This shows the vital difference between reasoning and rationalizing, and the relation of each to faith. The effect of reasoning on faith is constructive, while that of rationalizing is destructive. And the heart of the difference between the two traces back, in the last analysis, to those two kinds of vision. The rationalist, unyielding to the touch of God on his vision, sees only natural facts, and even then he sees them only partially and wholly out of relation to the spiritual revelation of God in the Bible and in Christ; and thinking that he sees discrepancies between the facts in the natural realm and the statements of Scripture, his =reason= leads him to reject the Bible as infallible and inerrant, thereby making faith in the God of the Bible utterly impossible. His reasoning powers are simply functioning normally when he concludes to reject the statements about the facts that to him are entirely unseen which do not seem to agree with what he sees. His trouble is not with his reasoning powers but with his vision. Refusing to see what he is passing judgment on, his method of inquiry is rationalizing. But the believer, utterly yielded to God and therefore seeing Him through anointed eyes in both the written and the living Word, thus seeing the infinite perfections of His character, is led by the normal functioning of the =same reason= to accept and act on the bare Word of God without further evidence, because the evidence he sees is all the evidence he needs. It is perfectly reasonable, therefore, for Him to accept all that such an One says in His Word, waiting for the partial and apparently contradictory knowledge in the natural realm to be corrected into harmony with the Bible. And his reasoning powers are simply functioning normally when he accepts the Bible as infallible and inerrant, for this attitude is based on what he sees. The entire difference between the rationalist and the believer is a matter of vision. The reasoning powers of each simply act in view of what each sees. This is why reasoning is never out of harmony with faith, while rationalizing always is. For true reasoning in spiritual things is =based= on an attitude of faith, while rationalizing rejects that attitude as an essential preliminary to correct conclusions, and therefore reasons either entirely apart from or in order to faith. Such an attitude as opens the vision does not precede the action of reason, and the conclusions cannot help being destructive of faith, for they are pronouncements on things utterly unseen and unknown, and which the Bible says are "foolishness" to the man who sees only through his natural vision. But the attitude of willingness toward the will of God so opens the vision to the whole spiritual realm that the real foolishness is seen to be even the least attempt to pronounce upon or repudiate that which is utterly unseen and unknown.