Reason and Faith

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God has made us with two eyes, both intended to be used so as to see one object. Binocular vision is the perfection of sight. There is a corresponding truth in the spiritual sphere. We have two faculties for the apprehension of spiritual truth—reason and faith; the former intellectual, the latter largely intuitive, emotional. Reason asks, How? Wherefore? Faith accepts testimony, and rests upon the person who bears witness.
Now reason and faith often seem in conflict, but are not. Reason prepares the way for faith, and then both act jointly. We are not called to exercise blind faith, but to be ready always to give answer to every man who asks a reason.
There are three questions which belong to reason to answer: First, Is the Bible the Book of God? Second, What does it teach? Third, What relation has its teaching to my duty? When these are settled, faith accepts the Word as authoritative, and no longer stumbles at its mysteries, but rather expects that God’s thoughts will be above our thoughts. Thus, where reason’s province ends faith’s begins.
—A. T. Pierson

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