reason creates powerful synergy as each reinforces the other. Jettisoning either one is catastrophic for one’s understanding of truth. Sola Scriptura does not mean that Scripture is the only source of truth; it means that Scripture is the final arbiter of truth. There are other sources of truth in addition to that provided by special revelation: mathematics, engineering, physics, chemistry, computer science, astronomy, logic, medical, biology, etc.,
Faith without reason is Fideism. Fideism holds that reason is unnecessary, inappropriate and even a hindrance for the exercise of faith.4 Yet, God exhorts us to reason (Isa 1:18). We are commanded to be ready to provide reason for our faith (1 Pet 3:15). On the Areopagus, Paul seeks to correct the ignorant Fideism of the Athenians (Acts 17:22-23). God demonstrates his unimaginable power, skill and intellect through creation, a truth that we can derive through reason (Rom 1:19-20). Paul reasons with the Jews using the Scriptures (Acts 17:2).
On the other hand, reason without faith is Rationalism. But rationalism is not the end-all as now often held up as there are some mysteries that are beyond human reason (Isa 55:8-9). We cannot rationally explain the incarnation of an eternal, preexistent, infinite and timeless God with a finite, time-bound human body. We cannot explain how the Universe was created from nothing. We cannot explain the mystery of life – i.e., what is life? Reason alone concludes that life must be the natural consequence of vast amounts of time and random mindless processes, relegating God as unnecessary. We are unable to reason to an understanding of the mysterious nature of time itself.5 The belief that reason explains everything is the height of hubris. While we can reason to some immanent truth (but not all), we can never reason to transcendent truth which must be revealed (i.e., Creation ex nihilo, the origin of life, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the mystery of the church, etc.)
We live in an age of marvelous scientific accomplishment and reap tremendous benefits from reason. But so powerful are the benefits from reason that more and more people today are increasingly inclined to abrogate God. Atheism is now much more in vogue and widespread than when I was in college 50 years ago. The popular culture has swung the pendulum from Fideism to Rationalism over the course of two millennia. As an aerospace engineer, I understand that airplanes can fly because of Bernoulli’s principle; I comprehend the physics that enable the wonder of flight. At the same time though, I marvel at a God who created the physics that encapsulate our world and facilitate flight . . . and that man, created in the image of God, is enabled with marvelous intellect to ascertain and benefit from the physics.
We live in an age where reason reigns supreme and faith is tragically increasingly irrelevant. While reason without faith may result in some significant accomplishments, it can never explain everything and results in a necessarily stunted grasp of reality. Transcendent truth cannot be reasoned to; it must be revealed (Col 1:26). Transcendent truth is simply beyond the realm of reason. Reason without faith is sterile and results in an emotionless worldview devoid of supreme meaning, akin to the character Spock in the original Star Trek series. Alternatively, combining faith with reason opens the door to ultimate reality. While both faith and reason are necessary, reason is always subservient to faith for we may reason wrongly because of the Noetic effects of sin. Faith is emboldened with reason, and reason becomes infinitely more meaningful when combined with faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6). The dynamic relationship between faith and reason is best expressed by the theology of Aquinas: knowledge accessed by reason can never contradict truth given by revelation that is understood by faith.
Edward Andrews remarks in The Christian Apologist that “the battle for human souls takes place on two fronts—the mind and the heart.” Both faith and reason are gifts from God to be used for our benefit and His glory. Matt 22:37 brings faith and reason together. “And he [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart [faith] and with all your soul and with all your mind [reason].”
1 https://earlychurchhistory.org/politics/plinys-letter-to-trajan-about-christians/
3 https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/
Christian Apologetics 
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