God created human reason; one should reject Christian faith if it makes reason less reasonable. But what if it makes reason more reasonable? Could that be so? It is the claim of Christian faith that it is so – that faith does not contract reason, but expands it. It leads reason to probe more deeply and ask more penetrating questions, and it provides reason with additional data.
Perhaps it is not surprising that many atheists do not know this. However, it is amazing that many Christians do not know it. They have been listening to how their adversaries describe faith, not to how the saints describe it. They think they must uphold an entirely un-Christian view of faith as something that detracts from reason.
I will not say they are not Christians for thinking so, but their view is in the most precise sense contrary to the faith, and tends to withdraw them from it.
As Benedict XVI argued, “Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature." And as his predecessor wrote, “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth, and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know Himself – so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
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