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I NTRODUCT ION We are distinguished as human beings by our ability to think. Our reason is the specific diVerence that makes us human and thus diVerentiates us from the other animals.Furthermore,distinctions in the quality of a person’s reason make him stand out among his fellow human beings, for better or worse, precisely as a human being. Human reason is not just the power to move from one proposition to another; it is not just the ability to argue, infer, and compute. More fundamentally ,it is the capacity to let things come to light,to let the intelligibility of things show up for ourselves and for others.Instances of such intelligence serve as both the starting points and the points of rest or stability amid the movements of argument. Reason, therefore, encompasses both reasoning and intelligence.Also,in its practical forms,reason is the power by which we are able to perform human actions and to fabricate things. Human thinking occurs most specifically in the medium of speech, but it can also be exercised in depiction,dance,and music;there can be as much intelligence in a portrait or a landscape as in an essay, each of which has its own kind of syntax.Thinking also occurs in the rationalized motions we call sport and in the patterned conduct we call games. Playing tennis and playing poker are exercises of reason, and they have their syntax too.Thinking occurs in the establishment of political societies and the performance of political actions, and it occurs further in acts of courage,justice,and friendship, in the fabrication of roads,bridges,and houses,and in the medical treatment of an illness.It occurs in a distinctive way in the pursuit of mathematical science and the technology derived from it.These are all exercises of reason, and words function at the heart of them all, even though they are not reducible to words.  Christian faith aVects us at the core of what we are,at the center of what makes us human. It is true that our faith must be expressed in our actions, but since our actions are formed by our understanding,faith must aVect our thinking before it can aVect what we do. God’s grace serves both to elevate and to heal us, and faith, specifically, both elevates and heals our reason. It makes it possible for us to know certain things that we would otherwise not have been able to know, and ultimately it promises us the beatific vision as the crown of faithfulness; this vision is a completion of understanding that we in our own eVorts would be entirely unable to conceive, let alone attain . But faith also remedies the deficiencies of our fallen nature, so that in its light we can think more clearly even about things we can know on our own. Faith is the response that God enables us to make to his revealed words and actions; it is also the response we are enabled to make to God as the one who speaks in revelation.We not only believe what is revealed but also believe in the one who reveals,and these two beliefs are interconnected,because the words that are declared tell us about the nature of the one who speaks them.We could not believe in God unless we believed the articles of faith contained in the creed; without them, we would not know whom to believe in. Faith is a personal relationship but it involves an understanding, not obedience alone. And although faith is God’s work in us, it becomes our own work as well, precisely as being given to us. It is not something that merely happens in us,nor is it something we are merely clothed with;it is something that we ourselves do. It is a transformation by grace of the nature we receive as created by God.God’s agency in us makes it possible for us to act toward him as our Father;we are enabled to act in union with the Son,under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.We act as befits rational agents, with the understanding and autonomy made possible by grace. Through faith we accept the man Jesus Christ as the eternal Word and Son of the living God, the God whom he called his Father, and whom he taught and enabled us to address in the same way. Through faith we accept the death of Christ on the...

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