Reason and logic are not sufficient to protect the development of religious ideas from occasional error
2 min • Digitized on May 8, 2023
From A Defense of the Teachings of Mary, page 86
By St. John Henry Newman
Nor is it any safeguard against these excesses in a religious system, that the religion is based upon reason, and developes into a theology. Theology both uses logic and baffles it; and thus logic acts both as a protection and as the perversion of religion.
Theology is occupied with supernatural matters, and is ever running into mysteries, which reason can neither explain nor adjust. Its lines of thought come to an abrupt termination, and to pursue them or to complete them is to plunge down the abyss. But logic blunders on, forcing its way, as it can, through thick darkness and ethereal mediums.
The Arians went ahead with logic for their directing principle, and so lost the truth; on the other hand, St. Augustine, in his Treatise on the Holy Trinity, seems to show that, if we attempt to find and tie together the ends of lines which run into infinity, we shall only succeed in contradicting ourselves; that for instance it is difficult to find the logical reason for not speaking of three Gods as well as of One, and of One Person in the Godhead as well as of Three.
I do not mean to say that logic cannot be used to set right its own error, or that in the hands of an able disputant the balance of truth may not be restored. This was done at the Councils of Antioch and Nicaea, in the instances of Paulus and Arius. But such a process is circuitous and elaborate; and is conducted by means of minute subtleties which will give it the appearance of a game of skill in the case of matters too grave and practical to deserve a mere scholastic treatment.
Accordingly St. Augustine simply lays it down that the statements in question are heretical, for the former is Tritheism and the latter Sabellianism. That is, good sense and a large view of truth, are the correctives of his logic.
And thus we have arrived at the final resolution of the whole matter; for good sense and a large view of truth are rare gifts; whereas all men are bound to be devout, and most men think they can argue and conclude.