Reason is thus the common ground between believers and unbelievers. So, too, did St. John Paul II, who wrote a magnificent encyclical on the subject. To be consonant with the word of God, philosophy needs first of all to recover its sapiential dimension as a search for the ultimate and overarching meaning of life. 56. 58. Yet the priority accorded this wisdom does not lead the Angelic Doctor to overlook the presence of two other complementary forms of wisdom—philosophical wisdom, which is based upon the capacity of the intellect, for all its natural limitations, to explore reality, and theological wisdom, which is based upon Revelation and which explores the contents of faith, entering the very mystery of God. CHAPTER VI - THE INTERACTION BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY, The knowledge of faith and the demands of philosophical reason. Faith stirs reason to explore paths that it would not otherwise have suspected it could take (n. 56). At the deepest level, the autonomy which philosophy enjoys is rooted in the fact that reason is by its nature oriented to truth and is equipped moreover with the means necessary to arrive at truth. For the sacred author, the task of searching for the truth was not without the strain which comes once the limits of reason are reached. If they discover that it is false, they reject it; but if they can establish its truth, they feel themselves rewarded. From this starting-point, human reason with its many questions has developed further its yearning to know more and to know it ever more deeply. Theology in fact has always needed and still needs philosophy's contribution. While it demands of all who hear it the adherence of faith, the proclamation of the Gospel in different cultures allows people to preserve their own cultural identity. The ultimate purpose of personal existence, then, is the theme of philosophy and theology alike. By faith, men and women give their assent to this divine testimony. Yet, for all that they may evade it, the truth still influences life. Created by. The blindness of pride deceived our first parents into thinking themselves sovereign and autonomous, and into thinking that they could ignore the knowledge which comes from God. The end result is the nihilism that we are now experiencing. Speculative dogmatic theology thus presupposes and implies a philosophy of the human being, the world and, more radically, of being, which has objective truth as its foundation. 103. John E. Fagan was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and practices law in Fairfax, Virginia. Fides et Ratio wastes no time in coming out swinging, like the opening D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan (also released in 1998), building as its foundation that faith and curiosity for it is built in man to find it. 115 In theology, which draws its principles from Revelation as a new source of knowledge, this perspective is confirmed by the intimate relationship which exists between faith and metaphysical reasoning. If the intellectus fidei wishes to integrate all the wealth of the theological tradition, it must turn to the philosophy of being, which should be able to propose anew the problem of being—and this in harmony with the demands and insights of the entire philosophical tradition, including philosophy of more recent times, without lapsing into sterile repetition of antiquated formulas. Thus, in knowing and loving God through faith, man comes to the ultimate truth about himself (n. 1). At this point the Christian faith comes to meet him, offering the concrete possibility of reaching the goal he seeks. I have myself emphasized several times the importance of this philosophical formation for those who one day, in their pastoral life, will have to address the aspirations of the contemporary world and understand the causes of certain behaviour in order to respond in appropriate ways.84. In Scholastic theology, the role of philosophically trained reason becomes even more conspicuous under the impulse of Saint Anselm's interpretation of the intellectus fidei. It is to be hoped therefore that theologians and philosophers will let themselves be guided by the authority of truth alone so that there will emerge a philosophy consonant with the word of God. And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Once reason successfully intuits and formulates the first universal principles of being and correctly draws from them conclusions which are coherent both logically and ethically, then it may be called right reason or, as the ancients called it, orthós logos, recta ratio. Jewish and pagan) authors who … People can even run from the truth as soon as they glimpse it because they are afraid of its demands. Fides et Ratio Sunday, February 22, 2009. From the teaching of the two Vatican Councils there also emerges a genuinely novel consideration for philosophical learning. Fides et Ratio is an encyclical promulgated by Pope John Paul II on 14 September 1998. Sundered from that truth, individuals are at the mercy of caprice, and their state as person ends up being judged by pragmatic criteria based essentially upon experimental data, in the mistaken belief that technology must dominate all. Politics; Current Events; Health; Scandal 2018 & Beyond; Technology; Miscellaneous; Self-Media. scientism. The challenges to faith and reason that inspired St. John Paul II’s encyclical letter have advanced rapidly with devastating consequences for the wellbeing and faith of children, and for their parents. Fides et Ratio begins by claiming that two wings are needed for the human spirit to ascend to truth. Nonetheless, there are in the life of a human being many more truths which are simply believed than truths which are acquired by way of personal verification. If human beings with their intelligence fail to recognize God as Creator of all, it is not because they lack the means to do so, but because their free will and their sinfulness place an impediment in the way. But the gift of wisdom enables judgement according to divine truth”.49. The term Christian philosophy includes those important developments of philosophical thinking which would not have happened without the direct or indirect contribution of Christian faith. In the New Testament, human life is much less governed by prescriptions than in the Old Testament. The content of Revelation can never debase the discoveries and legitimate autonomy of reason. Where have I come from and where am I going? In fact they succeeded in disclosing completely all that remained implicit and preliminary in the thinking of the great philosophers of antiquity.41 As I have noted, theirs was the task of showing how reason, freed from external constraints, could find its way out of the blind alley of myth and open itself to the transcendent in a more appropriate way. 3: 16). In more recent times, there has been the discovery that history as event—so central to Christian Revelation—is important for philosophy as well. Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life (Jn. There are various reasons for this disenchantment. It is as if we had come upon an implicit philosophy, as a result of which all feel that they possess these principles, albeit in a general and unreflective way. 52. For the Old Testament, then, faith liberates reason in so far as it allows reason to attain correctly what it seeks to know and to place it within the ultimate order of things, in which everything acquires true meaning. 4. Rom 1:21-32), the Apostle judged it wiser in his speech to make the link with the thinking of the philosophers, who had always set in opposition to the myths and mystery cults notions more respectful of divine transcendence. The two requirements already stipulated imply a third: the need for a philosophy of genuinely metaphysical range, capable, that is, of transcending empirical data in order to attain something absolute, ultimate and foundational in its search for truth. Although faith, a gift of God, is not based on reason, it can certainly not dispense with it. Given human weakness and the strength of man's passions, this inevitably leads to tragedy. He said that he "wished to defend the capacity of human reason to know the truth. In a spirit both sceptical and agnostic, some began to voice a general mistrust, which led some to focus more on faith and others to deny its rationality altogether. 49. From the first pages of his Summa Theologiae,48 Aquinas was keen to show the primacy of the wisdom which is the gift of the Holy Spirit and which opens the way to a knowledge of divine realities. In their destructive critique of every certitude, several authors have failed to make crucial distinctions and have called into question the certitudes of faith. Yet the positive results achieved must not obscure the fact that reason, in its one-sided concern to investigate human subjectivity, seems to have forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth which transcends them. The grave responsibility to provide for the appropriate training of those charged with teaching philosophy both in seminaries and ecclesiastical faculties must not be neglected. There are a plethora of passages about Jesus from historical antiquity. 111 Beyond simple historical occurrence, the truth of the events which these texts relate lies rather in the meaning they have in and for the history of salvation. This was a truth which the holy monks of Christian antiquity understood well when they called Mary “the table at which faith sits in thought”. Rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy has preferred to accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned. To understand a doctrine from the past correctly, it is necessary to set it within its proper historical and cultural context. A great spiritual impulse leads Indian thought to seek an experience which would liberate the spirit from the shackles of time and space and would therefore acquire absolute value. He is unable to factually verify even a small part of his knowledge himself. In the end, the word of God poses the problem of the meaning of life and proffers its response in directing the human being to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, who is the perfect realization of human existence. Philosophy is expected to rest content with more modest tasks such as the simple interpretation of facts or an enquiry into restricted fields of human knowing or its structures. Earlier still, and parallel to Pope Leo's call, there had emerged a number of Catholic philosophers who, adopting more recent currents of thought and according to a specific method, produced philosophical works of great influence and lasting value. His theology allows us to understand what is distinctive of wisdom in its close link with faith and knowledge of the divine. Moving beyond the stage of simple believing, Christian faith immerses human beings in the order of grace, which enables them to share in the mystery of Christ, which in turn offers them a true and coherent knowledge of the Triune God. To those wishing to know the truth, if they can look beyond themselves and their own concerns, there is given the possibility of taking full and harmonious possession of their lives, precisely by following the path of truth. In theological enquiry, historicism tends to appear for the most part under the guise of “modernism”. From the late Medieval period onwards, however, the legitimate distinction between the two forms of learning became more and more a fateful separation. This first requirement is in fact most helpful in stimulating philosophy to conform to its proper nature. This development sought to acquire a critical awareness of what they believed in, and the concept of divinity was the prime beneficiary of this. But that does not mean that they ignored the task of deepening the understanding of faith and its motivations. In the Acts of the Apostles, the Evangelist Luke tells of Paul's coming to Athens on one of his missionary journeys. 71. Beyond that, you can do pretty much anything. What is distinctive in the biblical text is the conviction that there is a profound and indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason and the knowledge of faith. For these reasons, I have judged it appropriate and necessary to emphasize the value of philosophy for the understanding of the faith, as well as the limits which philosophy faces when it neglects or rejects the truths of Revelation. In Athens, we read, Saint Paul entered into discussion with “certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers” (17:18); and exegetical analysis of his speech at the Areopagus has revealed frequent allusions to popular beliefs deriving for the most part from Stoicism. The truth comes initially to the human being as a question: Does life have a meaning? In reaffirming the truth of faith, we can both restore to our contemporaries a genuine trust in their capacity to know and challenge philosophy to recover and develop its own full dignity. Reason in fact is not asked to pass judgement on the contents of faith, something of which it would be incapable, since this is not its function. 1 Th 2:13). The truth communicated in Christ's Revelation is therefore no longer confined to a particular place or culture, but is offered to every man and woman who would welcome it as the word which is the absolutely valid source of meaning for human life. 86. I wish instead to recall some specific tasks of theology which, by the very nature of the revealed word, demand recourse to philosophical enquiry. On this score, some problems have emerged in recent times, problems which are only partially new; and a coherent solution to them will not be found without philosophy's contribution. The wisdom of the wise is no longer enough for what God wants to accomplish; what is required is a decisive step towards welcoming something radically new: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise...; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not to reduce to nothing things that are” (1 Cor 1:27-28). For Fides et ratio fails to address the fact that many contemporary thinkers are searching for a third option, beyond nihilism and metaphysics, an option that indeed calls attention to reason's limitations, but without a concomitant rejection of reason's capacities or a turn toward epistemological or metaphysical despair. With the Revelation of God Israel could plumb the depths of all that she sought in vain to reach by way of reason. The Gospel is not opposed to any culture, as if in engaging a culture the Gospel would seek to strip it of its native riches and force it to adopt forms which are alien to it. 53. 3. 7.0 CONCLUSION The Fides et Ratio of Pope John Paul II is really an edifying masterpiece which tried all its possible best to stand that relationship between all the issues discussed in it is more beneficiary and supportive. Theological work in the Church is first of all at the service of the proclamation of the faith and of catechesis. An initial problem is that of the relationship between meaning and truth. From different quarters, then, modes of philosophical speculation have continued to emerge and have sought to keep alive the great tradition of Christian thought which unites faith and reason. Moreover, one should not underestimate the danger inherent in seeking to derive the truth of Sacred Scripture from the use of one method alone, ignoring the need for a more comprehensive exegesis which enables the exegete, together with the whole Church, to arrive at the full sense of the texts. I ask everyone to look more deeply at man, whom Christ has saved in the mystery of his love, and at the human being's unceasing search for truth and meaning. Man therefore lives increasingly in fear. 4. In fact, many philosophical opinions—concerning God, the human being, human freedom and ethical behaviour— engage the Church directly, because they touch on the revealed truth of which she is the guardian. It deals with the relationship between faith and reason. This ordering of studies influenced, promoted and enabled much of the development of modern philosophy, albeit indirectly. I used a shoebox covered with… Reinforced by his personal story and sustained by a wonderful holiness of life, he could also introduce into his works a range of material which, drawing on experience, was a prelude to future developments in different currents of philosophy. Therefore, following upon similar initiatives by my Predecessors, I wish to reflect upon this special activity of human reason. Or, perhaps, you'd love to do it--but doing that and high school homework seems like a futile endeavor. With the first, theology makes its own the content of Revelation as this has been gradually expounded in Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Church's living Magisterium.88 With the second, theology seeks to respond through speculative enquiry to the specific demands of disciplined thought. In seeking to understand and explain these statements, theology needs therefore the contribution of a philosophy which does not disavow the possibility of a knowledge which is objectively true, even if not perfect. Human wisdom refuses to see in its own weakness the possibility of its strength; yet Saint Paul is quick to affirm: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). For its part, dogmatic theology must be able to articulate the universal meaning of the mystery of the One and Triune God and of the economy of salvation, both as a narrative and, above all, in the form of argument. Philosophy emerges, then, as one of noblest of human tasks. It is therefore minimalizing and mistaken to restrict their work simply to the transposition of the truths of faith into philosophical categories. On the one hand, the knowledge acquired through belief can seem an imperfect form of knowledge, to be perfected gradually through personal accumulation of evidence; on the other hand, belief is often humanly richer than mere evidence, because it involves an interpersonal relationship and brings into play not only a person's capacity to know but also the deeper capacity to entrust oneself to others, to enter into a relationship with them which is intimate and enduring. With its specific character as a discipline charged with giving an account of faith (cf. I noted that “once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. 42. Who in the end could forge anew the paths of experience and thought which have yielded the treasures of human wisdom and religion? That is why the criticism of Celsus—that Christians were “illiterate and uncouth”31—is unfounded and untrue. 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