In order to discuss the relationship between religion and reason, it is necessary to consider these questions: "what is the locus of reason in the realm of religion? Should a religious believer seek for a justification for his belief? If this is so, should this Justification be based on reasoning or does faith itself have a role in justifying one's belief without the need for the guidance of reason?" In this article, the writer presents a discriptive and rather critical report on the current views of the matter in question and proceeds to give a new classification of these views. Taking into account the three chief approaches of the relationship between reason and religion - i.e. maximal rationalism, fideism and critical rationalism - the writer offers examples of these views in the doctrinal traditions of Islam and Christianity, and classifies rationalism on the basis of reasoning into rationalism in accepting, rationalism in understanding and rationalism in defending religious claims. He goes on to point that although fideism, in its consistent and formulated form, has been presented to the Christian world by such distinguished thinkers as Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, strains of this view can also be found in the literature of Moslem mystics, traditionalists and thinkers.
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