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Faith and Reason: from Vatican I to John Paul I1

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Faith and Reason: from Vatican I to John Paul I1 FAITH AND REASON: FROM VATICAN I TO JOHN PAUL I1 AVERY CARDlNAL DULLES, S.), John Paul 11's encyclical of September 14, 1998, on "Faith and Reason" takes up a theme that has been a staple of Western theology since at least the time of Augustine in the*fourth century. St. Anselm in the twelfth century and St. Thomas iquinas, in the thirteenth, argued brilliantly for the harmony between faith and reason. The medieval synthesis, already wounded by the inroads of fourteenth- century Nominalism, was sharply contested fiom two sides in the sev- enteenth and eighteenth centuries. At one extreme were self-assured rationalists, who belittled the role of faith, and at the other, skeptical fideists, who distrusted the powers of reason. Since some Catholic thinkers of the early nineteenth century were tainted by these two errors, the Roman Magisterium issued condemnations of both ration- alism and fideism. The official Catholic position was most authorita- tively summarized in 1870 by the First Vatican Council in its Dog- matic Constitution on Catholic Faith, which contained a chapter dedicated to the theme of faith and reason. e Without actually mentioning Thomas Aquinas, Vatican I endorsed 4. 194 AVERY CARDINAL DULLES, S.J. Fronl Vatican I to John Paul I1 195 his position. A decade later, in 1879, Pope Leo XI11 published his might have been expected simply to enlarge upon the positions of encyclical Aetmi Pdtris, proposing St. Thomas as the thinker whose Vatican I, very much as Leo XI11 had done in his encyclical on synthesis of faith and reason should be accepted as a solid founda- Thomistic philosophy in 1879. But instead, he. ___,.addressed__- thegr&lem--- J tion from which to grapple with more recent questions in philosophy in~98gikin&.b~e~Ww%&. and science. The present pope does not, of course, contradict Vatican I. Tn fact, In the first half of the twentieth century the popes issued a num- he quotes or refers to its Constitution on Catholic Faith in favorable ber of further condemnations and admonitions relevant to our ques- terms at least ten times at various points spanning the entire encycli- tion. Early in the century Pius X repudiated the agnostic and histon- cal.' He takes over from Vatican I the familiar ideas that reason has 1; 1; cist theses of Modernism. After World War I, Pius XI censured the power to establish the existence of God and thc preambles of Marxist Communism for its materialist determinism. Pius XI1 in 1950 Christian faith (5553, 67), that faith confirms truths that reason can 1 cautioned against the nouvellr the'ologre of the day, in which he detect- cannot grasp except with great difficulty (943), that faith also I!a. ed a tendency toward historicism and dogmatic relativism. embraces mysteries that lie entirely beyond the range of unaided rea- ,E f At the Second Vatican Council, in 1962-1965, the problem no son (558, g), and that reason can render even these revealed mysteries 1 longer seemed acute. The Council, displaying a measure of historical to some degree intelligible ($83). In line with Vatican I, the pope consciousness, acknowledged the need to understand the Gospel teaches that the Magisterium has the righ't and duty to condemn phi- with all the tools of contemporary scholarship and to proclaim it in losophical tenets that are opposed to truths of faith (955, fn. 72), and ways adapted to existing cultural situations (GS 44, 62). But at the that there can be no conflict between faith and-reason, sirice both are same time it declared that there were unchanging realities and perma- gifts of the same God, who could ncver contra;(ict himself (998,53). ncnt truths (GS 10; DH 3). In the course of its treatment of the Also in the footsteps of Vatican I, John Paul TI opposes both a ration- autonomy of science and culture, it reaffirmed the teaching of Vati- alism that dismisses the input of faith and a fideism that distrusts the can I on the distinction between the "two orders" of faith and reason guidance of reason ($552, 53). He repeats the teaching of Vatican I (GS 59). Elsewhere Vatican I1 praised Thomas Aquinas for having that faith and reason "mutually support each other" ($100). given glorious witness to the harmony of faith and reason (GE 10). Notwithstanding these important continuities, there are striking But these were only passing and disconnected remarks. Vatican I1 differences between the approaches of Vatican I and John Paul U. gave no sustained attention to our theme; it was remarkably silent They are speaking to radically diverse situations. At the time of Vati- about the role of reason in preparing for the assent of faith-a point can I, the issues within the Church were rather clearly drawn. At one that had been of acute concern to the Fathers at Vatican I and to Pius end of the spectrum were rationalists and semi-rationalists who pro- XII. fessed exorbitant confidence in the powers of unaided reason to fath- Since the acrimonious debates of earlier centuries had evidently subsided, Pope John Paul I1 could easily have left the problem in a I. Ten references are fisted by Kenneth I.. Schmitz in his "Faith and Reason: Then and Now," Communio 26 (1999): 595-608, at 598, note 9. He seems to have overlooked the state of benign neglect. If he did wish to speak on the subject, he quotation from Dri Fihin Fides et rdbo g. * From Vatican I to John Paul I1 197 om the depths of reality and who regarded faith as unreliable and claims of pure reason. Unlike Vatican I he refrains from lamentations unnecessary for educated persons. At the other end were fideists and and angry condemnations. In the spirit of Vatican 11, he prefers to traditionalists who denied the capacity of the intellect to attain truths use what Pope John XXIII called "th=d!-m_e~y."~ He sees of a moral or metaphysical nature and who entrusted themselves to himself as a friend and ally, called to help philosophy to extricate faith as a blind movement of emotion or volition or a passive con- itself from its present state of impoverishment. He exhorts it to I formity to tradition. Rationalism was more at home in Germany; recover its original vocation of being a quest for wisdom, as is fideism, in France. implied in the very name philo-sophia, which means love of wisdom Vatican I, recognizing elements of truth and falsehood in both (553, 6). This positive stance harmonizes with the tendency of the rationalism and fideism, adopted a mediating position. Against the Second Vatican Council to depict the Church as a partner in the fideists it affirmed that reason, by its natural powers, could establish struggles of humanity at large, including its search for truth (52; cf. the foundations of faith and the credibility of the Christian revela- GS 16). tion (DS 3019,3033). And against the rationalists Vatican I attributed Whereas Vatican I spoke in authoritative and judgmental tones, the full assurance of the act of faith to the power of divine grace John Paul 11, s&g, huq~m~kground&!*qe enlightening the intellect and inspiring the will (DS 3010). The act m~r~~3i~~~k~~&eJ~e,,2?S,~~Ee'-e&gruu.The philo- was therefore reasonable without being a deliverance of pure reason. sophical quest, as he sees it, begins from below, where experience By the end of the twentieth century, the proud boasts of auto- gives rise to questions. All philosophy, he remarks, begins in wonder nomous reason, setting itself up against the claims of faith, had been (54). The mind ineluctably asks about the mcaningsw of life in the face severely muted. The prevailing mood was one of metaphysical ag- of suffering and inevitable death (526). In language reminiscent of nosticism. Some intellectuals, clinging to a remnant of rationalism, Augustine the pope detects in the human heart "a desire to know the professed a scientism that restricted genuine knowledge to the sphere truth," (Preface), which he later calls "a seed of desire and nostalgia of measurable physical reali.ties. Logical positivists dismissed all for God (524). Giving scope to this impulse, he interprets the search statements not verifiable by experience as "noncognitive" deliverances for wisdom as a pilgrimage or journey of discovery, much along the of emotion, convention, or simple caprice. lines of Bonaventure in his Itineraty ofthe Mind to God (5533, 105). In summary, therefore, the rationalist mentality hardly survives The pope's rhetoric is strikingly different from that of the Magis- today except in the spheres of mathematics, logic, and empirical sci- terium in the nineteenth century. Vatican I had called for a submis- ence. Philosophy, for its part, has practically abandoned the pursuit sion to the authority of God who reveals; it stressed the obligation of of transcendent or metaphysical truth. It has narrowed its horizons the individual to believe whatever is contained in the word of God to the spheres of shifting phenomena, linguistic study, the interpreta- and certified by the Magisterium. John Paul 11, by contrast, adopts tion of texts, and pragmatic strategies for coping with radical plural- the posture of a physician helping a patient on the road to recovery. ism. In this situation John Paul I1 sees no need to restrain the excessive 2. John XXIII, "Gaudet Mater Ecclesia," in The Donmnentr of Kfti~dnII, ed. Walter M. Abbott and Joseph Gallagher (New York: America Press, 1966), 716. From Vatican I to John Paul 11 199 He portrays the truth of revelation as a fulfillment of the universal cles and prophecies.
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