The Reformers, Luther and Calvin, recognized three kinds of reason:
- Natural reason – logic, critical thinking, and common sense.
- Renegade reason – autonomous reason; refuses to be subject to Christ and exalts itself over God.
- Regenerate reason – reason within the bounds of revelation, as opposed to Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Reason is not ultimate and that is reasonable. Reason should know and accept it limits.
Calvin: Reason is the receptacle of revelation.
Aquinas: Reason can prove what faith accepts.
Reason may argue beyond a reasonable doubt or beyond a shadow of a doubt depending upon the nature of the thing it's reasoning about. Scientific reasoning and aesthetic reasoning achieve different kinds of certainty.
Faith is not the denial of reason, but may be a response to reason. Faith is believing what we have been told. Sometimes we can see the rationality of something, but sometimes we cannot. If we cannot see how or why something is true, we may still believe it based on previous experience with that authority.
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