Christianity and faith have a long history of integrating reason. While anti-intellectualism emerged in some American Christian circles in the 1800s, prominent Christian thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, and Edwards viewed faith and reason as complementary. The document discusses how Galileo's issues with the church were more about politics and lack of evidence than a conflict between science and religion. It emphasizes that Christians should engage intellectually with their faith and confront ideas in culture through thoughtful apologetics rather than withdrawing from intellectual life.

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4. Ultimate Fighting Championship

5. Class Discussion
• What is Faith?
• Why is there tension between Faith and
Reason; Science and Religion?
• To what degree have you been intellectually
engaged with your faith?

6. “Some suggest we cannot find facts to support our faith, nor is it
preferable to try. This is silly. We're enjoined to have faith in part because
we have evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.”
“Biblical faith isn't believing against the evidence. Instead, faith is a kind of
knowing that results in action.”
“Friends, Christianity is not denying reality. Biblical Christians don't deny
reality, they discover reality. And once they've discovered it, they act on
what they've learned.”
“The opposite of faith is not fact, but unbelief. The opposite of knowledge
is ignorance. Neither is a virtue in Christianity.”
- Greg Koukl

7. What is faith?
1. A decision to believe something independent of
reason (Reason and Faith have no relationship).
2. A decision to believe while ignoring the lack of
evidence (Blind belief).
3. A decision to believe in spite of the evidence to
the contrary (Belief in opposition to evidence).
4. A decision to believe because we have a reason
to believe (Faith is based on reason).

8. Definitions
• Science
• Religion
• Theology
• Reason
• Faith

9. “The mind, not the Bible, is the very first line of defense
God has given us against error.” … “In order to understand
the Bible accurately, our mental faculties must be intact
and we must use them as God intended.” … “What is the
tool we use in our observations of the world that helps us
separate fact from Fiction? That tool is reason, the ability
to use our minds to sort through observations and draw
accurate conclusions about reality. Rationality is one of the
tools God has given us to acquire knowledge.”
- G. Koukl, Tactics pg. 32

10. God’ wants us to reason
• Christianity has a long history of Faith and
Reason.
• Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive
throughout Church History.
• “Come now, let us reason together, says the
LORD” Isaiah 1:18 (ESV)

11. Faith and Reason
• Reason is the handmaiden of Faith.
• ancilla: Latin for “handmaiden”.
• Compare the English derivative ancillary.

12. recta ratio, recta fides
• Credo ut intellegam (“I believe so that I may
understand”) and
• Intellego ut credam (“I understand so that I
may believe.”)
• recta ratio and recta fides
• right reason and right faith

13. Augustine of Hippo
“You say that truth is to be grasped more by
faith than by reason ... Heaven forbid that
God should hate in us that by which he made
us superior to the animals! Heaven forbid
that we should believe in such a way as not
to accept or seek reasons, since we could not
believe if we did not have rational souls.”

14. Galileo Galilei
Heliocentrism
Pope Urban VIII

15. Church v. Galileo
• First Trial (1616)
– Galileo’s evidence for the heliocentric model was
determined to be scientifically wrong.
– Bellarmino determined that Galileo’s telescopic
proof (the phases of Jupiter’s moons and Venus)
was inconclusive and his tidal proof (Galileo’s
assertion that the tides are caused by the motion
of the Earth around the sun) was flat out wrong.
– The result was a special injunction to Galileo not
to ``hold, teach, or defend'' the theory.

16. Church v. Galileo
• Galileo wanted to pursue his theory.
– He went to Pope Urban VIII later asking for
permission to write on heliocentrism.
– Galileo misrepresented the agreement from the
first trial as a warning when he asked Pope Urban
VIII for permission to write on the subject.

17. Church v. Galileo
• Galileo received permission from the Pope.
– Galileo was granted permission from the Pope so
long as he included the counter points.
– He did included counter points, however he
ridiculed the counter points.
• His work is written as a dialogue between two people,
one who is very foolish and the other who is
intellectual.
– This was like a slap in the face to the one person
who granted him permission.

18. Church v. Galileo
• The Pope’s Credibility
– Galileo was taking sides with people who were
politically opposed to Pope Urban VIII.
– The Pope was furious with Galileo, feeling betrayed.
– The book which Galileo had produced was very
different from the one he had expected and
approved.
– The Pope was concerned for his own credibility, since
his earlier friendship with Galileo was well known.

19. Church v. Galileo
• Galileo’s Second Trial (1632)
– His second trial was not about heliocentrism it was
about violating the terms of his 1616 agreement.
– However, the Inquisition did not press the most
serious charge, that of violating the special injunction.
– Galileo was required to ``abjure, curse, and detest
[these] errors and heresies.”
– His book was banned and he was sentenced to
imprisonment for life, which was commuted to house
arrest.

20. Galileo Galilei
Heliocentrism
Pope Urban VIII
The long and the short of it is Galileo did not have definitive scientific
proof and some of his proof was scientifically wrong. His personality
was abrasive. He lied about the settlement of his first trial. He made
the Pope look like a fool. This issue was not the Bible verses science
or religion verse science.

21. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109)
formed his views as a teacher of monks
who wished to understand logically
what they believed by faith.
Anselm's most famous demonstration
of a Christian truth is his "ontological
argument" for God's existence, which
holds that God is "that than which a
greater cannot be thought.”
- Professor Thomas Williams

22. Anselm of Canterbury
“Lord I am not trying to make my way to your
height, for my understanding is no way equal
to that, but I do desire to understand a little of
your truth which my heart already believes
and loves. I do not seek to understand so that
I may believe, but I believe so that I may
understand; and what is more, I believe that
unless I do believe I shall not understand. I
seek to understand so that I can lead others to
understand.”

23. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) used the works of
Aristotle as his primary philosophical inspiration,
developing arguments for the existence of God as well
as an account of the powers and limits of human
reason in knowing God. After Aquinas's death, some
of his views were officially proscribed by the
Condemnation of 1277.
- Professor Thomas Williams
He was the foremost classical proponent of natural
theology, and the father of Thomism.
His influence on Western thought is considerable, and
much of modern philosophy was conceived as a
reaction against, or as an agreement with, his ideas,
particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law,
metaphysics, and political theory.
- Wikipedia

24. Thomas Aquinas
• By reason alone we can know of God.
– In fact we can know there is one and only one God.
– No need for special revelation.
• By Faith we can know Christian doctrine.
– We can learn of Divinity of Jesus, Trinity, Redemption
etc…
– Through special revelation, (Bible and Tradition).
• All truth is harmonious.
– If our Faith and Reason are correct.
– There will be no conflict between what faith tells us
and what reason tells us.
Professor Thomas Williams, Ph.D., University of Notre Dame

25. Christian Mind in American Christianity

26. The Loss of the Christian Mind in
American Christianity
• Historical Overview
– The emergence of anti-intellectualism
• Focus on getting someone to believe with catchy sales
pitches not intellectually careful and doctrinally precise
sermons
– Evangelical withdrawal
• The Church started to focus on feelings and emotions
• Critical attacks on religious thought were unchallenged

27. Puritans
• In the 1600’s the Puritans were highly educated with a
89-95% literacy rate.
• Children learned how to read and write by age 6.
• They studies art, science, philosophy and other fields.
• "Ignorance is not the mother of devotion but of
heresy." Puritan, Cotton Mather.

28. Jonathan Edwards (1707-1758)
• Edwards is widely
acknowledged to be:
– America's most important
and original philosophical
theologian
– and one of America's
greatest intellectuals

29. Dawn of anti-intellectualism
• In the 1800’s there was a shift in the Church.
– Focus toward meeting felt needs.
– Focus was placed on getting people ‘in’.
• Grown out of the First Awakening.
– George Whitefield’s emotionally directed sermons.
• Full blown mid 1800’s.
– The Second Great Awakening (1800-1820).
– Revivals of Charles Finney (1824-1837).
– Layman’s Prayer Revival (1856-1858).

30. Legacy of the 1800’s revivals
“But their overall effect was to overemphasize immediate
personal conversion to Christ instead of a studied period of
reflection and conviction; emotional, simple, popular
preaching instead of intellectually careful and doctrinally
precise sermons; and personal feelings and relationship to
Christ instead of a deep grasp of the nature of Christian
teachings and ideas.”
J. P. Moreland, Love God With All Your Mind, pg 23
“Anti-intellectualism was a feature of American Revivalism.”
George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American
Culture, 1980 pg. 212

31. Impact
• Intellectually shallow, theologically illiterate form of
Christianity.
• Believers grew suspicious of intellectual issues
altogether.
• Birth of Mormonism (1830).
• Birth of Jehovah’s Witnesses (1884).
• Philosophies critical of religious thought, especially
from Europe (Immanuel Kant & David Hume) went
unanswered.
• Darwinian Evolution made the world safe for Atheists.
• Growth of scientism.

32. Scientism: A view that exalts the status of science and
scientific inquiry (of course, in the modern, current, Western
sense of the word) to an absolutely predominant position,
capable of solving, explaining, and/or passing judgment on
everything. In some cases, it is equivalent to science as
religion.
Professor Lawrence M. Principe

33. Attacks
• Once the Church retreated from academia the
Church became a target of academics.
– John William Draper (1811−1882)
– Andrew Dickson White

34. Anti-intellectualism's impact in the
Church
1. A misunderstanding of faith's relationship to
reason.
2. The separation of the secular and the sacred.
3. Weakened world missions.
4. Anti-intellectualism has spawned an irrelevant
gospel.
5. A loss of boldness in confronting the idea
structures in our culture with effective Christian
witness.

35. Other Terms
• Fideism (blind faith over reason)
– An approach to religion that emphasizes faith at the
expense of reason and, in its stronger expressions,
holds that no part of the body of faith can be
subjected to rational inspection or analysis; an
inherently anti-theological position. - Lawrence M.
Principe
• Biblicism (reliance on biblical texts alone)
– A theological position holding that the Bible is the
sole source of authority for Christianity. Accepted in
varying degrees by Protestants; rejected by Catholics
and Orthodox. - Lawrence M. Principe

36. In the World
• The Church was:
– Marginalization
– Trivialization
– Isolation from the public arena
• Church no longer has a voice:
– The reinterpretation of what the separation of Church
and State meant:
• From protecting the Church from the influence of the state.
• To protecting the state from the influence of the Church.

37. Legacy of the 1800’s revivals
"I cannot overemphasize the fact that this modern (anti-
intellectualism) understanding of Christianity is neither
biblical nor consistent with the bulk of church history.“
- J. P. Moreland, Love God With All Your Mind, pg 23 & 25

39. “It is important to see that apologetics is not an activity
reserved for philosophers who also happen to be religious
believers. Much that passes as philosophy of religion is really
apologetics as practiced by individuals who reject tenets of
religious belief. I do not say this to be critical of philosophers
of religion who also happen to be atheists. My point is that
philosophers who reject the Christian religion do not suddenly
become, by virtue of this fact alone, more objective or rational
or open minded than philosophers who are Christians or Jews.”
Ronald Nash, Faith and Reason: Searching for a Rational
Faith, pg 14

40. “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not
much of an evangelical mind… Despite dynamic success at
a popular level, modern American evangelicals have failed
notably in sustaining serious intellectual life. They have
nourished millions of believers in the simple verities of the
gospel but have largely abandoned the universities, the
arts, and other realms of “high” culture… The historical
situation is…curious. Modern evangelicals are spiritual
descendants of leaders and movements distinguished by
probing, creative, faithful attention to the mind.”
- Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

41. Resistance and Suspicion
• “In too many churches, a questioning mind can be a
plague to its owner. The thinking woman or man
seldom gets much support today – and more often
than not meets with resistance and suspicion.”
• “According to the Bible, developing a Christian mind is
part of the very essence of discipleship unto the Lord
Jesus.”
• “[God] does not love intellectuals more than anyone
else. But it needs to be said in the same breath that
ignorance in not a Christian virtue if those virtues
mirror the perfection of God’s own character.”
J. P. Moreland, Love Your God With All Your Mind

42. Faith and Reason
• Faith is a trust response to what we believe or
know.
• Reason is our process for evaluation of truth
claims.
– “Reason is relative to truth; it is a way of knowing
truth: understanding it, discovering it or proving
it.” - Kreeft and Tacelli
• Truth is reality.
– A truth cannot contradict another truth.

43. “In their uncompromising determination to
proclaim truth, Christians must avoid the
intellectual flabbiness of the larger society. They
must rally against the prevailing distrust of reason
and the exaltation of the irrational. Emotion, self-
indulgence and irrationalities have always been the
enemies of the gospel, and the apostles warned
their followers against them.”
- Herbert Schlossberg

44. 1. Inordinately individualistic
2. Infantile
3. Narcissistic
4. Passive
5. Sensate
6. Lost the art of developing an interior life
7. Hurried and busy
Countering the empty-self
1. Admit the problem
2. Choose to be different
3. Change your routine
4. Develop patience and endurance
5. Develop a good vocabulary
6. Set some intellectual goals
Don’t be so prideful as to think you know it all and that you are intellectual
enough. On the other hand do play the inferiority card and develop a sense
of insecurity about your mental abilities. Neither inferiority nor pride will do
you any good in developing a good Christian mind.
J. P. Moreland, Love Your God with all Your Mind pages 88-96

45. Homework
• Select a logical fallacy, learn about it, and
prepare an explanation of that fallacy to share
with the class.
• To find information about fallacies check:
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/

46. Quoted Resources
• Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of
Reason in the Life of the Soul by J. P. Moreland
• Reason and Faith: Philosophy in the Middle
Ages, Professor Thomas Williams
• Science and Religion, Professor Lawrence M.
Principe