Fides et Ratio: Faith and Reason.
Don’t be impressed that I know Latin because I don’t; however, the Latin I do know is from the fact that the encyclicals and letters of the Popes have Latin titles.
Fides et Ratio is an excellent one where Pope John Paul II explored the relationship between faith and reason in religion, philosophy, and society.
This post is in response to the recent flap between Dr. James Dobson, a prominent Evangelical, and Senator Obama, where Dr. Dobson criticized Senator Obama’s remarks about the Bible and how Christian faith should or should not affect the laws of our country.
A few years ago Sen. Obama spoke to a liberal Christian group, referenced some Old Testament Hebrew laws (don’t eat shellfish, etc.) to make the point that using the Bible to guide law-making doesn’t make sense. He also pointed out that even if we were all Christians, would we teach Dr. Dobson’s Christianity or Al Sharpton’s in schools?
He said that religious persons must frame their arguments in ways accessible to all people. That is very true! However, that doesn’t mean that arguments involving faith and theology should be excluded from the discussion.
Most of Senator Obama’s characterizations here are straw-man arguments. Dr. Dobson rightly critiqued him for making these statements, but the reasoning he gave for why Sen. Obama’s arguments are wrong were not the best ones.
No one is talking about teaching the Christian faith in public schools (that’s one straw-man). Further, the Christian faith and its theology have developed over the centuries in the Church: Senator Obama would do well to pick up a Catechism of the Catholic Church and read the moral law spelled out clearly; he won’t see anything about shellfish; he will see that slavery is condemned, and then he should ask himself how it was that a religion came to such reasonable moral teachings.
He will also see how faith and reason both have parts to play, for example, from Fides et Ratio (52):
If the Magisterium has spoken out more frequently since the middle of the last century, it is because in that period not a few Catholics felt it their duty to counter various streams of modern thought with a philosophy of their own. At this point, the Magisterium of the Church was obliged to be vigilant lest these philosophies developed in ways which were themselves erroneous and negative.
The censures were delivered even-handedly: on the one hand, fideism (59) and radical traditionalism,(60) for their distrust of reason’s natural capacities, and, on the other, rationalism (61) and ontologism (62) because they attributed to natural reason a knowledge which only the light of faith could confer.
The positive elements of this debate were assembled in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, in which for the first time an Ecumenical Council—in this case, the First Vatican Council—pronounced solemnly on the relationship between reason and faith. The teaching contained in this document strongly and positively marked the philosophical research of many believers and remains today a standard reference-point for correct and coherent Christian thinking in this regard.
Pope John Paul Ii denounces fideism, adherence to a faith without engaging one’s God-given reasoning ability. We see modern examples of fideism in radical Muslims who murder innocent people and themselves for the promise of an eternity of carnal pleasure in Heaven (no doubt many have this motivation and others (hatred, money, etc.), but I think this promise is a big part of their actions).
At the same time, rationalism is condemned as well, attempting to rely on reason alone to discern the truth of all things.
JPII continued:
Against all forms of rationalism, then, there was a need to affirm the distinction between the mysteries of faith and the findings of philosophy, and the transcendence and precedence of the mysteries of faith over the findings of philosophy.
Against the temptations of fideism, however, it was necessary to stress the unity of truth and thus the positive contribution which rational knowledge can and must make to faith’s knowledge: “Even if faith is superior to reason there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason. This God could not deny himself, nor could the truth ever contradict the truthâ€.(65)
I would love to hear an intelligent discussion between Senator Obama and Dr. Dobson (or maybe George Weigel or Archbishop Burke or Chaput) on the topic of faith and reason.
However, that discussion will probably never happen. Why not? Well, we as Americans like sound bites, and quick repartees, catchy slogans, and short, funny remarks. Also, I am not sure that Senator Obama has the philosophical education to discuss this matter, in spite of obtaining a political science degree from Columbia and a law degree from Harvard. Unfortunately, I think the education he received did not contain much on the natural law, which is the law written on every human heart, nor on how faith and reason complement each other perfectly.
Dr. Dobson also didn’t engage Senator Obama on the grounds of faith and reason, explaining how the two can and should be used in conjunction to discern the truth and make wise judgments. Instead, he attacked Obama’s understanding of Christian theology and the Bible.
Even though Dr. Dobson is correct in criticizing Obama’s vague and erroneous references to the Bible, which show his beliefs are against the Christian faith taught by the apostles and transmitted faithfully in the Church, it would be much better if he brought up the arguments against Obama’s positions on the family, abortion, same-sex unions, and stem-cell research based on the natural law.
Fortunately, there is an resurgence in the number of schools teaching Thomistic philosophy (i.e. based on St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, etc.), bringing back the “Great Books” programs, where classics are read and discussed, and also people in churches and schools are discovering the philosophy of Pope John Paul II and his developments on the personalistic norm, as well as his brilliant writings (Fides et Ratio, Veritatis Splendor, and so on).
When persons of faith are well formed in these important teachings, they become dynamos creating a more human, more just society. Let us pray that our country’s leaders, of all political parties, will learn these principles.