"Reason and Reasoning
Believers who aim to defend their faith make a serious mistake when they imagine…that something like “reason” should displace Christ as the ultimate authority (Lord) in their thinking and argumentation. They also fall into very sloppy and confused thinking due to misunderstanding over the word “reason.”
Christians are often befuddled about “reason,” not knowing whether it is something to embrace or to eschew. This is usually because they do not pinpoint the precise way in which the word is being used. It may very well be the most ambiguous and obscure word in the field of philosophy. On the one hand, reason can be thought of as a tool—man’s intellectual or mental capacity. Taken in this sense, reason is a gift of God to man, indeed part of the divine image. When God bids His people “Come let us reason together” (Isa. 1:18
),
we see that we, like God, are capable of rational thought and
communication. God has given us our mental abilities to serve and
glorify Him. It is part of the greatest commandment of the law that we
should “love the Lord thy God… with all thy mind”""Reason Not Ultimate
On the other hand, reason can be thought of as an ultimate and independent authority or standard by which man judges all claims to truth, even God’s. In this sense, reason is a law unto itself, as though man’s mind were self-sufficient, not in need of divine revelation. This attitude commonly leads people to think that they are in a position to think independently, to govern their own lives, and to judge the credibility of God’s word based on their own insight and authority; more dramatically, this attitude deified Reason as the goddess of the French Revolution. “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,” as Paul said (Rom. 1:22
).
This view of reason does not recognize that God is the source and
precondition of man’s intellectual abilities—that reason does not make
sense apart from the perspective of God’s revelation. It does not
recognize the sovereign and transcendent character of God’s thought:
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are…My thoughts higher
than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:9).""Reason as God’s Gift
Should Christians endorse the use of reason? Two equal but opposite mistakes are possible in answering that question. (1) Believers can recognize the appropriateness of using reason, taken as their intellectual faculty, but then slide into endorsing reason as intellectual autonomy. (2) Believers can recognize the inappropriateness of reason as intellectual autonomy, but then mistakenly think this entails rejecting reason as an intellectual faculty. The first group honors God’s gift to man of reasoning ability, but dishonors God through its rationalism. The second group honors God’s ultimate authority and the need for obedience in all aspects of man’s life, but it dishonors God through anti-intellectual pietism."
For the whole thing.
http://thecripplegate.com/bahnsen-on-the-role-of-reason-2/#more-41222
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