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FIDES ET RATIO

The human spirit soars on two wings, reason and faith.

—Fides et Ratio, John Paul II

READING

John Paul II, Fides et Ratio: On the Relationship of Faith and Reason (Boston: Pauline, 1998). You are invited to read the entire work, but you are expected to have read the following sections:

Introduction: 1, 3–5

I. Revelation: 12, 15

II. Credo ut Intelligam: 16–19

III. Intelligo ut Credam: 26, 30–33

IV. Faith and Reason: 36, 38–40, 43, 45–46, 48

IV. Magisterium: 49, 51–52, 55–56, 62

V. Philosophy and Theology: 64–68, 71–73, 75–77, 79

VI. Current Requirements and Tasks: 81, 83, 85, 86–90, 97, 106

The epigram to Fides et Ratio presents an image that governs Pope John Paul II’s thought: “Faith and reason are like two wings upon which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” The image is suggestive: with one wing a bird cannot take off but only flutters around in a circle, pivoting around itself. One wing—faith alone or reason alone—gets one nowhere in the greater scheme of things. Fideism or rationalism are the extremes to be avoided. But there is also a third option to be avoided: rejection of both faith and reason.

In this encyclical John Paul II addresses the contemporary intellectual situation. He finds currents of materialism, scientism, positivism, phenomenalism, historicism, subjectivism, relativism, skepticism, agnosticism, atheism, evolutionism, pantheism, nihilism, and fideism, as well as, linked to fideism, biblicism and radical traditionalism.

Materialism is a position that claims to be the upshot of scientific development: everything is reducible to elementary particles that combine and separate according to invariant laws. Human awareness is wholly governed by brain-functioning (Faith and Reason, #80, p. 101; henceforth 80/101). It is also called reductionism. It appears as evolutionism insofar as it sees no link between matter and spirit but reduces the latter to the former. Materialism is linked to positivism. The pope also calls it scientism (88/109), which claims that our only knowledge is sensory (46/62). It is also linked to instrumentalism, which the pope sees as in turn linked to pragmatism (89/110–11), which holds that through science we can know how to develop the means to our ends without any ability to assess ends (47/63). Phenomenalism is broader than positivism because what appears is more than sensory, for example, our own awareness; but phenomenalism denies knowledge of ultimates beyond phenomena (54/71; 83/105).

Relativism is the generic position that denies all absolutes (5/14; 80/101). Its two variants are subjectivism and historicism. Subjectivism claims that all opinions and especially all values are merely relative to individual preference. Certain brands of existentialism make that claim with regard to values. Historicism broadens the claim to cover cultures and epochs: truth and goodness are determined by culture or the historical time frame within a culture and there is no way to judge better or worse with regard to differing cultures or different historical time frames (54/72; 87/109). Skepticism withholds judgment on everything. Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, which means “nothing”) goes further than skepticism to claim that there is nothing at all to value or even to ultimate intelligibility (46/62; 90/111). Agnosticism withholds judgment on the existence of God (5/14), while atheistic humanism denies the existence of God as a block to the maturity of humankind (46/62), and pantheism claims that everything together is God (80/101). On the other side of the ledger are fideism, biblicism, and radical traditionalism (52/69; 55/73–74). Fideism refers to the position of those who accept absolutes by reason of their religious belief system and reject the work of reason. Biblicism narrows the belief system to what the Hebrew-Christian Bible is thought to teach, radical traditionalism to what has been taught in the past. All these forms either distrust or place unwarranted limits on reason. With a distrust of full-fledged reason goes reliance upon individual feeling regarding the most fundamental things.

The pope discerns in all of these movements a denial of the competency of reason, except as merely instrumental reason, as a tool to get what we want. But there are also positions which affirm that competency. He singles out three that he finds inadequate: rationalism, ontologism (52/69), and eclecticism (86/108). The term eclecticism is derived from the Greek for “selection.” It refers to a position that accepts truths wherever they might be found, but without a comprehensive view of the compatibility of the frameworks within which they have been formulated. Rationalism claims the omni-competence of reason and its superiority to faith, though (for example, in Hegel) it is not necessarily opposed to the truths of faith. Ontologism involves the claim that in the notion of Being (Greek on, genitive ontos) we intuit God himself. John Paul also points to “some forms of idealism” that attempt to transform faith into reason (45/62), though he recommends the idealism of Rosmini, who had been condemned for ontologism (59/77). Idealism holds that there is nothing outside of mind, at least outside the mind of God.

One problem involved in most of these movements is the problem of the fragmentation of human experience. A vision of the Whole is lacking and, in most cases, denied. Metaphysics, as the discipline, based upon the all-inclusive notion of Being, which aims to ponder the most fundamental and comprehensive principles, is ignored or denied (83/104). The pope calls for a rehabilitation of reason as critical and constructive, aiming at a metaphysical view of the Whole that is coherent, systematic, and organic (4/12). Against the general cultural denial of the competence of reason aimed at the Whole, the pope exhorts contemporary thinkers to have confidence in reason (6/16) and to develop a philosophy rooted in the notion of Being (97/119). Against fideism, biblicism, and radical traditionalism, he speaks for the autonomy of reason, its being a law (nomos) unto itself (autos), governed by its own intrinsic principles which cannot be dictated to from the outside. This is a theme that appears throughout the encyclical as one of its central claims (13/23; 14/24; 75/94; 77/97; 45/61).

John Paul sees metaphysics or the philosophy of being as involving the basic principles of noncontradiction, causality, and finality (4/12). What first occurs in intellectual awareness is the notion of Being as a notion of unrestricted scope: outside of being there is nothing, and the notion of Being concerns everything about everything. The principle of noncontradiction follows from the notion of Being: whatever is is such that it cannot both have and not have the same property at the same time and in the same respect. This is the basis for all rationality. What is claimed in one area of experience, e.g., in physics, cannot contradict what is claimed in another area, e.g., in moral experience or in the Bible. If there appears to be a contradiction, we have to learn to wait and work—for centuries if necessary—for a more comprehensive way of understanding. The principle of causality follows from experience: that nothing finite is the cause of its own being. The principle of finality (a.k.a., teleology from the Greek telos, as end) also follows from experience: that every agent acts for an end or purpose (Latin finis). The three principles together form the bases for a comprehensive metaphysical view.

Though he sees the deficiencies of the modern philosophies listed above, nonetheless the pope cautions that they also contain “precious insights” which we neglect at our peril (48/64). In particular, he underscores the historical character of thought by distinguishing between enduring truths and historically conditioned formulations, and he sees a growth in the adequacy of formulations through time (95/117). That is linked to a legitimate pluralism of philosophies as differing angles on the Whole which calls for dialogue and not simply condemnation. He exhorts us to an extension of the dialogue from an exclusively intra-Western focus to one that includes Eastern thought as well (7072/88–92). And because human beings are by nature explorers, the quest for understanding never ceases (64/83).

What does that mean for the faith tradition? The pope reaches back to the Bible to point out the role of reason in the wisdom literature (16/29) and St. Paul’s dialogue with the Greek philosophers. The latter involved both an acceptance of the quest for God and a caution not to be misled by inadequate views (24/47). The pope goes on to show the assimilation of Platonic philosophy in thinking through revelation on the part of the Church Fathers and medieval Doctors. The latter transformed theology through the assimilation of Aristotle as well, reaching a high point in St. Thomas Aquinas. (In succeeding chapters we will examine the assimilation of Platonism in Augustine and of Aristotelianism and Platonism in Aquinas.) One of Aquinas’s basic principles was that grace presupposes and perfects nature (43/58). His appreciation of the integrity of nature bypassed what the pope views as an unnatural tendency to negate the world and its values which persists as a noxious strain in Christianity (43/59). (Readers of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov can see this in the monk Fr. Ferapont as an archetypal world-negating figure. Such negation is the main target for Friedrich Nietzsche’s atheistic critique of Christianity.) As regards theology, for Aquinas revelation presupposes reason in that God speaks to humans who are defined as rational animals.

The God who reveals himself in history is the same God who gave us reason (34/47). Faith demands that the rational being seek to understand its belief: the truths of revelation are to be understood in the light of reason (35/48). The pope cites St. Anselm: fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. He also cites St. Augustine: credo ut intelligam, I believe that I might understand. And he refers to the unusually strong words of St. Augustine that a thoughtless faith is nothing (79/99)—rather strong words, indeed!

When we take up the Bible as the record of revelation, we understand it in terms of our own experience. The problem with biblical fundamentalism is the poverty of reflective self-understanding exhibited by its practitioners as well as a failure to understand the peculiar literary form and role of each of the books of the Bible. As Aristotle said, human beings cannot avoid philosophizing; their only options are to do it well or poorly—that is, attend carefully and reflectively to experience or attend casually and unreflectively. Belief does not excuse one from careful and comprehensive reflection on experience. And that is just what philosophy at its best is. Both the Church Fathers and the Doctors of the Church understood that. They spoke of certain rationally discernible prolegomena fidei, certain prerequisites to faith such as the existence of God as source of revelation and the credibility of the Bible itself as putative divine revelation (67/85–86). And they saw that revelation, far from being antithetical to reason, is an invitation for reason to extend its scope (14/24). That extension is theology as a logically consistent body of knowledge (66/84). It presupposes “reason formed and educated to concept and argument” (77/97).

The encyclical hearkens back to a recovery of tradition initiated in modern times by Leo XIII’s 1879 encyclical, Aeterni Patris, which called for a renewed study of Scholastic thought, especially though not exclusively that of Thomas Aquinas (57/76). In subsequent papal teaching, this had the unfortunate consequence of adopting Thomistic philosophy as official Catholic philosophy and requiring the defense of the 24 Thomistic Theses by all Catholic teachers of philosophy and theology. That requirement denied the autonomy of philosophy and turned Catholic professors into rationalizers of Thomistic teaching rather than responsible and independent thinkers. John Paul II expressly repudiates that (though prudently avoiding the claim that he is overturning previous papal authority): there is no longer any official Catholic philosophy (49/66; 78/98). When the defense of Thomistic Theses view dominated, there was a lack of dialogue with modern philosophy (62/81) and a consequent failure to appreciate modern philosophy’s “precious and seminal insights” (48/64). The pope claims a legitimate pluralism in philosophy since no philosophy can embrace everything adequately (51/68).

He goes on to recommend, in addition to twentieth-century Thomistic philosophers like Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson, late nineteenth-century Catholic thinkers who were not Thomists, thinkers like John Henry Newman and Antonio Rosmini, the latter of whom, remember, had been condemned by the Vatican for “ontologism.” He also recommends twentieth-century Catholic thinkers like phenomenologist Edith Stein (now Saint Theresa Benedicta of the Cross) and Maurice Blondel, as well as Russian thinkers lesser known in the West like Soloviev, Florensky, Chaadev, and Lossky (59/77; 74/93), to initiate dialogue with the Orthodox tradition. And with regard to earlier thinkers, in addition to Thomas Aquinas, he recommends non-Thomists like Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Anselm, and Bonaventure, who were philosophers of some stature and whose philosophic development served as the basis for their theologies. (Pope Benedict wrote his doctoral dissertation upon Bonaventure.)

The motto of Leo XIII’s encyclical was: Vetera novis augere et perficere, “To extend and perfect the old with the new.” That involves not only a recovery but also a renewal, exactly the twin movement behind Vatican II: aggiornamento and resourcement, an (Italian) updating of Catholic thought and a (French) return to the sources. However, the updating following from Vatican II involved a dialogue with modern thought which had been largely condemned from without by the papal tradition, and the return to the sources involved going back behind the Middle Ages for a recovery of the early Church Fathers and a methodically enriched study of the Bible. The latter was rooted in Pius XII’s 1943 encyclical, Divino afflante spiritu, which permitted the use of historical-critical method forbidden by previous Vatican pronouncements. So while John Paul explicitly underscores the continuity of Vatican II with the modern papal tradition, he also, subtly and without calling attention to it, reverses elements of that papal tradition in the light of the study and development of tradition as a whole launched by Vatican II.

The overall aim of the encyclical is to restore trust in reason and to recover philosophy’s dignity (6/16; 56/75) in order to “develop for the future an original, new, and constructive mode of thinking” (85/107), a philosophy not restricted to repeating antique formulae (97/119), but open to all that human inquiry uncovers. The understanding of the faith itself grows through that inquiry. That is why the pope underscores the importance—indeed, the indispensability—of the study of philosophy for the priesthood (62/81).

QUESTIONS

1. What is the main thesis of the book? What is its basic claim? What reasons are offered to support the claim?

2. What do you understand by “faith”? By “reason”? Identify the various passages in which the pope explains what he means by these terms.

3. Consider the basic outline of the text. Is it like a shopping list or is there some basis for the order?

4. What do you understand by “philosophy”? Do you have a philosophy? What is the basis for it?

5. President Bush said that his favorite philosopher was Jesus. Would the pope say that? What does the pope understand by “philosophy”? How is it related to “theology”? How are both related to “faith”?

6. List the thinkers favored by the pope. List the philosophical and theological positions he does not favor. What are his reasons for favoring or not?

7. What are we to do with the plurality of philosophies, theologies, and faiths? Why is there this plurality?

8. What are the “current requirements and tasks”?