Perhaps the most misleading idea in current philosophical dialogue that plays itself out in popular culture is the assertion that “faith” and “reason” are polar opposites, and that there has always been an underlying “war” between faith and reason, religion and science. Such claims are as uncritical and simplistic as those who make them. Their definition of “reason” is really just “objective scientific method,” and their definition of “faith” is “blind belief in fairytales.” Neither definition is much of a definition and both definitions are nothing more than nursery school explanations of graduate school concepts.
Immanuel Kant and George W.F. Hegel
So what is “faith”? What is “reason”? Kierkegaard gives a very thought-provoking explanation of both. But before we discuss his take on these things, we need to quickly review the philosophical worldview of early 19th Century Europe, namely the influence of two men: Immanuel Kant and George W. F. Hegel.
Immanuel Kant is the one credited for arguing that when it comes to understanding morality and God, rationality, reason, and scientific knowledge must be the “playing field” on which morality and God is understood. He was influenced by, and ultimately rejected, the teachings of George Hegel, who tried to wed the growing Enlightenment worldview to a sense of spirituality. What he came up with, though, was not Christianity. It was a vague pantheism.
Hegel argued that ideas and truth develop throughout history, so that what is “true” essentially evolves over time. There is an initial concept of truth (thesis), then another idea happens to run into conflict with it (antithesis), and after awhile the thesis and antithesis “duke it out,” reconcile, hop in bed together, and eventually give birth to another truth (synthesis), which in turn becomes the new thesis. Eventually another conflicting idea (antithesis) comes along…and so on and so on. Hegel, therefore, believed that this “evolution of ideas” would eventually lead to the “Ultimate Idea,” which he understood to be “God”—the ultimate reality of everything known.
Whatever your reaction to Hegel’s theory itself may be, you should see that his underlying assumption was still the same as Kant’s: rationality and reason were in the driver’s seat of truth. Hegel’s “God” was really just “ideas, fully understood.” Now, I’m guessing that most modern people will say, “What’s the problem? How else are we even able to understand morality and God without our reason, and without a careful ‘scientific’ study of the world?” The very fact that most people probably see nothing startling with Kant’s claims shows just how much we have been influenced by him. It doesn’t even occur to us that there is anything wrong with that notion.
What’s the Problem?
There is. The problem isn’t that reason is used within our search for morality and God. The problem is the assumption that reason and the scientific method is the primary, if not only viable, way of coming to an understanding of morality and God. The problem is that the Kantian view essentially reduces human beings to mere brains. And we all know what happens if one detaches a human brain from the rest of the body—it quickly dies and becomes useless.
Such is the ultimate problem with the modern/Enlightenment worldview—it elevates the rationality as the only real way truth can be assessed, and all other ways are fairytales and illusions. Of course, a moment’s reflection should convince every one of us just how (ironically) irrational such a view is: the times you are holding your baby in your arms as he falls asleep, the times a certain song, poem, or work of art touches your heart and affects you in a way you don’t fully understand, and yet you are aware of a deeper meaning to life that you can’t quite get your mind around, but you know it’s there, and is just as real, if not more so, than what your tiny brain can understand.
Simply put, the Enlightenment worldview and Kantian elevation to human reason as the “be all/end all” to truth is nothing more than egotistical idolatry, and a denial of the deep mystery and wonder of life. It is the removal of the human brain from the body, the putting it on a pedestal, and the bowing down to it. Of course, when that happens, in a very short time, both that brain and the one who worships it will be dead. We must remember, against the backdrop of the millions of years of existence, the past 200 years of Enlightenment-influenced ideas is but a blip on the radar screen of history.
Given this Enlightenment worldview of Kant and Hegel, enter Kierkegaard. He saw where such a view led to, and he rejected it. It wasn’t because he was opposed to “reason.” It was because he was opposed to the naïve (and he would argue sinful) attempt to place limited human reason as the arbiter of truth about everything regarding humanity and God. He rejected the same old ancient idolatry dressed up in modern clothes.
Human Beings: Rational and Relational Creatures
For Kierkegaard, what it means to be a human being cannot be reduced to mere rational ideas. To be a human being is to be a relational creature. Therefore, it is relational knowledge (what Kierkegaard calls faith) that takes precedence over rational knowledge. You can amass all the data about a woman—her likes, dislikes, body size, hair color, personal history, etc.—but unless you actually go up and talk to her, and get to know her in a personal and relational way, all your facts and figures about her life won’t mean anything when it comes to living as a human being. We see the same view in the Bible itself: when a husband and wife have sex and produce a child, the Bible puts it in terms of “Adam knew Eve, and she bore a son…” etc.
So, relational knowledge goes much deeper than rational knowledge, for it is relationality that defines human beings, not rationality. In fact, our rationality is only of any use when it is subordinated to relationality. Rationality is the servant, relationality is the lord, and for Kierkegaard, it is that relationality that lies at the heart of faith. That is why he reacted so strongly against the Enlightenment’s claim that unaided human reason’s pursuit of truth about things could be king, and could give meaning to human life.
But Kierkegaard puts it in even starker terms: the putting of human reason on a pedestal is nothing less than sin, for it is usurping the primacy of relational knowledge with limited human knowledge about facts. It is essentially saying, “I can cover my room with Justin Bieber posters, buy every teen magazine that has pictures and facts about Justin Bieber, learn every one of his songs, and know every fact about him, and thus convince myself that I actually know him (even though I don’t, and won’t ever will, because I’m too busy plastering myself with Bieber paraphernalia!”
What is Truth?
Or let’s leave my rather silly example of Justin Bieber, and use another one—one that Kierkegaard used to condemn the institutionalized Church. As Vardy writes, “the Truth that Jesus reveals is not a matter of doctrines or propositional knowledge, it is Truth about human beings and their relationship to God” (14). Many Christians (and non-Christians, for that matter) are so busy learning facts and doctrines about Christ, that they have never taken the time to get to know him. It is that obsession with gathering facts about Christ, elevating your reason to the point where you think you can “prove” God exists and Jesus is Lord, and assuming that the Christian faith is just another theory that can be convincingly proven, if only we get our facts straight and use our reason to convince people—for Kierkegaard that is sin. Sin is not just a moral failing—it is ultimately placing yourself and your limited, autonomous human reason at the center of your life, and believing that it can figure everything out by itself.
Autonomous Human Reason is Sin?
For Kierkegaard, it is a sin to limit the Christian faith within the borders of human reason alone. Biblically speaking, sin brings death, and the Enlightenment idolatry of human reason brings death to the individual, relational person who is made in God’s image. Kierkegaard, as well as the entire Eastern Orthodox Tradition, understood that just because something isn’t “rational,” doesn’t mean it’s not true. Is the love a parent has for his child “rational?” Is the beauty of Van Gogh’s “Starry Starry Night” “rational”? Are Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos “rational”? Is stepping out in a living faith and entering into a relationship with the Trinitarian God as revealed in Christ “rational”? The answer to all those questions is, “No”—but they are all real and true. In fact, they are more real and more true that the actual paint on a canvas, notes on a page, or systematized creed.
Now don’t get me wrong: the paint, notes, and creeds are needed, but they are only tools by which a painting, concerto, or relationship goes forward and is developed. What the philosophy since the Enlightenment has done is to cast aside the painting, concerto, and relationship as “not really true,” and then point to the paint still in the tubes, or the ivory keys on the keyboard, or the “naturalistic facts” that make up the biological world, say, “THAT is truth because we can measure it and quantify it!”
Ultimately, modern philosophy ever since the Enlightenment, the kind that Kierkegaard lambasted, and the kind that still is prevalent today in not only philosophy classes, but also comparative religions classes, and even the pop culture “science vs. religion” debates, is an exercise in silliness—but it is the worst kind of silliness, for it is a silliness that negates the human being, and ultimately brings death. As Kierkegaard put it, it is the worst kind of sin, for it attempts to put autonomous human reason—an amputated human brain—in the center of the universe. It is philosophical geo-centrism…and it signals the death of true knowledge and faith.
