Use of Reason and Logic

I am excited by the dialogue that has ensue in the past years about postmodernity and modernity. I've read as much as I can get my hands on in terms of the dialogue and sometimes heated debate about the shift we have been experiencing. Being a young pastor I was thrilled to find many peers asking the same questions and getting to some real answers.

My question has to do the place and use of reason and logic in the life of believers. I understand as human beings we are limited in our ability to understand "everything" or even some basic things by virtue of be created beings and because of the state human beings have gotten themselves into through sin. After following the dialogue for some time I am troubled that we are stirring towards the perspective that we should abandon reason and logic in attempting to understand "anything" spiritual.

I understand there are things we cannot explain and that reason cannot replace God yet it seems to me that God assumes that we are able to do these basic functions at some capacity otherwise he wouldn't communicate to us via language, ideas and other people. Isn't this an overreaction against the Enlightenment and its exaltation of human reasoning? And if so is there an attempt by postmoderns to redefine these things or simply bash them? Thank you for your time.

Great question. I agree with you that we would be terribly unwise to overreact to the naïve realism of Enlightenment rationalism and go to the opposite extreme – a kind of know-nothing anti-intellectualism. God save us from that! Anti-intellectualism was one way fundamentalist Christians coped with the attacks of rationalism on Christianity during modernity, and I fear that for many conservative Christians, it’s still a temptation.

In I Corinthians 13, Paul says, “We know in part.” That doesn’t mean “we know some things perfectly, and not others,” nor does it mean “we don’t know anything in any way.” It means that all of our knowing is partial, reflecting our creatureliness, which entails the privilege of having a perspective, but not of having a universal perspective. Only God has that, and we trust God who knows beyond our best knowing.

Also, I think we need to remember the Wisdom tradition in Scripture: we are told in no uncertain terms to seek wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and discernment. So, anyone who advocates lazy or sloppy thinking, or tells you to think less and worse instead of better and more, is grossly misleading.