Knowing God, Unknowing Reason

“Our knowledge of our own existence is intuitive.” (pg. 274, 3) For Locke, knowledge is what the mind is able to perceive through reasoning with a connection or lack of a connection between our ideas. This is because knowledge only has to do with relations between ideas which are in our minds not of the world itself. Most of our everyday experience is subject to some opinions or judgments. We base our judgments on the similarities between our own experiences and the experiences described by others. We use reason to obtain judgment and knowledge. When it comes to knowing God, faith is the acceptance of the revelation and has its own truth that reason can’t find. However, reason is always used to determine which revelations are really from God and which are the makings of man. Reason may also include the use of the syllogism. "But God has not been so sparing to men to make them barely two-legged creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational." (pg. 315, 4) It is possible and very common for people to be reasonable without having had any instruction in the use of the syllogism.