Anglicanism is . . . 2. Reasonable, with a Caveat

Anglicans look to the inspired Scriptures as our primary authority. But we also recognize that God speaks to us in myriad ways. Anglicans honor the human ability to reason. Reason enables us to interpret Scripture, engage Tradition, and understand Creation (the Book of Nature). Reason is understood not merely as abstract logic, but as the comprehensive human capacity to imagine, understand, experience, reflect upon reality, and discern truth ultimately aiming to know God. It is a participatory engagement with the reasonableness of a reality created and intimately sustained by God who is in, with, and under all things.
 
“God being the Author of Nature, her voice is but His instrument. . . . By force of the light of Reason, wherewith God illuminateth everyone which cometh into the world, men being enabled to know truth from falsehood and good from evil, do thereby learn in many things what the will of God is.’ The function of reason was to discover law, particularly the Natural Law, moral and physical, by which God regulates the universe.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“Whatsoever either men on earth or the Angels of heaven do know, it is as a drop of that unemptiable fountain of wisdom; which wisdom hath diversely imparted her treasures unto the world. As her ways are of sundry kinds, so her manner of teaching is not merely one and the same. Some things she openeth by the sacred books of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of Nature: with some things she inspireth them from above by spiritual influence; in some things she leadeth and traineth them only by worldly experience and practice. We may not so in any one special kind admire her, that we disgrace her in any other; but let all her ways be according unto their place and degree adored..”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“Religion is not a bird of prey sent by God to peck out the eyes of [humans].”
– Nathaniel Culverwel (1619-1651), An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature
[This is a paraphrase of a rhetorical question Culverwel asks about those who are suspicious of reason]

“Now tho’ Christ hath brought greater light into the world, yet he never meant by it to put out any of that natural Light, which God hath set up in our souls.”

– The Whole Duty of Man (1658), Anonymous

 
“And this is the second proposition: If God does reveal himself to us, we cannot acknowledge or master what he reveals without the use of reason. Therefore all his self-manifestation is also our discovery of him, and all revealed theology is rational theology.”
– Austen Farrer (1904-1968), Saving Belief
 
“If people are to believe with any vigour of peace of mind, then heart and head need to be on reasonably friendly terms. At least our scientific picture of the universe and our general habits of thought, the ideas we are prepared to find meaningful, must be such that ’God’ does not become a nonsensical term, totally alien to everything else in our mental furniture.”
– John Baker (1928-2014) in Believing in the Church: The Corporate Nature of Faith by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England, 1981
 
But with a caveat
 
Anglicans, recognizing the effects of sin, self-deception, and creaturely limitations, are cautious about putting too much trust in our ability to reason our way to truth unaided by God. Thus we use our reason with humility.
 
“Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade deep into the doings of Most High, whom although to know be life and joy to make mention of His name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him, and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence. He is above and we are on earth, therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“This light hath caught a fall . . . and thereupon it halteth.”
– Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Lancelot Andrewes Works, Sermons, Volume Five, Nineteen Sermons Upon Prayer in General, and the Lord’s Prayer in General Preparation to Prayer, Sermon II
 
“Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.”
– John Donne (1572-1631), Batter my heart, three-person’d God
 
“As the human mind is limited in its knowledge, and its premises are not universal, its conclusions are only more or less probable. The function of the reasoning faculties in respect to religious truths is to better enable us to understand what God has revealed and our spiritual nature discerned. It must therefore be kept in its own proper office, to illustrate and not to be made the basis of our faith.
 
We must also mortify it by a certain distrust in it, and not be obstinate in holding our opinions. After the truths of the faith, there is nothing of belief which is a matter of grave importance. We should therefore never argue with earnestness of manner or assertions of certainty about theoretical questions or practical matters.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), A Commentary on the Rule and the Book of Customs
 
“Reason itself as it exists in us in vitiated. We wrongly estimate the ends of life, and give preference to those which should be subordinate, because they have a stronger appeal to our actual, empirical selves . . . It is the spirit which is evil; it is reason which is perverted; it is aspiration itself which is corrupt.”
– William Temple (1881-1944), Nature, Man, and God
 
“Who can possibly know what the right thing is to say, particularly when one speaks of God? Near the end of his life, following a profound religious experience while celebrating Mass, Thomas Aquinas ceased writing. He is reported to have said, when asked why he had ceased his theological labors, ‘All that I have written seems like straw to me compared to what I have seen.’ As Thomas himself had often said, the inadequacy of human language plagues all attempts to talk about God. But sometimes even our straw can be used by God as tinder upon which the spark of the Spirit can fall.”
– Sarah Coakley (1951 - ), Introduction to The Love that is God by Frederick Bauerschmidt

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