Reason and Revelation

Scripture Reading: Proverbs 28:26

Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.

This proverb, like many of them found in the book of Proverbs, has two lines in which each one helps to explain the other. The first line describes a person who puts their faith in their ability to reason through a problem. They have pride in their intellect. This proverb calls that person a fool.

I don’t believe this is to be taken as an anti-intellectual statement. The writer is not asking us to put our reasoning abilities on a shelf and just take everything in blind faith. What he is doing is helping us set limits on our reasoning abilities. He doesn’t want us to abandon reason, but he also wants us to give revelation its rightful place in our thinking.

Paul points out the dangers inherent in the exaltation of reason above revelation in Romans chapter one. He writes that man, “claiming to be wise…became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images…And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done…” (Romans 1:22,23,26).

The second line of this proverb talks about walking in wisdom. Since this is placed in juxtaposition to that first line, the wisdom he is referring to is the wisdom of God, the wisdom that comes from revelation and not reason alone. The person who lives consistently (the idea behind walking) being guided by the wisdom that comes from the revelation of God, as found in God’s Word and personified in Jesus Christ, is the person who will be delivered.

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