Knowledge of Divine Things Twenty-Five Fides et Ratio Sixteen

Because of home circumstances, I am containing the walk through Fides et Ratio and encourage my readers to follow up their reading here.

I want to highlight St. John Paul II's comment on metaphysics, which is the core point of this series.

My comments are in normal type. After this post, I shall move on to Caritas in Veritatis.

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. This first requirement is in fact most helpful in stimulating philosophy to conform to its proper nature. In doing so, it will be not only the decisive critical factor which determines the foundations and limits of the different fields of scientific learning, but will also take its place as the ultimate framework of the unity of human knowledge and action, leading them to converge towards a final goal and meaning. This sapiential dimension is all the more necessary today, because the immense expansion of humanity's technical capability demands a renewed and sharpened sense of ultimate values. If this technology is not ordered to something greater than a merely utilitarian end, then it could soon prove inhuman and even become potential destroyer of the human race.⁹⁸

To state this more simply, one needs to think in terms of nature first, and wisdom begins with reality, which God created. But, the end of this philosophical order is not utilitarianism, but the wisdom of the Church.

The word of God reveals the final destiny of men and women and provides a unifying explanation of all that they do in the world. This is why it invites philosophy to engage in the search for the natural foundation of this meaning, which corresponds to the religious impulse innate in every person. A philosophy denying the possibility of an ultimate and overarching meaning would be not only ill-adapted to its task, but false.

Again the goal of men and women is heaven, not this world. Any valuable philosophy would consider man's origins and his end, a life beginning in and with God and going towards God.

82. Yet this sapiential function could not be performed by a philosophy which was not itself a true and authentic knowledge, addressed, that is, not only to particular and subordinate aspects of reality—functional, formal or utilitarian—but to its total and definitive truth, to the very being of the object which is known. This prompts a second requirement: that philosophy verify the human capacity to know the truth, to come to a knowledge which can reach objective truth by means of that adaequatio rei et intellectus to which the Scholastic Doctors referred.⁹⁹ This requirement, proper to faith, was explicitly reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council: “Intelligence is not confined to observable data alone. It can with genuine certitude attain to reality itself as knowable, though in consequence of sin that certitude is partially obscured and weakened”. ¹⁰⁰

The total truth is Christ Himself, Whose Mind is revealed in the teaching of the Catholic Church.  God is knowable through reason and so is natural law. Philosophy helps order these basic truths. I get weary of hearing that people "are deceived" as we all have free will and reason to cooperate with grace.

A radically phenomenalist or relativist philosophy would be ill-adapted to help in the deeper exploration of the riches found in the word of God. Sacred Scripture always assumes that the individual, even if guilty of duplicity and mendacity, can know and grasp the clear and simple truth. The Bible, and the New Testament in particular, contains texts and statements which have a genuinely ontological content. 

This means that Christ tells us who man is--what it means to be a human being.

The inspired authors intended to formulate true statements, capable, that is, of expressing objective reality. It cannot be said that the Catholic tradition erred when it took certain texts of Saint John and Saint Paul to be statements about the very being of Christ. 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. This applies equally to the judgements of moral conscience, which Sacred Scripture considers capable of being objectively true. ¹⁰¹

 Many Catholics deny the possibility of knowledge of Who Christ Is. Objectivity, the mark of a spiritual person, has been undermined both by Protestantism. One of the weakenesses of the glitz of "Catholicism" is the lack of a cohesive philosophy behind the presenter's comments. Actually, he lacks an real understanding of Catholic Christology.

Sapiential knowledge is wisdom from the work of philosophy. Analytical knowledge is the ability of all men to reason.

83. 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. This requirement is implicit in sapiential and analytical knowledge alike; and in particular it is a requirement for knowing the moral good, which has its ultimate foundation in the Supreme Good, God himself. Here I do not mean to speak of metaphysics in the sense of a specific school or a particular historical current of thought. I want only to state that reality and truth do transcend the factual and the empirical, and to vindicate the human being's capacity to know this transcendent and metaphysical dimension in a way that is true and certain, albeit imperfect and analogical. In this sense, metaphysics should not be seen as an alternative to anthropology, since it is metaphysics which makes it possible to ground the concept of personal dignity in virtue of their spiritual nature. 

The questions begin always, "Who is man?" "Who is God?" and so on. I hope I can share the love of knowledge, the love of the beauty of truth which I share with all those who follow this way of study and prayer.

In a special way, the person constitutes a privileged locus for the encounter with being, and hence with metaphysical enquiry.

Wherever men and women discover a call to the absolute and transcendent, the metaphysical dimension of reality opens up before them: in truth, in beauty, in moral values, in other persons, in being itself, in God. We face a great challenge at the end of this millennium to move from phenomenon to foundation, a step as necessary as it is urgent. We cannot stop short at experience alone; even if experience does reveal the human being's interiority and spirituality, speculative thinking must penetrate to the spiritual core and the ground from which it rises. Therefore, a philosophy which shuns metaphysics would be radically unsuited to the task of mediation in the understanding of Revelation.

Grace comes with study, if the person is pursuing truth.

The word of God refers constantly to things which transcend human experience and even human thought; but this “mystery” could not be revealed, nor could theology render it in some way intelligible, ¹⁰² were human knowledge limited strictly to the world of sense experience. Metaphysics thus plays an essential role of mediation in theological research. A theology without a metaphysical horizon could not move beyond an analysis of religious experience, nor would it allow the intellectus fidei to give a coherent account of the universal and transcendent value of revealed truth.

The meaning of intellectus fidei, which is "the understanding of faith", becomes the goal of metaphysics.  Faith and reason bring us to God through grace.

If I insist so strongly on the metaphysical element, it is because I am convinced that it is the path to be taken in order to move beyond the crisis pervading large sectors of philosophy at the moment, and thus to correct certain mistaken modes of behaviour now widespread in our society.

Here it is. The saint states, "...I am convinced that it is the path to be taken in order to move beyond the crisis pervading large sectors of philosophy at the moment, and thus to correct certain mistaken modes of behaviour now widespread in our society."

It is as if the spirit of St. John Paul II is standing up in this phrase and addressing the synod fathers.

84. The importance of metaphysics becomes still more evident if we consider current developments in hermeneutics and the analysis of language. The results of such studies can be very helpful for the understanding of faith, since they bring to light the structure of our thought and speech and the meaning which language bears. However, some scholars working in these fields tend to stop short at the question of how reality is understood and expressed, without going further to see whether reason can discover its essence. How can we fail to see in such a frame of mind the confirmation of our present crisis of confidence in the powers of reason? When, on the basis of preconceived assumptions, these positions tend to obscure the contents of faith or to deny their universal validity, then not only do they abase reason but in so doing they also disqualify themselves. 

What a powerful paragraph!  Reason can discover the essence of reality, as we are made in the image and likeness of God in our intellect and our free will, and, of course, God wants to be found. He is waiting.

Only "isms", only ideologies stop inquiry. Can you think of those isms which stop real understanding of the natures of man, God, Christ, His Church? Relativism, individualism, subjectivism, and so on...

Faith clearly presupposes that human language is capable of expressing divine and transcendent reality in a universal way—analogically, it is true, but no less meaningfully for that. ¹⁰³ Were this not so, the word of God, which is always a divine word in human language, would not be capable of saying anything about God. The interpretation of this word cannot merely keep referring us to one interpretation after another, without ever leading us to a statement which is simply true; otherwise there would be no Revelation of God, but only the expression of human notions about God and about what God presumably thinks of us.

Faith and reason can express the transcedent reality of Scripture, Tradition, including doctrine, dogma, prayer and so on.

Christ is the Word of God. Scripture is the word of God. Both revealed through the Father and the Holy Spirit for our salvation.

One must stop in awe and thank God for the clarity of this document.

Thanks be to Jesus Christ...

I shall move on to the second encyclical tomorrow.

Knowledge of Divine Things Twenty-Two--Fides et Ratio Thirteen

This next section applies to all of us to a certain extent, although not all are called to be theologians. We are, by our baptism, called to come to an understanding of the basics, not only for the appropriation of our own faith, but for evangelizing. This section proves to be one of the most important in the entre work. Objectvity and rationality must alway be part of the study of the structure of knowledge about sacred things, sacred words, sacred texts.

65. Theology is structured as an understanding of faith in the light of a twofold methodological principle: the auditus fidei and the intellectus fidei. 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.

Philosophy contributes specifically to theology in preparing for a correct auditus fidei with its study of the structure of knowledge and personal communication, especially the various forms and functions of language. No less important is philosophy's contribution to a more coherent understanding of Church Tradition, the pronouncements of the Magisterium and the teaching of the great masters of theology, who often adopt concepts and thought-forms drawn from a particular philosophical tradition. In this case, the theologian is summoned not only to explain the concepts and terms used by the Church in her thinking and the development of her teaching, but also to know in depth the philosophical systems which may have influenced those concepts and terms, in order to formulate correct and consistent interpretations of them.

These skills are woefully missing in so many priests, bishops and cardinals. Theology based on philosophy will be intelligible, logically consistent, clear and not contradictory to Tradition or the Scriptures.

66. With regard to the intellectus fidei, a prime consideration must be that divine Truth “proposed to us in the Sacred Scriptures and rightly interpreted by the Church's teaching” ⁸⁹enjoys an innate intelligibility, so logically consistent that it stands as an authentic body of knowledge. The intellectus fidei expounds this truth, not only in grasping the logical and conceptual structure of the propositions in which the Church's teaching is framed, but also, indeed primarily, in bringing to light the salvific meaning of these propositions for the individual and for humanity. From the sum of these propositions, the believer comes to know the history of salvation, which culminates in the person of Jesus Christ and in his Paschal Mystery. 

If a lay person, for whatever reason, cannot appropriate some truths, that person must be obedient in order to be saved. This assent of faith is a humble recognition of limitations of all sorts.

Believers then share in this mystery by their assent of faith.

Now, one of the main purposes of this entire series comes to the fore in St. John Paul II's text.

Meaning must be articulated in the form of argument, as well as in narrative. 

Going to Mass in such desert, this can be woefully not the case in too many parishes.

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. It must do so, in other words, through concepts formulated in a critical and universally communicable way. Without philosophy's contribution, it would in fact be impossible to discuss theological issues such as, for example, the use of language to speak about God, the personal relations within the Trinity, God's creative activity in the world, the relationship between God and man, or Christ's identity as true God and true man. 

How beautiful it is to want to know Christ through the gifts of faith and reason. This drive is a true sign of the saint, the one who loves.

This is no less true of the different themes of moral theology, which employ concepts such as the moral law, conscience, freedom, personal responsibility and guilt, which are in part defined by philosophical ethics.

It is necessary therefore that the mind of the believer acquire a natural, consistent and true knowledge of created realities—the world and man himself—which are also the object of divine Revelation. Still more, reason must be able to articulate this knowledge in concept and argument. 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.

What an indictment these last two paragraphs are for so many clerics today, who merely think from the emotions, in the passions, and not from conceptual reflections, rational discourse, argument.

The meaning of what it means to be human ultimately gets lost in the chaos resulting from the lack of thinking.

Such is the Protestant heritage and the charismatic empahsis on the emotions......

to be continued....

Knowledge of Divine Things Twenty-One--Fides et Ratio Twelve

Continuing with the encyclical, one finds another one of those lines which grab one's attention, and I go backwards into the text to share this one, and some of the thoughts below.

It is this conviction which I stressed in my Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor: “There is no morality without freedom... Although each individual has a right to be respected in his own journey in search of the truth, there exists a prior moral obligation, and a grave one at that, to seek the truth and to adhere to it once it is known”.²⁵

The moral obligation is twofold. One obligation belongs to the individual, and the other to the society, to allow this search for truth.

Moving on and picking up where I left off on Saturday, St. John Paul II reminds us of the danger of a highly technological culture which has given up asking the basic questions on the nature of man and the goal of man.

In my first Encyclical Letter I stressed the danger of absolutizing such an approach when I wrote: “The man of today seems ever to be under threat from what he produces, that is to say from the result of the work of his hands and, even more so, of the work of his intellect and the tendencies of his will. All too soon, and often in an unforeseeable way, what this manifold activity of man yields is not only subject to 'alienation', in the sense that it is simply taken away from the person who produces it, but rather it turns against man himself, at least in part, through the indirect consequences of its effects returning on himself. It is or can be directed against him. This seems to make up the main chapter of the drama of present-day human existence in its broadest and universal dimension. Man therefore lives increasingly in fear. He is afraid of what he produces—not all of it, of course, or even most of it, but part of it and precisely that part that contains a special share of his genius and initiative—can radically turn against himself”.⁵³

Fear underlies the sexual revolution, in my opinion. as people seek comfort in sex rather than the harsh reality of facing one's self in the Dark Night. Fear causes people to stop growing, to get caught up in seeking comfort of all kind. Lust and greed, as well as gluttony, can come from a fear of being alone in an increasingly man-made environment. 

In the wake of these cultural shifts, some philosophers have abandoned the search for truth in itself and made their sole aim the attainment of a subjective certainty or a pragmatic sense of utility. This in turn has obscured the true dignity of reason, which is no longer equipped to know the truth and to seek the absolute.

Both the search and desire for a subjective certainty and utilitarianism, distort a view of man and society to the point of destroying the very dignity of humans, and the need for the individual, independent relationship with God.

We have seen how the Church must intervene and contradict false philosophies, which too often become ideologies. Some of these ideas are repetition, but worthy of reconsidering.

In our own century too the Magisterium has revisited the theme on a number of occasions, warning against the lure of rationalism. Here the pronouncements of Pope Saint Pius X are pertinent, stressing as they did that at the basis of Modernism were philosophical claims which were phenomenist, agnostic and immanentist.⁶⁶ Nor can the importance of the Catholic rejection of Marxist philosophy and atheistic Communism be forgotten.⁶⁷

Later, in his Encyclical Letter Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII warned against mistaken interpretations linked to evolutionism, existentialism and historicism. He made it clear that these theories had not been proposed and developed by theologians, but had their origins “outside the sheepfold of Christ”.⁶⁸ He added, however, that errors of this kind should not simply be rejected but should be examined critically: “Catholic theologians and philosophers, whose grave duty it is to defend natural and supernatural truth and instill it in human hearts, cannot afford to ignore these more or less erroneous opinions. Rather they must come to understand these theories well, not only because diseases are properly treated only if rightly diagnosed and because even in these false theories some truth is found at times, but because in the end these theories provoke a more discriminating discussion and evaluation of philosophical and theological truths”.⁶⁹

And, some of the clerics at the synod are caught up in the various errors of thinking, which St. John Paul II neatly describes below.

An example of this is the deep-seated distrust of reason which has surfaced in the most recent developments of much of philosophical research, to the point where there is talk at times of “the end of metaphysics”. 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.

In theology too the temptations of other times have reappeared. In some contemporary theologies, for instance, a certain rationalism is gaining ground, especially when opinions thought to be philosophically well founded are taken as normative for theological research. This happens particularly when theologians, through lack of philosophical competence, allow themselves to be swayed uncritically by assertions which have become part of current parlance and culture but which are poorly grounded in reason.⁷²

It is painfully obvious that so many bishops and even cardinals lack philosophical competence, and are swayed for popular ideas....Have we not seen that in America last week?

There are also signs of a resurgence of fideism, which fails to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for the understanding of faith, indeed for the very possibility of belief in God. One currently widespread symptom of this fideistic tendency is a “biblicism” which tends to make the reading and exegesis of Sacred Scripture the sole criterion of truth. In consequence, the word of God is identified with Sacred Scripture alone, thus eliminating the doctrine of the Church which the Second Vatican Council stressed quite specifically. Having recalled that the word of God is present in both Scripture and Tradition,⁷³ the Constitution Dei Verbum continues emphatically: “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture comprise a single sacred deposit of the word of God entrusted to the Church. 

Embracing this deposit and united with their pastors, the People of God remain always faithful to the teaching of the Apostles”.⁷⁴ Scripture, therefore, is not the Church's sole point of reference. The “supreme rule of her faith” ⁷⁵ derives from the unity which the Spirit has created between Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church in a reciprocity which means that none of the three can survive without the others.⁷⁶

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. Those who devote themselves to the study of Sacred Scripture should always remember that the various hermeneutical approaches have their own philosophical underpinnings, which need to be carefully evaluated before they are applied to the sacred texts.

Fideism is one of the many heresies found in the majority of charismatics.

Reason helps us all sort out the dangers of faulty thinking, coming to trust in the sacred absolutes of the Church.

Other modes of latent fideism appear in the scant consideration accorded to speculative theology, and in disdain for the classical philosophy from which the terms of both the understanding of faith and the actual formulation of dogma have been drawn. My revered Predecessor Pope Pius XII warned against such neglect of the philosophical tradition and against abandonment of the traditional terminology.⁷⁷

56. In brief, there are signs of a widespread distrust of universal and absolute statements, especially among those who think that truth is born of consensus and not of a consonance between intellect and objective reality. In a world subdivided into so many specialized fields, it is not hard to see how difficult it can be to acknowledge the full and ultimate meaning of life which has traditionally been the goal of philosophy. Nonetheless, in the light of faith which finds in Jesus Christ this ultimate meaning, I cannot but encourage philosophers—be they Christian or not—to trust in the power of human reason and not to set themselves goals that are too modest in their philosophizing. The lesson of history in this millennium now drawing to a close shows that this is the path to follow: it is necessary not to abandon the passion for ultimate truth, the eagerness to search for it or the audacity to forge new paths in the search. It is faith which stirs reason to move beyond all isolation and willingly to run risks so that it may attain whatever is beautiful, good and true. Faith thus becomes the convinced and convincing advocate of reason.

One can only say again and again, that reason and faith go together and are not mutually exclusive.

The next section I already reviewed, on St. Thomas Aquinas. In the next post on this encyclical, I shall continue with the saint's review of the overlap of philosophy and theology.

To be continued...

Knowledge of Divine Things Part Thirteen Fides et Ratio Six

Sometimes in an encyclical, a line "jumps out" at a person. Here is one from Fides et Ratio, the focus of this half of the series, now no longer "mini". I backtrack a bit in this post....

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.

I hear so many people, especially in the UK, speaking of the ignorance of people as if humans beings were cattle. St. John Paul II and many others have made it clear to us that our natural, as well as supernatural intellegence can lead us to God. The intellect will be illumined by grace if one is open to metanoia, to change. (See my previous posts on metanoia). The free will can be closed to God by a continual life of sin which causes one's discernment to darken. (See the series on discernment).

True ignorance must be rare in this era of communications. The vast majority of young people have more knowlege, more information, (not necessarily knowledge,) literally at their fingertips. God nudges people to see Him. He wants to "be found".  What is missing is fear of the Lord. Here is John Paul II again.

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. In brief, human beings attain truth by way of reason because, enlightened by faith, they discover the deeper meaning of all things and most especially of their own existence. Rightly, therefore, the sacred author identifies the fear of God as the beginning of true knowledge: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov 1:7; cf. Sir 1:14).

One may ask the question as to why a certain person would no longer "fear the Lord" or what true knowledge? I have asked myself this question after speaking with many women and men who are following false seers, even those condemned. Why do they not fear the Lord, who speaks through the Church? Why do they not want true knowledge and are closed when presented with alternative explanations to what they are believing? Why do sodomites not fear the Lord, or the arrogant who oppress the poor?

Why do those in power in the Church not fear the Lord and, instead, follow their own counsels?

 Remember my post on Thomas Merton stating that television was intruding into the space created by God for contemplation of Him and His mysteries? But, television is not the only power which clogs the special ability of humans to reflect reasonably on God and His ways. Power, status, sex, money...the list is endless. Some one I know and respect told me on Tuesday that poverty was a great gift to him, as it made him detached from such things. Here is the saint again:

In the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul helps us to appreciate better the depth of insight of the Wisdom literature's reflection. Developing a philosophical argument in popular language, the Apostle declares a profound truth: through all that is created the “eyes of the mind” can come to know God. Through the medium of creatures, God stirs in reason an intuition of his “power” and his “divinity” (cf. Rom 1:20). This is to concede to human reason a capacity which seems almost to surpass its natural limitations. Not only is it not restricted to sensory knowledge, from the moment that it can reflect critically upon the data of the senses, but, by discoursing on the data provided by the senses, reason can reach the cause which lies at the origin of all perceptible reality. In philosophical terms, we could say that this important Pauline text affirms the human capacity for metaphysical enquiry.

Now, John Paul II is getting to the meat of the encyclical. We are all capable of metaphysical enquiry, what is missing in Catholic newspaper editorials and commentaries, Catholic magazines, Catholic television shows, Catholic blogs. The framework for discussion is not there.

Few are reasoning out the basic questions.

Few.

Why have they turned away from the capacity which is given to all?

As I noted, all the heresies, ALL, are now attacking the Church. The list is long and embodied in particular people, cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, the laity.

And where are, I repeat, the Augustines, the Athanasius, the Bellarmines, to respond to these attacks within the Church?

If all have the capacity, then those who are steeped in heresy have purposefully turned away from truth, as God will allow Himself to be found by the just man.

If all have the capacity, why are the laity putting at the brush fires and ignoring the firestorm creeping over the edge of the mountain? Comments on blogs, letters to editors, petitions, will not change the heresies in the Church. Actions must be preceded by contemplation, meditation, mortification.
The blindness of pride, states John Paul II, removes one from the knowledge which God wants to give. Disobedience, whether in not keeping marriage vows, or following condemned seers, darkens the intellect in a turning away owing to pride.

But, Praise be to Jesus Christ, He came and freed our reason. So, why do so many people go back and choose the shackles?

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. All men and women were caught up in this primal disobedience, which so wounded reason that from then on its path to full truth would be strewn with obstacles. From that time onwards the human capacity to know the truth was impaired by an aversion to the One who is the source and origin of truth. It is again the Apostle who reveals just how far human thinking, because of sin, became “empty”, and human reasoning became distorted and inclined to falsehood (cf. Rom 1:21-22). The eyes of the mind were no longer able to see clearly: reason became more and more a prisoner to itself. The coming of Christ was the saving event which redeemed reason from its weakness, setting it free from the shackles in which it had imprisoned itself.

23. This is why the Christian's relationship to philosophy requires thorough-going discernment. In the New Testament, especially in the Letters of Saint Paul, one thing emerges with great clarity: the opposition between “the wisdom of this world” and the wisdom of God revealed in Jesus Christ. The depth of revealed wisdom disrupts the cycle of our habitual patterns of thought, which are in no way able to express that wisdom in its fullness.

John Paul II knows it is the Cross which brings one back to the basic questions of philosophical thinking, to the metaphysics of all teaching which is good, beautiful and true in the Church.

The wisdom of the Cross, therefore, breaks free of all cultural limitations which seek to contain it and insists upon an openness to the universality of the truth which it bears. What a challenge this is to our reason, and how great the gain for reason if it yields to this wisdom! Of itself, philosophy is able to recognize the human being's ceaselessly self-transcendent orientation towards the truth; and, with the assistance of faith, it is capable of accepting the “foolishness” of the Cross as the authentic critique of those who delude themselves that they possess the truth, when in fact they run it aground on the shoals of a system of their own devising. The preaching of Christ crucified and risen is the reef upon which the link between faith and philosophy can break up, but it is also the reef beyond which the two can set forth upon the boundless ocean of truth. Here we see not only the border between reason and faith, but also the space where the two may meet.

So one reason why so many refuse to think is that they refuse to do the hard thing-follow the Cross. 

The acceptance of suffering clears the mind and allows for the grace of God to illuminate the intellect. Running away from the Cross deadens this process.

What we have seen in recent days are examples of those running away from the Cross, and instead, choosing those "cultural limitations" which attempt to put truth into a box.

Here is the truth:  The search for truth, of course, is not always so transparent nor does it always produce such results. The natural limitation of reason and the inconstancy of the heart often obscure and distort a person's search. Truth can also drown in a welter of other concerns. People can even run from the truth as soon as they glimpse it because they are afraid of its demands. Yet, for all that they may evade it, the truth still influences life. Life in fact can never be grounded upon doubt, uncertainty or deceit; such an existence would be threatened constantly by fear and anxiety. One may define the human being, therefore, asthe one who seeks the truth.

St. John Paul II sheds light on the running away from truth by some...

to be continued...and is it not strange that a prominent Jewish commentator used this passage, referring to the knowledge of the Lord in relation to the eclipse on Friday? Interesting.

Isaiah 11:9: “None will harm or destroy another on My entire holy mountain, for the land will be as 

full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is filled with water.”

Read more: Solar eclipse Friday has some looking for signs from God | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/solar-eclipse-friday-has-some-looking-for-signs-from-god/#ixzz3Ux5qNU7U
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Knowledge of Divine Things Part Twelve Fides et Ratio Five

In yesterday's Benedictine Divine Office, which I use, and is called the Monastic Diurnal, at None, the reading from Wisdom 10:10 was this: She conducted the just, when he fled from his brother' s wrath, through the right ways, and shewed him the kingdom of God, and gave him the knowledge of the holy things, made him honourable in his labours, and accomplished his labours.

A reference to Solomon, this passage uses the phrase I chose for this series-the knowledge of holy things, or the knowledge of diving things.

Solomon desired wisdom. 

All people desire truth and desire God, although they may not know this. St. John Paul II reminds us that we all seek knowledge of some kind in order to be fulfilled.

The Apostle (Paul) accentuates a truth which the Church has always treasured: in the far reaches of the human heart there is a seed of desire and nostalgia for God. The Liturgy of Good Friday recalls this powerfully when, in praying for those who do not believe, we say: “Almighty and eternal God, you created mankind so that all might long to find you and have peace when you are found”.²² There is therefore a path which the human being may choose to take, a path which begins with reason's capacity to rise beyond what is contingent and set out towards the infinite.

The saint notes, quoting St. Augustine, that people do not want deceit, and reject it when it is discovered, although they may want to deceive.

Now, at this juncture, John Paul II comes to the main point of humans needing and desiring the answers to basic questions. Have so many priests, bishops, and cardinals forgotten this desire for truth and, instead, settle for compromise and u

The truth comes initially to the human being as a question: Does life have a meaning? Where is it going? At first sight, personal existence may seem completely meaningless. It is not necessary to turn to the philosophers of the absurd or to the provocative questioning found in the Book of Job in order to have doubts about life's meaning. The daily experience of suffering—in one's own life and in the lives of others—and the array of facts which seem inexplicable to reason are enough to ensure that a question as dramatic as the question of meaning cannot be evaded.²⁶ Moreover, the first absolutely certain truth of our life, beyond the fact that we exist, is the inevitability of our death. Given this unsettling fact, the search for a full answer is inescapable. Each of us has both the desire and the duty to know the truth of our own destiny. We want to know if death will be the definitive end of our life or if there is something beyond—if it is possible to hope for an after-life or not. It is not insignificant that the death of Socrates gave philosophy one of its decisive orientations, no less decisive now than it was more than two thousand years ago. It is not by chance, then, that faced with the fact of death philosophers have again and again posed this question, together with the question of the meaning of life and immortality.

John Paul II, perhaps, saw the lack of asking the basic questions among some of his own confreres. Perhaps, he wanted to remind them of death, and the need to find out the truth of "our own destiny". 

Socrates, who asked all the right questions, was killed by the authorities for corrupting youth. This corruption was the simple asking of questions. The bureaucrats of Athens saw questions which led to thinking skills as dangerous to the polis. Of course, comformity and undivided loyality without thought is always demanded of tyrannies.

Catholics who learn how to think, to ask the basic questions and find the answers in our faith, will challenge the powers that be.

John Paul II knew this only too well growing up under both Nazism and Communism.

to be continued...

Knowledge of Divine Things Part Ten Fides et Ratio Part Three

One begins, always, with Scripture, and the conviction that there is a knowledge "peculiar to faith" which enlightens the mind.

Restating almost to the letter the teaching of the First Vatican Council's Constitution Dei Filius, and taking into account the principles set out by the Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council's Constitution Dei Verbum pursued the age-old journey of understanding faith, reflecting on Revelation in the light of the teaching of Scripture and of the entire Patristic tradition. At the First Vatican Council, the Fathers had stressed the supernatural character of God's Revelation. On the basis of mistaken and very widespread assertions, the rationalist critique of the time attacked faith and denied the possibility of any knowledge which was not the fruit of reason's natural capacities. This obliged the Council to reaffirm emphatically that there exists a knowledge which is peculiar to faith, surpassing the knowledge proper to human reason, which nevertheless by its nature can discover the Creator. This knowledge expresses a truth based upon the very fact of God who reveals himself, a truth which is most certain, since God neither deceives nor wishes to deceive.⁶

Some things we can know from natural reason and some from the Holy Spirit, remembering that one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is knowledge. Also, to some, God gives infused knowledge, especially with regard to understanding Scripture. One is given insights in prayer and meditation.

9. The First Vatican Council teaches, then, that the truth attained by philosophy and the truth of Revelation are neither identical nor mutually exclusive: “There exists a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards their source, but also as regards their object. With regard to the source, because we know in one by natural reason, in the other by divine faith. With regard to the object, because besides those things which natural reason can attain, there are proposed for our belief mysteries hidden in God which, unless they are divinely revealed, cannot be known”.⁷ Based upon God's testimony and enjoying the supernatural assistance of grace, faith is of an order other than philosophical knowledge which depends upon sense perception and experience and which advances by the light of the intellect alone. Philosophy and the sciences function within the order of natural reason; while faith, enlightened and guided by the Spirit, recognizes in the message of salvation the “fullness of grace and truth” (cf. Jn 1:14) which God has willed to reveal in history and definitively through his Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 5:9; Jn 5:31-32).

The purpose of all grace consitutes uniting us with Christ. The study of Scripture, an act of reason as well as faith, brings us to deeper understandings of Christ, ourselves and history.

 By this Revelation, then, the deepest truth about God and human salvation is made clear to us in Christ, who is the mediator and at the same time the fullness of all Revelation”.⁸
11. God's Revelation is therefore immersed in time and history. Jesus Christ took flesh in the “fullness of time” (Gal 4:4); and two thousand years later, I feel bound to restate forcefully that “in Christianity time has a fundamental importance”.⁹ It is within time that the whole work of creation and salvation comes to light; and it emerges clearly above all that, with the Incarnation of the Son of God, our life is even now a foretaste of the fulfilment of time which is to come (cf. Heb 1:2).

Catholics must see themselves in context, in the context of salvation history. Without context, we cannot discover who we are and the goal of our lives, our cultures, our societies.

For the People of God, therefore, history becomes a path to be followed to the end, so that by the unceasing action of the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 16:13) the contents of revealed truth may find their full expression. This is the teaching of the Constitution Dei Verbum when it states that “as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly progresses towards the fullness of divine truth, until the words of God reach their complete fulfilment in her”.¹¹
12. History therefore becomes the arena where we see what God does for humanity. God comes to us in the things we know best and can verify most easily, the things of our everyday life, apart from which we cannot understand ourselves.
In the Incarnation of the Son of God we see forged the enduring and definitive synthesis which the human mind of itself could not even have imagined: the Eternal enters time, the Whole lies hidden in the part, God takes on a human face.

To study salvation history is to learn about the relationship between individual men and God and the People of God and God.

Without context, one stumbles about looking for other identities. See my posts on identity. We assent to Revelation and thereby, open ourselves to the Holy Spirit to inform our intellect, as the Scriptures are full of mystery. For some of us, this becomes habit over the years.

The Council teaches that “the obedience of faith must be given to God who reveals himself”.¹⁴ This brief but dense statement points to a fundamental truth of Christianity. Faith is said first to be an obedient response to God. This implies that God be acknowledged in his divinity, transcendence and supreme freedom. By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals. By faith, men and women give their assent to this divine testimony. This means that they acknowledge fully and integrally the truth of what is revealed because it is God himself who is the guarantor of that truth.

Once we acknowledge truth to the extent we can, God meets us more than half-way to enlighten our minds through His grace.

This is a great mystery, that reason is enlightened by faith, and faith is enlightened by reason. One actually becomes more intelligent the more one studies the faith and Scripture. The more one knows, the more one is aware of the immense mystery of God.

In short, the knowledge proper to faith does not destroy the mystery; it only reveals it the more, showing how necessary it is for people's lives: Christ the Lord “in revealing the mystery of the Father and his love fully reveals man to himself and makes clear his supreme calling”,¹⁸ which is to share in the divine mystery of the life of the Trinity.¹⁹

As some of my ex-students would know, I am a great fan of St. Anselm, who renewed the studies in the seminaries by bringing back the Trivium and Quadrivium into the formation of priests.

Here is St. John Paul II on Anselm:

Revelation therefore introduces into our history a universal and ultimate truth which stirs the human mind to ceaseless effort; indeed, it impels reason continually to extend the range of its knowledge until it senses that it has done all in its power, leaving no stone unturned. To assist our reflection on this point we have one of the most fruitful and important minds in human history, a point of reference for both philosophy and theology: Saint Anselm. In hisProslogion, the Archbishop of Canterbury puts it this way: “Thinking of this problem frequently and intently, at times it seemed I was ready to grasp what I was seeking; at other times it eluded my thought completely, until finally, despairing of being able to find it, I wanted to abandon the search for something which was impossible to find. I wanted to rid myself of that thought because, by filling my mind, it distracted me from other problems from which I could gain some profit; but it would then present itself with ever greater insistence... Woe is me, one of the poor children of Eve, far from God, what did I set out to do and what have I accomplished? What was I aiming for and how far have I got? What did I aspire to and what did I long for?... O Lord, you are not only that than which nothing greater can be conceived (non solum es quo maius cogitari nequit), but you are greater than all that can be conceived (quiddam maius quam cogitari possit)... If you were not such, something greater than you could be thought, but this is impossible”.²⁰

But, John Paul II states this.

Christian Revelation is the true lodestar of men and women as they strive to make their way amid the pressures of an immanentist habit of mind and the constrictions of a technocratic logic. 

This line is one of the most important in the entire encyclical. Immanentism denies the transcendence of God (a problem at the synod, imho) and Dr, McInerny writes this from an article here.  

Father John Hardon, in writing on the subject of immanentist apologetics, refers to it as “A method of establishing the credibility of the Christian faith by appealing to the subjective satisfaction that the faith gives to the believer.” Coupled with this emphasis on the subjective, there is a downplaying of the objective criteria of our faith, even to the point of rejecting miracles and prophecies. Purely personal motives for faith, motives that have mainly to do with feelings, are given primary of place. “Religion, therefore, would consist,” Father Bouyer remarks, “entirely in the religious feeling itself.” Reason is marginalized, and the idea of belief, as being essentially the assent of the intellect, loses its currency.


Does this not describe some of the thinking behind the idea that people cannot do the hard things, and that compromise is the only answer?

I believe that this Modernist heresy is one of the many attacking the Church in Rome at this time.
Indeed, all the main heresies, as I noted earlier, are attacking the Church through the great, and perhaps, last war of Satan against the one, true, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.

Here is McInerney again:

St. Pius X identified two major parts of Modernism; one was agnosticism, the other was immanentism. By agnosticism Modernism denies that man is capable of gaining a reasoned knowledge of God. Thus, with a stroke, it effectively does away with natural theology, that philosophic discipline whose principal task is to show that we can arrive at a knowledge of the existence of God through natural reason. Now, that such is possible is actually a matter of faith for Catholics, as was taught by the First Vatican Council.

Having disposed of natural theology, Modernism then proposes immanentism to explain what religious experience is supposedly all about. Human beings, the Modernists argue, are invested with a “religious sense” which wells up out of the unconscious and creates in us a need for the divine. 

May I comment that I think von Balthasar falls into this category.

It is in response to this need that we positively respond to ideas about the reality and nature of God which, as it happens, are comfortably conformable to our feelings. What this comes down to, in practical terms, is that the “God” to which one gives one’s allegiance is but a fiction of one’s own devising, a pseudo-being having its source nowhere else but in the demands of deep-set emotions. Here Modernism can be said to be reflecting the thought of the nineteenth century atheistic philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, who argued that what we call God is no more than the imagined product of human longings and wishes.

The Modernist heresies contradict Catholic teaching regarding knowledge, so clearly seen here in the encyclical, through the words of St. John Paul II.

...the words of the Book of Deuteronomy are pertinent: “This commandment which I command you is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that you should say, 'Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear and do it?' But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, that you can do it” (30:11-14). This text finds an echo in the famous dictum of the holy philosopher and theologian Augustine: “Do not wander far and wide but return into yourself. Deep within man there dwells the truth” (Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi. In interiore homine habitat veritas).²¹

God wants to share Himself and the mysteries of the world, as well as ourselves to us.

He desires this for each person.

To be continued.....

Knowledge of Divine Things Part Eight Fides et Ratio One

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 (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

Thus does St. John Paul II begin what some consider his best encyclical. Even this short introduction reminds us of his debt to Aquinas and Augustine.

The first paragraph indicates that truth is contemplated, known, loved, through faith and reason. One loves God with charity, the theological virtue which transcends all other virtues, which resides in the will.

Immediately, the saint takes us into the great longings of the human heart as all desire to know God and know themselves. This desire separates men and women from beasts.

Asking the basic questions, some of which I wrote about earlier in this series and in the reposts, one comes to answers depending on one's "god". St. John Paul II writes this: In fact, the answer given to these questions decides the direction which people seek to give to their lives.

The role of the Church, and that means us, is to lead others to truth, when we have appropriated this truth to some extent. This is the call of the Church, to lead all into the truth as much as we can know God while on earth. 

It is her duty to serve humanity in different ways, but one way in particular imposes a responsibility of a quite special kind: the diakonia of the truth.¹ This mission on the one hand makes the believing community a partner in humanity's shared struggle to arrive at truth; ² and on the other hand it obliges the believing community to proclaim the certitudes arrived at, albeit with a sense that every truth attained is but a step towards that fullness of truth which will appear with the final Revelation 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).

St. John Paul II then reminds us all that philosophy, which is the love of wisdom, leads us to truth, the truth of ourselves and God. It is a tool, sadly, which has been set aside by most Western educational systems, I must add.

Again, the saint notes that wisdom is won by those who wonder (remember my posts in 2013 summer, on the normative child, who keeps wonder and desires to learn?). I could make a list of things which squash wonder, but sin is the first. Here is the saint.

Without wonder, men and women would lapse into deadening routine and little by little would become incapable of a life which is genuinely personal.

What a damning statement is so few words! Without wonder, one falls into mediocrity in the spiritual life and then, most likely, serious sin. One loses the chance for a personal relationship with God because one sinks into a sort of beast-like existence of feeding the sensual appetites and not feeding the intellect. Discipline, simplicity of life and ascetism are the marks of those who desire to know themselves and who have not lost wonder, the gift we all have as children until it is ruined or lost.

Although times change and knowledge increases, it is possible to discern a core of philosophical insight within the history of thought as a whole. Consider, for example, the principles of non-contradiction, finality and causality, as well as the concept of the person as a free and intelligent subject, with the capacity to know God, truth and goodness. Consider as well certain fundamental moral norms which are shared by all. These are among the indications that, beyond different schools of thought, there exists a body of knowledge which may be judged a kind of spiritual heritage of humanity. It is as if we had come upon animplicit philosophy, as a result of which all feel that they possess these principles, albeit in a general and unreflective way. Precisely because it is shared in some measure by all, this knowledge should serve as a kind of reference-point for the different philosophical schools. 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.

For those who have been following this blog for years, you know I have written about right reason, from many viewpoints. One can look at the tags of St. Thomas Aquinas for a start.

Philosophy marks the Bride of Christ as seeking to know God and know self. St. John Paul II follows in the footsteps of so many saints and popes, theologians and philosophers, in writing this encyclical.

On her part, the Church cannot but set great value upon reason's drive to attain goals which render people's lives ever more worthy. She sees in philosophy the way to come to know fundamental truths about human life. At the same time, the Church considers philosophy an indispensable help for a deeper understanding of faith and for communicating the truth of the Gospel to those who do not yet know it.

What is missing from synod discussions is this discipline of thought, this way to come to know fundatmental truths. But, the synod merely reflects the Church at large, floundering in a sea of opinions not based on reason, but only on emotional responses, or neo-con attempts to explain the truth.

One cannot merely point out the problems without working on the solutions.

To be continued....