Late medieval theologians concluded reason could defend but never prove the Christian faith.

Evidence

Alfonso Buenhombre’s hoax epitomizes the failure of the Dominican ambition to convert the Jewish and Muslim worlds to Christianity through disputation. Late thirteenthand fourteenth-century theologians increasingly denied that it was possible to prove the faith through reasoned argument: reason can be used to defend the faith, for Thomas Aquinas, but not to prove it. Both the Franciscan and Dominican approaches turned out to be failures. One of their sharpest critics, Ramon Llull, forged his own idiosyncratic strategy for converting Muslims. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1277

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Aquinas ‘faith and reason’ distinction that recurs in theology and philosophy of religion; also parallels whiggish accounts of failed conversion missions.