Faith and reason are compatible, says theologian

True faith need not be contrary to reason, says renowned Indonesian theologian Stephen Tong.

In an address to students at the National University of Singapore last week, he argued that faith and reason complement each other, but faith is the more important of the two.

“True faith will [cause] your reason that has been lost, to be loyal to the truth,” he said, adding that faith only "improves" reason and "makes it complete".

He said every person exercised some form of faith in their day-to-day living and that even mundane tasks like brushing teeth and sitting down on a chair demonstrated some degree of faith. In the former, there is faith that the toothpaste is good for health. In the other case, there is faith that the chair will hold one’s weight.

Most people simply believe their parents are who they say they are and most people believe the earth revolves around the sun without having actually seen it.

Indeed, the viewpoint that reason should come before faith is a contradiction in terms, he said. This is because in holding such a view, one has already exercised faith.

It is "arrogant" to seek to live purely by reason, Tong contended. He said reason alone could not bring fulfilment in life because it is incapable of apprehending transcendent things such as love.

"Evidence is not enough to prove everything,” said Tong. “Evidence is only a small part of the truth. Science is only to know a bit about the superficial.”

Responding to the claim by Stephen Hawking in his latest book that God did not create the universe, Tong said that scientists should refrain from making such presumptuous claims because they still do not fully understand the universe.

Instead, the progress made in understanding the vast and expanding universe has only served to reveal human ignorance, he said.

Tong told of the doubts he had struggled with as a young man. He recalled telling God that if He would help him solve his questions, he would in turn help others solve theirs.

He said the Christian understanding of God was a convincing one. When asked why it was necessary to believe that God revealed Himself through the Bible, he contended that a God who hid Himself would be an unworthy one and "cruel".

"God is not a dying God, or deaf God, or blind God or dumb God," he said.

"He is an existing God, a living God, the source of life, of truth, of grace.

"It's reasonable to believe in God through His revelation to us."