Reading? What's that?

Topping off these reflections on the relationship between faith and reason, as inspired by Pope Benedict’s speech in Regensburg, I now want to take a brief look at the question of learning and what it has to do with spirituality and our relationship with God. What good is proper theology to my spirituality?

Last week at a theological symposium here at the seminary, a priest pointed out that our faith is one of encounter. But it’s not about what we encounter, but Who we encounter. And just how can we encounter God if we do not know God?

I believe that it was the great St Anselm who is attributed with the phrase “faith seeking understanding”. “I believe that I may understand.” The further you get into theology, the more you find that you do not know. The deeper I go more and more keeps getting opened up for further inquiry. It’s amazing just how deep this pool is. Is there a bottom? Then again, it is God we are talking about.

The object of theology is a deeper knowledge of God. At the same time, the object of spirituality is a closer relationship with God. If the two ultimately have the same end, how can they be separate? Monsignor Graff, one of the speakers at the recent symposium, said that good theology is good spirituality. The more I learn about the human person, the more I experience the Love of God. The more I learn about the Liturgy, the more I enjoy it and find God. The more I learn about God in general, the more I love Him.

It’s like in any relationship. How can a marriage last if the husband and wife hardly know each other?

Two of a kind...

“What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” (Tertullian)

Late in his speech, Pope Benedict speaks of the effects of separating faith and reason, and limiting them to specific realms. And in doing this, he says:

The subject (man) then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective ‘conscience’ becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter.

This is a “dangerous state of affairs”, he goes on, as it is why we have so many people claiming “Christian-other” as their faith or, better yet, starting their own denomination. It is also why so many battles (such as the one on stem cell research) are going on. This further divides our world and does nothing good for bringing us together and drawing us closer to returning to original innocence (the state enjoyed by Adam of Eve before the fall).

How can we ever enter into dialogue with others if we simply cut ourselves off from specific areas of understanding? How can we ever enter into dialogue if we continue to say that “I have the power to decide that and don’t have to listen to your expertise in the matter”? Listening to others and taking what they say seriously and accepting that I personally do not have all of the knowledge I need to survive is a big step that is much needed if we are ever to reach world peace.

God is Love, Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, is a good starting point, especially for us Christians. Through the use of both faith and reason, he looks at just what love is through the two concepts of “agape” (divine love) and “eros” (erotic love). He then applies his findings into today’s circumstances, such as the need for our participation in society.

If God is Love, then how could God ever expect us to spread the faith by the sword? He gave us free will so that we could love him all the more (simply because we want to, it is our choice)! And we must respect the free will of others when we are evangelizing. We must evangelize out of love.

“When will we all become one?” I heard this question last lent and posed it to a number of teenagers and adults this summer on four different occasions. When will we ever accept that we are no better than other human beings, and must listen to what the have to say?

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain asked God (Gen 4:9). I think that Jesus answered that question, and Pope Benedict and demonstrated that answer well.

Not to act reasonably is stupid

“Can God’s existence be proven through reason alone?”

One major question through history has been the one presented above. If you want to enter into a meaningful dialogue with an unbeliever, or even one who is extremely skeptical, you will need to be able to use your reasoning to a good extent. After all, an unbeliever will brush off any scriptural belief as merely speculation and literature.

When St Paul was evangelizing, he was going to people who had never been exposed to Christ. In fact, many of them may not have even believed in God. So why not take what they believed at the time and work in Christianity? When evangelizing, it seems that it would help if you used the language of the people being evangelized. You have to hit them where they are, and that is what Paul, along with many others, did by using the Greek thought of the day.

Proving God’s existence, that is, the existence of an infinite and perfect being, can be done through reason alone. But what would that tell us? Other than getting an atheist to believe in a higher, omniscient power, it would not tell him or her anything about how to live or why we are here. Thus, we turn to scripture, linking our finite realm with the infinite realm of God. But reason cannot be discarded yet, as it still can open us up to understanding Revelation all the more. I am convinced that this is why we have volumes upon volumes of works expounding upon the Bible itself.

Faith opens human reasoning up to so many new ventures. Why have so many modern philosophers failed? Simply put, they tried to work without God. It truly is unfortunate that you hardly ever hear of works by those who have produced philosophical works that include God, such as Bernard Lonergan, S.J., did in his work Insight.

“Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God.”

One winged bird?

“Faith and Reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth...”

Pope John Paul II began his encyclical Fides et ratio (On the Relationship between Faith and Reason) with the above line, comparing the relationship between faith and reason to a bird’s wings. Truly, a bird cannot fly without both of its wings. In the same way, we cannot fly to God without both faith and reason. Our rational capacity is unique to us (humanity) and has traditionally been accepted as that which separates us from the other animals. Many have also ventured to say that it is also what makes us created in the image of God.

On September 14, 1998, John Paul the Great gave this magnificent letter to the Church in hopes to bolster the use of reason in our search for God. And I doubt he could have picked a better day for this letter. Sept. 14 is traditionally the day when the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. Of the Cross, St Paul says, “but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Cor 1:23-24). Christ, as the Word incarnate, was around at the time of creation. The entire Trinity had a hand in creation, because each part of the Trinity is God. So to discard any part of the Trinity during any part of the history of the world would be a fault. Who is to say that the Logos, the Word of God, did not influence Plato, Aristotle, or any of the other great ancient philosophers whose work has given much influence to theology used today? Remember, St Paul was no idiot. He had most likely been schooled in Greek philosophy. It shows in the Platonic thought that can be found throughout the Pauline corpus.

So what am I saying? Well, for starters, if you try to fly to God with only one of your wings (faith or reason), you will only get so far. As John Paul the Great showed through his encyclical, faith without reason risks becoming mere speculation. And reason without faith risks losing any reason to go beyond the senses (what can concretely be experienced in this world). But with faith and reason working hand in hand, the possibilities are amazing!

Pope Benedict attempted to show this in his speech at Regensburg. He never intended to cause the hell-storm that came forth instead. He simply was offering an abbreviated version of Fides et ratio.

There was more than just the quote...

After finally reading the Holy Father Pope Benedict’s address at the University of Regensburg, where he quoted “the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus” on Islam and the concept of holy war, I have to say that I am not disgusted with Pope Benedict one bit. In fact, I enjoyed the speech, as it deals with an issue far beyond what the media and the rest of the world has claimed. From what I understand, he was talking about how we have tried to separate faith and rationality, thus limiting ourselves as humans and our capabilities to find truth.

“Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature,” he says in the fourth paragraph of his speech. After all, the beginning of the Gospel of John, in addressing the creation of the world, says:

In the beginning was the Word; the Word was in God’s presence, and the Word was God. He was present to God in the beginning. Through him all things came into being and apart from him nothing came to be.

Hence, rationality has been around since the beginning of time. Who are we to deny its use, much less limit it to only a certain area of acceptability? But it seems that this is exactly what a portion of the Muslim world, along with many others (including some Protestants), has done.

The Arabs used to be so well versed in philosophy and other sciences. If I am not mistaken, they are the ones who originally brought back Aristotle and devised the numbering system we have today. Yet, now they are people “of the ‘Book’”, as the Holy Father referred to them at Regensburg. It seems as if they limit themselves to a book, completely ignoring what sets them apart from the other animals of the world—the rational capacity, the ability to think! And with that, they have found that spreading faith by the sword is ok. In fact, may I be so brave as to say that this sounds a lot like President Bush and many evangelicals, though not all of them.

Simply put, the Holy Father was addressing the dehellenization of Christianity—that is, the removal of rational thought and philosophy (primarily Greek) from matters of theology and faith. With this separation, the two sides become limited and are made taboo in different areas. How, then, can true dialogue between cultures ever take place?