Our cursory look at the history of Christian argumentation directed at Jews suggested the preponderant utilization of biblical verses to make the Christian case; our more detailed examination of twelfth- and thirteenth-century argumentation over messianic advent, the suffering of the Messiah, and rejection of the Jews has shown the same preponderance of exegetical argumentation. In the light of this emphasis on biblical exegesis, it is rather striking that our very first two Jewish polemical works, which are at the same time the very first two works of Jewish anti-Christian polemic composed in medieval western Christendom, begin with the effort to approach the Christian–Jewish debate from the perspective of reason. The older of these two works, Joseph Kimhi's Sefer ha-Berit, opens with a series of brief and limited Christian efforts to advance major Christian doctrines on the basis of reason. Each time, the Jewish author has his Christian protagonist retreat rather quickly to alternative lines of argumentation, suggesting the weakness of the Christian appeal to reason. Jacob ben Reuben, however, devotes the entire first chapter of his Milḥamot ha-Shem to an extended and dogged Christian effort at defending key Christian truth claims through reason and to Jewish rebuttal of that extended effort.

Over the ages, Christian thinkers have taken a wide range of positions on the place of reason in the Christian scheme of things.