McCabe on Faith and Reason Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

McCabe on Faith and Reason - Essay Example Indeed, Christianity or Islam operate with rather complex notions and require their followers to have a strong faith. In this paper I will argue that Herbert McCabe fails to draw a good connection between faith and reason because his arguments are too ambiguous. This represents the major drawback of his position when it comes to explaining what role the latter plays in the former. In order to demonstrate this, I will first explore his position on the connection between faith and reason; then pay attention to the merits of it and, afterwards, put emphasis on the deficiencies that can be found in it. To begin with, it may be particularly important to outline the view of McCabe on the way faith and reason are connected. He points out that there are two extreme positions when it comes to faith: on the one hand, some might argue that to practice it one should not have any reasons at all which means that faith is above any reasoning; on the other hand, others are firm in that their faith can hardly be disproved logically. The scholar notes that true understanding of faith lies somewhere in between as â€Å"the first extreme makes the notion of truth inapplicable. The other makes the notion of faith inapplicable† (McCabe 5). In addition McCabe notes that people who dismiss the importance of the relationship between faith and reasons fail to â€Å"take sufficiently seriously the point that faith means holding something as true – they think of faith as more an act of courage or trust in a very general sense† (McCabe 6). So, he proves that it is essential to make th is relationship clear. There are several merits of such an approach. First of all, McCabe shows that faith should not be perceived as some kind of a metaphysical knowledge that is beyond common sense and is incompatible with logic. Quite the opposite, he draws several examples, as in the case of marrying for money, which show that faith is a rather difficult complex and any