We are both dependent on God as the only sufficient basis for reason and expected of God to use those faculties to think for ourselves. Christian philosopher Sarah Geis makes this important distinction in this article concerning 'autonomous reason.'
The secular philosophy textbook from which I teach Intro classes proclaims that philosophy exercises rational autonomy. “You need to learn to think critically; think for yourself,” nascent philosophers are often told. Some think that this embrace of autonomy is a locus of conflict between philosophy and Christianity. Christians believe that we are created by God, redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus, and we now belong to him rather than to the darkness. We are not our own; we were bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:20). Is Christian faith not then the very antithesis of autonomous reason? If philosophy is, in essence, an exercise in autonomous reason, but the Christian worldview proclaims that we are not autonomous, then how could Christians, in good conscience, be philosophers?
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