Not to act reasonably is stupid

“Can God’s existence be proven through reason alone?”

One major question through history has been the one presented above. If you want to enter into a meaningful dialogue with an unbeliever, or even one who is extremely skeptical, you will need to be able to use your reasoning to a good extent. After all, an unbeliever will brush off any scriptural belief as merely speculation and literature.

When St Paul was evangelizing, he was going to people who had never been exposed to Christ. In fact, many of them may not have even believed in God. So why not take what they believed at the time and work in Christianity? When evangelizing, it seems that it would help if you used the language of the people being evangelized. You have to hit them where they are, and that is what Paul, along with many others, did by using the Greek thought of the day.

Proving God’s existence, that is, the existence of an infinite and perfect being, can be done through reason alone. But what would that tell us? Other than getting an atheist to believe in a higher, omniscient power, it would not tell him or her anything about how to live or why we are here. Thus, we turn to scripture, linking our finite realm with the infinite realm of God. But reason cannot be discarded yet, as it still can open us up to understanding Revelation all the more. I am convinced that this is why we have volumes upon volumes of works expounding upon the Bible itself.

Faith opens human reasoning up to so many new ventures. Why have so many modern philosophers failed? Simply put, they tried to work without God. It truly is unfortunate that you hardly ever hear of works by those who have produced philosophical works that include God, such as Bernard Lonergan, S.J., did in his work Insight.

“Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God.”