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The issuance of Fides et Ratio is an extraordinary event. That a subtle philosophical discourse should be issued by the head of a vast ecclesiastical bureaucracy! We must all behold with awe and astonishment this achievement of the Church of Rome. Those of us who are not members will find a good dose of envy mixed in with our awe and astonishment.
Pervading the entire document is the both/and style of rhetoric: as in—above all—both faith and reason. We, in our time and place, are not much drawn to this rhetorical style. We prefer the disjunctive over the conjunctive. The conjunctive style smacks to us of indecision; we prefer the confrontational, attention-getting bite of either/or. But Fides et Ratio is by no means indecisive. Its both/and is full of bite.
With one single discourse, Fides et Ratio addresses two quite different sorts of intellectual ills in contemporary society: on the one hand, the skepticisms of immanentism; on the other, the suspicions of fideism. Both/and.
On the one hand, there are those who, in the words of the encyclical, "distrust … the human being's great capacity for knowledge." They "rest content with partial and provisional truths, no longer seeking to ask radical questions about the meaning and ultimate foundation of human, personal and social existence." They have "lost the capacity to lift [their] gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being. Abandoning the investigation of being, modern philosophical research has concentrated in stead upon human knowing. Rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy has preferred to accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned." We are, it is said, "at the end of metaphysics." In thus speaking, philosophy has "forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps to wards a truth which transcends them."
That is one of the intellectual ills to which the encyclical is addressed: the skepticisms of immanentism. The other is the suspicions of fideism. The fideist is one who, again in the words of the encyclical, "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." Among the manifestations that the encyclical cites of the skepticisms of fideism are biblicism in scriptural interpretation and disdain for philosophy and speculative theology.
The pope addresses both these intellectual illnesses at once by offering a discourse, informed and subtle, on faith and reason. That discourse grounds, in turn, a vigorous and visionary call to boldness. To the immanentist the pope says: do not be content with exploring the subjective and the anthropological; inquire boldly into what lies beyond the self. To the fideist the pope says: Do not be content with "mere faith"; appropriate boldly the riches of the philosophical tradition so as both to deepen our understanding of the faith and to exercise "critical discernment" on the intellectual endeavors of humanity generally. Fides et Ratio, to say it again, is a vigorous and visionary call to boldness—boldness in the use of reason, boldness in the exercise of faith. Once again: both/and.
I am a philosopher who stands in the Reformed tradition of Christianity—that tradition that traces its roots to the Reformation, which originated in the Swiss cities and was shaped, above all, by John Calvin. When I read the pope's discourse on faith and reason, I read it with the eyes and mind of such a person. Calvinists have been known to say some rather bracing things about Catholic modes of thought in general, and about popes in particular. Could it be that those disputes are on the way to disappearing? For I find myself in almost complete agreement with what the pope says about the relation of faith and reason. I would want to debate with him some of the things he says about the history of philosophy. I think, for example, that there is rather less core consensus than he seems to think there is. And I have some hesitations on a few peripheral matters: what he says about the authoritative status of tradition, for example, and some of what he says about the role of Mary. But what he says on the topic of faith and reason seems to me both true and needing to be said. Such convergence between these two traditions, though disappointing to the agonistic spirit implanted in all of us by life in a competitive society, is a wonderful thing for anyone formed by the spirit of the gospel.
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