Faith beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account

by C. Stephen Evans

In this work, the author distinguishes between a faith which rejects all reason and a faith requiring that reason is self-critical. He addresses this central debate in the philosophy of religion in the light of the key arguments of Kierkegaard, Aquinas and Kant. The text leads the student through the traditional topics, such as knowledge of God's existence, the problem of evil, and how someone could know that his or her religion had been based on revelation from God.

Genres: Philosophy, Christian, Theology

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 1998

About the author

C. Stephen Evans (b. Atlanta , Georgia) is an American historian and philosopher, he is one of the United States' leading experts on Søren Kierkegaard having published six books on Kierkegaard over 25 years. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Baylor University. He holds a B.A. with High Honors (philosophy), from Wheaton College, an M.Phil. (philosophy) from Yale University, and a Ph.D. (philosophy) from Yale University.

He has won numerous awards, and reviews manuscripts for several university presses, including Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Princeton University Press, as well as Harper and Rowe. He does the same for several academic journals. He was curator of the Howard V. and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library. He has organized several major conferences. He served five years on the the editorial board for Kierkegaard Monographs and for the International Kierkegaard Commentary Series. He is a past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers and the Søren Kierkegaard Society.

Reviews

[Samuel Eastlund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evans' attempt to rehabilitate fideism, or what he calls 'responsible fideism'. Outlining reasons to reject irrational fideism, he proceeds to understand fideism as 1. reason's inability to determine truth or falsity for a proposition, 2. reason's inability to even investigate that belief, or 3. reason's inability to grasp an important concept in a proposition. These loosely correspond to Aquinas, Kant, and Kierkegaard, but there is significant overlap with the later thinkers with the earlier.

Evans rejects 'presuppositional' understandings a la Van Til, but when he goes on to show how Kierkegaard understands 'Faith Against Reason' the reasons are surprisingly similar. Both think that concrete/practical reason has been damaged by sin and needs an act of God to move over for faith. I think Evans' reasons for rejecting Van Til is the coercive nature of God's action in his account. For Van Til, human reason is unable to move aside and accept its impotence over certain propositions/knowledge, and God has to force his way in. For Kierkegaard, human reason is just as selfish and imperialistic, but (with God's help) has the ability to recognise its own limitations, and can move itself aside for the faith necessary to know God. At least this is how I understand the distinction Evans proposes.

The last few chapters cover some related issues in philosophy of religion which a fideist might be involved in. The most helpful for me was the chapter on the problem of evil, where the fideist can reject the logical and evidential problem of evil based on reason's damaged nature and limitations, and can provide encouragement for the believer in the face of evil.

This was a really good read, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in Christian philosophy.

[Holland Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

In case you were wondering. I despise Philosophy books. The pursuit of knowledge in this book was at times intriguing at best. A fun game I would play would be to turn to a random page and read a random sentence to a friend. Every single time the response I got was, “wow, that’s a lot.” An opinion of mine that I hold is that any book that cannot be read by the majority of people is in fact, badly written.

The book talked about the fideism which is a particular kind of view that holds a type of faith “without” reason. That’s literally it. It just talks about what a bunch of different people have thought about relationship between reason and faith. This would be an interesting conversation to have, but the way that this book was written took away all interest from the subject.

[Andy Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really fantastic book. Well written and bold case for what Evans calls "responsible fideism." He successfully argues that a faith beyond reason is logically and philosophically the only true faith. I loved it: book of the year with just a month to go.