Reasoning

“Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear" (1 Peter 3:15 KJV).

Reasoning is an activity through which humans acquire, organize and justify their knowledge and plan and evaluate courses of action. A narrower term than thinking, reasoning has the sense of thought that is organized into some sort of connected structure or network. This structure is usually only immanent in our thinking, but it is displayed explicitly when we are in the act of communicating our knowledge in the form of an argument or in the act of reflecting upon it.

Neither reasoning, pure and simple, nor correct reasoning is the province of intellectuals alone. We all engage in it in almost all human activities that involve communication or planning. Our common verbs to judge, to argue, to persuade, to claim, to show, to prove, to evaluate and others all describe activities that employ reasoning to a greater or lesser degree. We constantly make arguments and evaluate arguments put forward by others. Consider the following examples:

• This car led all others in sales last year. It’s just what you’re looking for!

• Candidate X supports welfare cuts, so we should vote for him.

• The disciples knew that by publicly claiming that Jesus was alive, they were facing persecution, perhaps to the point of death. Only the explanation that Jesus was indeed raised from the dead explains this boldness.

• Since Jesus commands his disciples to turn the other cheek, we ought to refrain from self-defense.

We deal with arguments of these kinds every day. Making and evaluating arguments are activities more like conversation, work or recreation than a quality or characteristic such as intelligence, health or strength. The question is not whether we will reason but whether we will do so well or poorly.

Kinds of Reasoning

We use the term argument to describe the basic structure of reasoning. Arguments must have at least two parts. The position or point for which one argues is called the claim or the conclusion. If we liken reasoning to a plant, what we usually see is the stem and leaves—not the roots. The “point” of the plant, if one can speak of a plant as having a point, is the part that is above ground. Yet without the roots, there would be no plant. In a similar way, the usual form in which we encounter reasoning is as a claim. Such claims can be controversial: “Jesus was truly raised from the dead!” “Abortion is murder.” Claims can also be quite pedestrian: “The Bible is an authoritative book for Christians”; “Murder is wrong”; “Turkey is the best meat for dinner tonight.”

When asked for support for our claim, we offer premises or grounds. We say something to the effect, “These are the relevant facts that lead us to say what we say” or “Such passages as Matthew 28:6-9 and 1 Cor. 15:3-8 clearly state that Jesus rose from the dead.” We can label these verses as the grounds for the claim that Jesus is truly raised from the dead. Are these the only grounds we could employ? No. Is this the only claim that might use these passages as grounds? No again. Perhaps the person making the claim is a new convert giving his testimony. Lacking biblical knowledge, he would be at a loss to offer any particular scriptural reference. In its place he might, when questioned, simply reply, “Mary, my youth pastor, told me so.” This kind of answer is just as much a provision of grounds as is the citing of Scripture. Of course, the effectiveness of these two types of answer varies from situation to situation.

So the second of the two most basic parts of an argument is the grounds, or premises, that are put forward to support the claim. Grounds for arguments can vary widely; sometimes we call them the facts or reasons or data or supporting evidence. Often when we are asked to support a claim, this kind of answer is enough. Thus, the most basic form of an argument can be represented as follows: Grounds, therefore Claim (G C). Note the arrow pointing from the grounds to the claim. This symbol is highly significant, for it suggests that an argument must go somewhere. The arrow means that the statements are not merely an assertion but are an invitation to the reader or listener to move from one position (acceptance of the grounds) to another (acceptance of the claim).

But what if a person responds, “How do you get from a Bible verse to such a claim?” This kind of question asks for a different kind of premise, which we call a warrant. A warrant is a rule that bridges the gap between the grounds and the claim. Constructing the whole chain of reasoning thus far, we might have the claim “Jesus was truly raised from the dead!” grounded on the statement in 1 Cor. 15. A possible warrant for moving from these grounds to this claim might be “Every statement of the Bible that so represents itself is factual.” On the other hand, if our grounds are the fact of Mary’s testimony, we might offer as warrant “Mary is a credible witness.”

Notice that both of the warrants are more general than either the grounds or the claim. The first one speaks not just of this one Bible verse but of many. Mary’s being a credible witness means that she is always or usually reliable. Notice, also, that one argument often leads to another. If challenged, we could treat our warrant “Mary is a credible witness” as a claim. We might ground this claim with statements like “Mary is a sober, intelligent person” and “Mary always tells the truth.” So as we begin to give reasons for claims we make, we find that our knowledge is connected together as a network of arguments.

Philosophers and logicians have classified types of reasoning or forms of arguments. A deductive argument is one such that if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 b.c.) contributed a great deal to our understanding of deductive arguments. He was interested in forms of arguments called syllogisms. The following is an example (no account of reasoning would be complete without this tired old example!):

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore Socrates is mortal.

An interesting question is, Why do deductive arguments work? How do they manage to convey certitude regarding their claims? The usual way of answering this question (since the development of modern logic, at least) is to say that the claim is already contained (implicitly) in the premises. So, for example, the knowledge that all men are mortal includes the knowledge that the man Socrates is mortal. We may become aware of something new, psychologically speaking, by means of deductive argument, but we never actually expand or increase our knowledge.

This raises another question: If deductive reasoning cannot lead to genuinely new knowledge, where do we get new knowledge? Whence come the general statements that are the stock in trade of deductive arguments? A common answer to these two interrelated questions is induction. If deduction (as it is said) reasons from the general (all men) to the particular (Socrates), then induction is its converse—reasoning from a collection of particulars to a general statement: My mother has red hair, and she has a hot temper. My sister has red hair, and she has a hot temper. My brother has red hair, and he has a hot temper. Therefore, all redheads have hot tempers. This is induction at its simplest. And just as there are deductive arguments more complex than a syllogism, so there are inductive arguments more complex than this one. What all inductive arguments have in common is that their claims enlarge upon, go beyond, the evidence. So inductive reasoning is essential for expanding our knowledge. Its drawback is that it does so at the expense of the comforting certitude of deductive reasoning—we can never be sure that the next redhead will not be different.

Our most valuable intellectual tool for protecting against rash inductive generalizations is statistics. Statisticians have intriguing formulas for calculating the probability that a generalization is accurate based on the size of the sample observed and on a few other assumptions. They have formulated precisely the intuitive recognition that if I have only observed a few redheaded people, I am on very shaky ground concluding that all (or most) redheads have hot tempers.

Inductive reasoning is a powerful tool in science and in everyday reasoning as well. Nonetheless, it does not provide an adequate account of how knowledge grows. If scientific reasoning were limited to induction, we would have a collection of natural laws based on observed regularities, but we would have no theoretical knowledge. And it is the theoretical knowledge that explains the regularities. So we must have a form of reasoning that gives us a different kind of knowledge. This is just what we find with hypothetical reasoning.

Consider this example: You come home from work and find the front door ajar and muddy tracks leading into the kitchen. These are the facts or observations. You form a hypothesis: The kids are home. You have not seen them, but you infer that they are there because their presence provides the best explanation of the facts you have observed.

Note the difference between hypothetical reasoning and induction. The latter would allow you to conclude something like the following: I see muddy tracks in the hall; I see muddy tracks in the kitchen. Probably there are muddy tracks in all the other rooms as well. Hypothetical reasoning is not aimed at knowledge of more tracks but at the cause of the tracks—the explanation of how they got there. So we can see why this kind of reasoning is called hypothetical. We extend our knowledge by inventing hypotheses that, if true, would explain the observed facts.

We can never be certain of a conclusion based on hypothetical reasoning. This is because we can never be sure that there is no better explanation of the data than the one(s) we have considered. In the example above, it may turn out that the open door and muddy tracks were instead left by a prowler.

It is important in reasoning to recognize the different strengths of our arguments. Deductive arguments are the strongest; inductive and hypothetical arguments are weaker, depending on how much evidence we have and other factors. We indicate the strength of our arguments by using qualifiers: probably, certainly, necessarily and possibly are some of the more common ones. It might appear at first glance that using these qualifiers would weaken the argument. Instead, by explicitly limiting the scope of the argument, we strengthen our position. Another way to improve the persuasive force of an argument is to recognize possible rebuttals or conditions under which the argument might fail.

Reason, Reasoning and Faith

Philosophers reason. We need only notice the vast number of books on logic and reasoning to know this. Logic, mathematics and some theoretical parts of science are the fields in which we find deductive arguments. Scientists reason. They make inductive generalizations, which we call laws of nature, and then formulate hypotheses to explain the regularities. Lawyers reason in the courtroom. Business managers make judgments about the best policies to follow. If we were to stop here, we might get the idea that only those who are intellectually well trained engage in reasoning, but the examples used above show that ordinary people reason all the time. In recognition of this fact, the ancients defined humans as “rational animals.” Thus, they identified rationality as the quality that set humans apart from animals. Christians in the past have adopted this view and combined it with an understanding that it was this rationality that constituted the image of God in humans. Whenever the Greek philosophical inheritance has been in the ascendancy—even as it is in so many ways in the modern period—humans are judged to be at their best when reason dominates and the passions or emotions are in subjugation to reason. More recently, though, this preference for reason over emotion has been called into question. Many claim that we mischaracterize and oversimplify when we see reason as simply in competition with the other aspects of personality and denigrate feeling or emotion.

In the past few centuries Western thought has increasingly valued rationality. We speak of the Enlightenment as the Age of Reason. Christians have felt the burden of this cultural valuation and have, in some spheres, been preoccupied with the relation between reason and faith. However, the reason that is often opposed to faith is a narrower conception than we are dealing with here. In this sense, reason is being used to designate a body of knowledge known by means of human inquiry alone, without the aid of revelation. It is valuable to distinguish this sense of reason from reasoning as a human activity. When we see reasoning as a human activity, the conflict or competition between faith and reason disappears. In fact, faith, when it becomes articulate, will always involve some reasoning.

Christian Uses of Reason

As Christians, there are many areas in which we reason. It will be helpful to show some examples from a few of these areas.

Apologetics. 1 Peter 3:15 tells believers to be prepared to give a reason for their hope when asked. In our terminology we might say that our interlocutor is asking for the grounds for a Christian claim. Although the claim in question may well be an articulation of our faith, it is just as likely that the claim is an implicit one evidenced in our lives. One may ask us, for example, in the context of the death of a loved one, “How can you be so peaceful with all that you are going through?” In such a case we have said nothing about a hope, yet our actions presuppose the ability to make such a claim.

Biblical interpretation. Bible readers are constantly faced with questions about the meaning of texts and how to apply them today. For example, what does Paul mean in saying that women should have their heads covered in worship “because of the angels” (1 Cor. 11:10)? Sunday-school teachers, pastors and biblical scholars will all make claims about the meaning of such a passage and will draw further conclusions about what it means for church life today.

Ethics. Christians constantly engage in ethical reasoning. For example, does the commandment not to kill ground the claim that Christians must stay out of the army? What does Jesus’ love command imply for our decision about how to care for Grandmother?

Preaching. Sermons generally have as grounds some scriptural text. As claims, sermons teach doctrine; they provide guidance for the life of the church; they interpret the world. Church members often reason about the quality of the sermon in the car on the way home.

Christian education. Education is sometimes narrowly conceived as packing information into the brains of students. Given the account of reasoning in this article, a much broader and more helpful understanding can be attained. True education seeks to link these pieces of information with other pieces in a structure that makes sense. When a lesson makes sense to a student, it is often structured so that some of the information is seen as grounds and some as claims, linked in a chain by various warrants that are themselves other bits of information. Thus, we can conceive of Christian education as giving students the tools with which to think critically about their faith, to see connections between disparate facts and to justify their beliefs when called upon to do so.

» See also: Christian Education

» See also: Conversation

» See also: Education

» See also: Speaking

» See also: Teaching

References and Resources

N. Murphy, Reasoning and Rhetoric in Religion (Valley Forge, Penn.:Trinity Press, 1994); S. Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).

—Richard Heyduck and Nancey Murphy