Faith and Reason
Last week, to mark his
20 th anniversary as pope, John Paul II issued an encyclical, "Fides
et Ratio," calling on the faithful to reconcile faith and reason. Rationalists
reasonably ask: How does one do that? If faith tells you that God created
humankind in the garden of Eden and reason tells you humankind evolved from
lower animals over millions of years, how do you reconcile those messages? If
faith tells you that the Communion wafer is the body of Christ and
reason tells you this seems highly unlikely, where do you go from there?
Various
subdivisions of various religions have various strategies for reconciling faith
and reason. Here are a few, on a rough spectrum from faith wins to reason
wins:
1 Fundamentalism/Literalism
Literalist approaches to the
Bible/Torah/Koran contend that when reason contradicts the word of God ,
reason is misguided. This philosophy is summed up in the battle cry of many a
literalist: Nothing is impossible with God. Scientific proofs that contradict
biblical stories of the great flood or creation are wrong and have been derived
through erroneous means. The debate over evolution is probably the
best-known example of the literalists' combination of rock hard belief and
relentless point by point challenge of the rationalist side.
Literalists often warn against too much reliance on knowledge as opposed
to truth as revealed through Scripture. It is this obsession and lust
for knowledge that caused the human condition (suffering, evil, painful
childbirth, etc.) in the first place: Eve's craving for enlightenment is
what led her to eat from the tree of knowledge, after which God expelled her
and Adam from paradise.
2 Faith Complements Reason
This is the position the
pope takes in his latest encyclical. Faith and reason are argued to be
logical complements. God empowered humans with reason precisely so that
humankind might come to a better understanding of God and God's creation.
"Fides et Ratio" says there is thus no reason for competition of any kind
between reason and faith. Each contains the other, and each has its own scope
for action. Officially, the Catholic Church gives reason the same weight as
faith. If you use your reason in the way it was intended, you will discover the
wonder and mystery in God's creation and, in turn, you will come to a greater
understanding and appreciation of God.
Those who
favor this approach often tend to see philosophy and Scripture as
sharing the key to the ultimate truth. The pursuit of knowledge is good, not
bad, because it leads closer to the actual truth: God and God's plan. Without
reason and knowledge, say Catholics and other believers in this way of
reconciling reason with faith, the teachings of the Bible look like magical
fables instead of moral teachings. Michael Novak, a theologian at the American
Enterprise Institute, sums up the basic premise of this approach, saying that
without lively attention to reason, Judaism and Christianity fall into
sentimentality, superstition, and self-parody.
3 Apples and Oranges
Another school of thought
contends that faith and reason occupy two different realms of knowing.
They are so dissimilar that they cannot contradict one another. Reason
encompasses the physical, while faith deals with the metaphysical. The seen and
unseen are independent of each other: You don't read the Bible for answers to
scientific questions, and you don't read a biology textbook to find out how to
live.
The basic
premise of this line is that the findings of faith and reason are not at
odds--only their methods are. Reason is objective --discovered in
the outside world. Faith is subjective --discovered within. Faith is
about the metaphysical world, that world of events, occurrences, and mysteries
that by their very nature can never be proved objectively.
4 Cultural/Historical Relativism
Relativists hold that
religious texts written centuries ago must be interpreted within the
cultural and historical context of their times. The Bible and Koran were
written when the scientific laws the 20 th century takes for granted
were nonexistent. The writers had to make their points in terms that people of
the time would understand. For example, had the writer of the Genesis creation
story been composing for a 20 th century readership, he or she would
have explained God's hand in the evolutionary process as opposed to the more
magical creation story in the Bible. Likewise, had Talmudic authors had the
sanitary conditions of today, laws for keeping kosher might have been
much less stringent or possibly omitted altogether.
Though
this approach will seem quite reasonable to rationalists, it is one of the more
controversial approaches to reconciling faith and reason. Its critics complain
that God's truths are not and cannot be relative to the time they are
written. There is a moral absolute that supersedes cultural and historical
contexts.
5 Religious Texts as Allegorical Moral
Literature
Possibly the antithesis of
literalist theories, this approach assumes that the Scriptures were written
solely for the purpose of conveying a moral message. Much like Aesop's fables,
these theological works are said to use myth, imagery, and symbolism to
instruct readers how to lead a good life. They are not historical or factual
documents, since all the events within were composed as literary
tools .
Once again, this is an
oft-criticized approach. If the Bible and Koran are simply books of myths with
morals, then they are no different from any other moral literature--they are
stripped of their sacred significance.
The challenge the pope has thrown down is a
formidable one. Reconciling faith and reason is hard work. There are other ways
to go about it, but these five should be enough to get you started, God
willing.
