Year of Faith: Celebrating Our Catholic Tradition
Session #5: “Know Yourself: The Relationship Between Faith and Reason”
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Cornerstone Document
Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II: Fides et Ratio
Date: September 14, 1998
Copy online:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclic
als/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-etratio_en.html
“I WILL NOT Believe”
In the Gospel (John 20:19-31) for this upcoming
Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday, the famous account of
the doubt of St. Thomas the Apostle is given. When told
by his brother apostles about the Lord’s appearance to
them, he emphatically states that “unless I see…I will
not believe.” Of course, Jesus appears again and
Thomas believes. But Jesus also proclaims that “blessed
are those who have not seen and have believed.”
This account is often used as an illustration of doubt, but
it also points to the prevailing modern culture, which is
obsessed with scientific proofs and observable data. The
words of Thomas can just as easily come out of the
mouth of the modern person when it comes to the
subject of God: “Unless I see…I will not believe.”
Faith and Reason: Opposed?
In the second century, Tertullian famously proclaimed,
“What does Athens have in common with Jerusalem?”
(De Praescriptione Haereticorum). In other words,
what does the philosophy and reason of the Greeks have
to do with Christian faith? This question is one that has
lasted throughout the centuries. How do faith and reason
relate? The Catholic tradition has always held the role
of reason to be critical in the Christian journey, but
many other Christian denominations reject the use of
reason as an enemy of faith.
St. Augustine rejects this sola fide (faith only) approach
as useless. “To believe is nothing other than to think
with assent…Believers are also thinkers: in believing,
they think and in thinking, they believe…if faith does
not think, it is nothing.” (De Praedestinatione
Sanctorum)
The great Christian thinker St. Anselm also rejects the
possibility of a sola fide approach, expressing the proper
relationship of faith and reason in two famous phrases:
credo ut intellegam (“I believe so that I may
understand”) and fides quarens intellectum (“faith
seeking understanding”).
The use of human reason is natural – as the great
philosopher Aristotle noted, humans have an innate
desire to know (Metaphysics, I, 1). And this is natural –
if man is created in the image of God, whose Son is the
Divine Logos (which is translated as Word as well as
Reason), then man’s reason is naturally connected to his
origin in God.
There is a famous inscription at the Temple of Apollo at
Delphi that reads “Know Yourself”. Indeed, man
constantly seeks to know himself and to know answers,
because on this path lies his answers about God – and
the answers as to man’s meaning.
The Relationship Between Faith and Reason
It is with this realization that Pope John Paul II opens
Fides et Ratio with this greeting: “Faith and Reason are
like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the
contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human
heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know
himself – so that, by knowing and loving God, men and
women may also come to the fullness of truth about
themselves.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that “there
can never be any real discrepancy between faith and
reason” since both have their origins in God, who is
truth and therefore cannot lie or deceive himself or
others. (CCC 159)
Reason’s actual role, John Paul II explains, is to
understand and find meaning in the contents of the faith.
(Fides et Ratio 42). “Reason and faith cannot be
separated without diminishing the capacity of men
and women to know themselves, the world and God
in an appropriate way.” (Fides et Ratio 16)
Therefore, the Christian is wrong to distrust or fear
the use of reason but should embrace it. “Faith
therefore has no fear of reason, but seeks it out and
has trust in it. Just as grace builds on nature and
brings it to fulfillment, so faith builds upon and
perfects reason.” (Fides et Ratio 43) To have faith
is not to surrender one’s reason, says Fr. Robert
Barron. Faith is instead an assent when reason
reaches its limits – the surrender is on the far side of
reason.
The journey to seek and understand does not end
until our mortal life ends and we stand in the very
presence of God. “For now we see in a mirror
dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part,
then I shall understand fully.” (1 Cor 13:12)
Everyday Faith
Many modern people scoff at the idea of faith as one
might laugh at a fairy tale. Yet most of what people
hold as true has as its source the teaching of parents,
teachers, authorities, and witnesses. People simply do
not have the time or ability to personally verify and
prove everything that is true. There is a trust, or dare we
say faith, in the credibility of the witness of others. For
Christians, there is no shortage of witnesses such as the
apostles, saints, and martyrs, but most especially Jesus
Christ himself, who became man and walked the earth
by our sides.
Who is God?
Many great Catholic minds have sought to show the
existence of God through the simple use of reason.
St. Anselm made the first ontological argument,
defining God as “that than which nothing greater
can be conceived.” (Proslogion) St. Thomas
Aquinas famously presented his quinquae viae (or
“five ways”) to come to God through the use of
reason. Many have often sought to see God through
looking at nature – in fact, tradition often makes
reference to the “Book of Nature”. The Book of
Wisdom speaks of the wonders of God in nature
that man can observe. “In reasoning about nature,
the human being can rise to God: ‘from the
greatness and beauty of created things comes a
corresponding perception of their Creator’ (Wis
13:5)” (Fides et Ratio 19).
The Loss of Truth and Meaning
The modern tendency to dismiss faith as foolish and
to rely solely upon reason is not without its
consequences (which are easily observable in the
moral issues of today’s society). Modernists like to
portray the Church as the enemy of reason and look
back on medieval times as backwards. This is to
rewrite history, as the very foundations of today’s
great scientific thinking lies in medieval times at the
feet of great Christian thinkers, philosophers, and
scientists. The great accomplishments that were
borne by a unity of faith and reason have been
unraveled by a misguided rationalist approach in
modernity (Fides et Ratio 45). Instead atheistic
humanism and secularism have not hesitated to
replace “religion” with a religion of their own. This
has yielded some of the greatest tragedies the world
has ever known in oppressive totalitarian regimes
and the culture of death that still pervades today.
Indeed, reason deprived of faith has been sidetracked from asking the relevant questions in
pursuit of pragmatic and utilitarian goals and
technology. Faith deprived of reason, on the other
hand, has lost its grounding in the Truth and has
become mere feeling and experience (Fides et Ratio
48). Ones who hold to a universal Truth in today’s
world are intolerantly accused of being intolerant –
yet barriers between people can ONLY be
overcome through unity in Truth, not in plurality
and relativism.
Power and Pride – Original Sin
The original sin of man in Adam and Eve was the
attempt to grasp power and knowledge away from
God in order to have sovereignty. From the time of
the fall, human reason has been wounded and
unable to reconcile itself to God on its own. Indeed,
the capacity to know the Truth has been clouded by
man’s aversion to God who is the source of Truth
itself (Fides et Ratio 22). Man, when confronted
with God and the Truth often runs out of fear and
into deception (Fides et Ratio 28).
Mary, Seat of Wisdom
In our pursuit of God, of truth, of faith, we are wise
to turn our eyes to Mary, who is the very Seat of
Wisdom. In the Annunciation, we see the faith and
fidelity of Mary to God in her fiat, her “yes” to the
message of the angel. Unlike others in salvation
history who receive word from divine messengers,
Mary did not laugh, question, or reject the divine
plan, but simply asked, “How?” Then she famously
gave her humble response, “May it be done to me
according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)
Thus Mary provides the model for faith and assent
in the face of the mystery of God – when reason
reaches its limit, the Christian response is assent –
reason then seeks to understand what is believed.
For this reason, Mary is inherently connected to our
pondering of mystery, which is displayed most
often in the praying of the Rosary. As believers
contemplate the mysteries of the faith, we pray that
Mary, the Seat of Wisdom, may help us in our
journey to understand, and ultimately to believe in
the salvific Word of God.