Q&A - Logic vs. Faith
August 1, 2021 Sunday Evening Study

Many people have the impression that Christians live two separate lives - one is in the world of faith and the other in a world of reason. The world of faith is where Christians live on Sunday morning, or the world to which they refer when dealing with spiritual or moral matters. However, it would appear that Christians live according to logic and reason the rest of the time when we are dealing with practical everyday matters. For instance, do I have to believe the Bible in order to put gas in my car or to clean my kitchen?

When these two worlds cross over, this is where skeptics begin to question the logic and reason employed by people of faith. This then leads to the question:

Is the Christian worldview logical? Can we believe what we believe without suspending logic and reason?

What do you think? When have you heard this argument against Christians?

This entire question stems from misconceptions of what faith actually is. The idea of “faith versus reason” is an example of something called a false dichotomy. Faith does not fight with reason - on the contrary, biblical faith and reason go well together and complement each other. Faith is not a belief in the absurd as many people believe it is, nor is it belief in something just for the sake of believing it. Faith is placing confidence in something that we have not perceived with our senses. This is How the Bible defines faith in Hebrews 11:1. Whenever we have confidence in something that we cannot see, hear, taste, touch, or smell, we are acting on faith. All people have faith - even if it is not a saving faith in God.

Look at the laws of logic - people believe them, but they are not material. They are abstract ideas that cannot be experienced by our senses. Take the law of non-contradiction - It is impossible to have this watch and not this watch at the same time in the same place (same relationship.) Now I can write down that law, but the sentence I write and can see is only a representation of the law, not the law itself. To believe in the laws of logic which cannot be perceived by the senses, this is a type of faith.

We have confidence that the universe will operate in the future as it has in the past - that is acting on faith. We all presume that next Sunday, gravity will behave the same way that it does today. So we all believe in things that go beyond sensory experience. From both a CHristian and a logical perspective, this is a very reasonable belief. God tells us in Gen. 8:22 that He will uphold the universe in a consistent way, so it makes sense for us to have faith in the behavior of nature. In this reason and faith go well together.

It is appropriate and biblical for us to have a reason for our faith. In Isaiah 1 God encourages us to reason with one another, and in Acts 17 Paul reasoned with those in the synagogue and marketplace. If we follow the scriptures, Christian faith is not a blind faith - it is a faith that is rationally defensible. It is logical and self-consistent, and it can make sense of what we experience in the world. In fact, as Christians we have a moral obligation to think rationally, as we are commanded to be imitators of God, patterning our thinking after His revelation.

Where do you see examples of our reasoning? Do you believe our faith is fully defensible, even if the skeptic does not believe the Bible?

Of course many challenge that a biblical worldview is not rational. Many believe it is illogical on the face of it - after all, the Bible speaks of floating axe heads, the sun moving backward, a universe created in six days, an earth with pillars and corners, people walking on water, light before the sun, a talking serpent, a talking donkey, and a senior citizen taking 2 of every land animal on a big boat. A critic would suggest that no rational person can possibly believe in such things in our modern age of scientific enlightenment - to do so would be illogical.

The Bible does make extraordinary claims - but are such claims truly illogical? Do they violate any actual laws of logic? Although all that I just listed are experiences that go beyond ordinary, everyday experiences, none of them are contradictory. They do not violate any laws of logic. In some cases criticism comes from a misuse of language - taking a figure of speech like “the pillars of the earth” as though literal, when it is clear from context that they are metaphor or allegory. This is an error on the part of the critic, not the text. Poetic sections of the Bible like psalms and other figures of speech must be treated as such - to try and make them literal would be academically dishonest.

In fact, most criticisms against the Bible’s legitimacy are nothing more than a subjective opinion of what is possible. The critic does, of their own mind, state equivocally that the sun cannot go backwards in the sky and the universe cannot be created in six days. Yet, where is the evidence for this? They might argue that such things cannot happen based on natural laws. I think we can agree with that. But who says that natural laws are the limit of what is possible? They are the limit of what is natural - but one can argue that unnatural things happen regularly. The biblical God is not bound by natural law, since He is in fact the creator of them.

Suppose they argue then that the claims of the Bible do not appeal to their own personal intrigued sense of what is possible - it is not “my truth.” That statement by definition is irrational. He is committing a logical fallacy known as “begging the question.” By this he has decided in advance what things are not possible, thereby assuming the Bible must be untrue because it contains what he considers impossible. Yet he began his reasoning with the assumption that the Bible is untrue - it is a cyclical reasoning with no starting point and no foundation - he is saying miracles are impossible because the Bible is untrue, and the Bible is untrue because miracles are impossible. There is not weight to either argument without control.

When someone argues that what we believe is strange or unreasonable, we must ask the question “strange or unreasonable by what standard?” If it is the critic’s personal and arbitrary opinion, then we must point out that opinion has no logical merit, according to the laws of logic. Personal feelings have no bearing on what is true or possible.

The extraordinary claims of scripture cannot be dismissed simply because they are extraordinary. A critic may assert that the Bible violates logic - this is a common one - that there are passages in the Bible which are contradictory. This is common because it is serious - two contradictory statements cannot both be true even in principle. If the Bible did in fact contradict itself, one statement would have to be false and the Bible would not be inerrant. The reality is that critics largely do not understand what a contradiction is according to logical law, as I outlined earlier. A contradiction is “both A and not A at the same time and in the same relationship. This is not the nature of biblical “contradictions.”

For example: the fact that Christ has 2 genealogies is not contradictory. In fact, all people have 2 - one through their father and one through their mother. The fact that Jesus was born in Bethlehem but is “of Nazareth” is no contradiction as He did grow up in Nazareth. The fact that Matthew 8 mentions 2 demon possessed men while Mark 5 and Luke 8 each mention 1 is not a contradiction - it is a variance in report. Perhaps one was much more violent than the other - we simply do not know.

In truth, when a critic says that the Bible contains contradictions, he is refuting his own argument, demonstrating truth in the Word. The Bible is the only logical reason to believe in the logical law of non-contradiction. Virtually every person alive believes in the law of non-contradiction - we all know that two contradictory statements cannot both be true. But have you ever wondered why that is?

This is some deep theological stuff - try and follow me. The logical law of non-contradiction comes from the nature of the biblical God. 2 Timothy 2:13 states that God does not deny Himself, and Colossians 2:3 states that all knowledge is in God - thus, true knowledge will not deny (contradict) itself. The law of non-contradiction is a universal and unchanging law because God Himself upholds the entire universe (Hebrews 1:3) and God does not change with time (Hebrews 13:8). We know these things only because God has revealed them to us in His Word. By the laws of logic, the Bible is the only objective basis for knowing that the law of non-contradiction is universal and unchanging - and this applies to all other logical laws.

When an unbeliever applies the law of non-contradiction - the basis of the law of logic, he is unknowingly yet implicitly standing on the Christian worldview. When a critic argues against the Bible, he must use God’s standard of reasoning to do it, since logic and reason come from the Bible. Since rationality itself stems from the nature of the biblical God, it follows that the Christian worldview is necessarily rational. Christian people may be irrational - we are all sinners saved through grace - but the Christian worldview is fully rational.

Although non-biblical worldviews have pockets of rationality in them, they must ultimately appeal to scripture as a basis for laws, logic, which they then deny as the one and only inspired Word of God, which makes all logic and reason fallible and unusable. Therefore, not only is the Christian worldview logical, it is the only worldview that is ultimately and consistently logical.

A Christian has faith - he believes in things as accounted in scripture that he has not personally observed by sensory experience. But he has good reason to believe in scripture, since the biblical God alone makes reason even possible. So a good reason for my faith is that my faith makes reason possible.

The unbeliever must use Christian principles to argue against the Bible. This logical fallacy in itself proves he is wrong. The non-Christian does not have a good reason behind his beliefs. He too has a type of faith, but his faith is in fact blind, as it is not supported by an apologetic (evidence and argument for merit) giving no foundation for beliefs. 

When have you encountered discussions like this - if not so deep and philosophical? How do we use this message to reach unbelievers?