Faith Without Reason?

Arguably, one of the most central terms in Christianity is faith. In fact, it's such a central term that it's even used to describe the religion itself (I.e the Christian faith). Despite its centrality to much of Christianity's doctrines, however, it might be one of the most misunderstood terms in the Christian vocabulary.

So, what is faith?

A common misconception among the opponents of Christianity is that faith is something one relies upon as a replacement for reason or in spite of evidence. It's simply a blind, unquestioning belief that not only is without evidential support, but often comes in spite of evidence and logic. In reality, though, that flies in the face of everything the educated Christian must know about the word.

The original text of the New Testament was written in Koine Greek. In that original language, the word πίστις (pistis) is used a total of 243 times. Of those 243 total uses of the word, it's translated in the New American Standard Bible as faith 238 times, but if we look at the remaining five, we can start to get a bit of a deeper understanding of what the word truly means. Of those five, three are translated as faithfulness (Romans 3:3, Galatians 5:22 and Matthew 23:23), while the same word is translated as pledge once (1 Timothy 5:12) and proof (Acts 17:31) once.

If faith simply means a blind adherence or unquestioning belief, does it really make any sense to ever translate the same word as both faith and proof or pledge? To answer that question, one must take a much deeper look into the classical use of the word we translate into English as faith. The Bible never explicitly defines it, but the differences in translation of the original Greek word, along with what is said about faith in Hebrews 11:1 — that it is "the certainty of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen" — take us a long way in the effort to arrive at a more accurate understanding.

Throughout the two millennia since the inception of Christianity, the prevailing understanding of the word we English speakers most often translate as faith has been that it is most accurately described as trust or conviction in the truth of a something. With this understanding, it's easy to see how translators came to different conclusions in different passages as to what English word should be used. This understanding also creates a much more cohesive explanation for many other passages of Scripture and lends further credence to the assertion that faith couldn't be further from some blind adherence to a proposition in the face of logic and evidence to the contrary.

Not only is faith not what many atheists want us to think it is, but in reality, it's just the opposite. True Christian faith that defies reason is an oxymoron. It's a contradiction in terms. It simply can't exist.

In isolation, most of the passages in Scripture that mention faith could possibly be interpreted as nothing more than a blind belief, but when read in combination and within the totality of God's Word, there's very little room for any sort of debate against the necessity of reason in the development of faith. In fact, not only is it made clear through such a thorough investigation that Christians are not intended to throw out reason and logic to "just believe," but exactly the opposite was the true intent behind what we read.

Just as Luke praised the Bereans for in Acts 17, we as modern Christians must always strive to be noble-minded as the Bereans were called in verse 11, receiving the "word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so." Paul puts it most simply in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 when he says, "But examine everything; hold firmly to that which is good."

Without examination and an adherence to reason, we have no way to fulfill that command. If our faith were truly blind, how would we even know what's good and what isn't? Much like many other myths surrounding Christianity and its teachings, the assertion that faith must replace and contradict logic and reason is just that... a myth.