ABSTRACT
Martin Luther (1483-1546) sometimes spoke derogatorily about reason (Vernunft), even calling it a ‘whore’ of the devil, meaning that the devil has some power over it. Replying to Erasmus of Rotterdam’s (1469-1536) defense of free will, he wrote that such delusions arise if reason is employed in order to understand God. He opposed the Scholastic theology of his day and its Aristotelian assumptions, but he did not hold that reason is entirely defunct. In his Disputations about Man (1536) he states: ‘Even after Adam’s fall God has not taken from reason its sovereignty but has rather con rmed it.’ And we should keep in mind that at the Diet of Worms, when he was summoned to renounce his views, he famously answered that he cannot recant a word unless he is convicted by Scripture and plain reason. Other reformers af rmed the value of philosophy and reason unambiguously. Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), for example, defended the harmony of reason and Christian revelation and endorsed parts of Aristotle’s philosophy. Melanchthon’s work in natural theology (i.e., the pursuit of knowledge of God through reason), inspired later Protestant work in this eld, e.g., by Johann Gerhard (1582-1637). Also Erasmus of Rotterdam, although he endorsed the Reformation only partly, contributed to the development of Protestant philosophical theology. It was he who coined the term ‘philosophia Christi.’ John Calvin (1509-64) sometimes defended his claims explicitly through ‘natural reason.’ Reason, he writes, ‘could not be entirely destroyed; but being partly weakened and partly corrupted, a shapeless ruin is all that remains’ (Calvin 1960: 2.2.12). Especially its ability to know God is corrupted: ‘To the great truths, what God is in himself, and what he is in relation to us, human reason makes not the least approach’ (ibid.) Karl Barth (1886-1968) later took this thought further and rejected natural theology and the use of philosophical method in theology in general. Calvin’s main point is that reason cannot deliver knowledge of God that is as ‘sure and rm’ as is required by Christian faith, which entails an unwavering commitment to God. But apart from that, reason is still a God-given guide to truth. ‘To charge the intellect with perpetual blindness, so as to leave it no intelligence of any description whatever, is repugnant not only to the Word of God, but to common experience’ (Calvin 1960: 2.2.12). The Reformation did not introduce a fundamentally new view about the relationship between faith and reason and about philosophy into Christianity. Like earlier theologians, the Reformers took the harmony between reason and Christian faith to be desirable and achievable. Like earlier theologians, they recognized, and perhaps emphasized relatively strongly, that reason is limited and debilitated through the Fall, and they acknowledged that philosophy can contribute to clarifying and defending Christian doctrine.
