Being Reasonable about Faith and Reason

If you’re looking for something to do with the Amazon gift card you got for Christmas, take a look at Chris Kaczor’s new book, The Seven Big Myths About the Catholic Church. In a recent interview, he focuses the mind a bit on that faith-and-reason front that we sometimes find ourselves talking about more often than not at gatherings around this time of year:

Faith does transcend reason, but faith does not contradict reason. Faith involves trusting someone and accepting what is revealed by this person as true. In a human sense, we have faith in our friends. We can know certain things about our friends such as their general height, age, and appearance from using our reason. But others things about them we can know only if our friends reveal them to us, such as their beliefs, history, and inner experiences. However, it is not irrational to believe what our friends reveal to us about themselves, even if we cannot verify that they are telling us the truth about their inner thoughts and feelings. So too, faith in God involves accepting what God reveals to us about his own inner life; for example, that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We cannot prove the Trinity through philosophy, but we can accept it through faith. This acceptance is not contrary to reason but does go beyond what reason can know through its own power.

There is much more in our interview here.

His book on abortion and ethics is also a treasure trove — we talked specifically about it earlier in the year. But do give the Seven Big Myths book to yourself or someone who might be interested. As with Austen Ivereigh’s gift to the Church, How to Defend the Church without Raising Your Voice, Kaczor focuses the mind on truth. And believers need the gentle reminders and catechetical primers perhaps even more than anyone.