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Fides et ratio
Fides et ratio (Latin for 'Faith and Reason') is an encyclical promoted by Pope John Paul II on 14 September 1998. It was one of 14 encyclicals issued by John Paul II. The encyclical primarily addresses the relationship between faith and reason.
Cardinal Georges Cottier, who was secretary general of the International Theological Commission from 1989 to 2003, says he was part of the drafting of the encyclical.
Fides et ratio was the first encyclical since Pope Leo XIII's 1879 Aeterni Patris to address the relationship between faith and reason.
The encyclical posits that faith and reason are not only compatible but essential together. He starts with "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth;" Faith without reason, he argues, leads to superstition. Reason without faith, he argues, leads to nihilism and relativism. He writes:
4 Through philosophy's work, the ability to speculate which is proper to the human intellect produces a rigorous mode of thought; and then in turn, through the logical coherence of the affirmations made and the organic unity of their content, it produces a systematic body of knowledge... [T]his has brought with it the temptation to identify one single stream with the whole of philosophy. In such cases, we are dealing with a "philosophical pride" that seeks to present its own partial and imperfect view as the complete reading of all reality....
Although reason creates a "systematic body of knowledge," the Pope avers, its completeness is illusory:
5 Yet the positive results achieved must not obscure the fact that reason, in its one-sided concern to investigate human subjectivity, seems to have forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth that transcends them. Sundered from that truth, individuals are at the mercy of caprice, and their state as a person ends up being judged by pragmatic criteria based essentially upon experimental data, in the mistaken belief that technology must dominate all. It has happened therefore that reason, rather than voicing the human orientation towards truth, has wilted under the weight of so much knowledge and little by little has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being. Abandoning the investigation of being, modern philosophical research has concentrated instead 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.
Without a grounding in spiritual truth, he continues, reason has:
Fides et ratio
Fides et ratio (Latin for 'Faith and Reason') is an encyclical promoted by Pope John Paul II on 14 September 1998. It was one of 14 encyclicals issued by John Paul II. The encyclical primarily addresses the relationship between faith and reason.
Cardinal Georges Cottier, who was secretary general of the International Theological Commission from 1989 to 2003, says he was part of the drafting of the encyclical.
Fides et ratio was the first encyclical since Pope Leo XIII's 1879 Aeterni Patris to address the relationship between faith and reason.
The encyclical posits that faith and reason are not only compatible but essential together. He starts with "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth;" Faith without reason, he argues, leads to superstition. Reason without faith, he argues, leads to nihilism and relativism. He writes:
4 Through philosophy's work, the ability to speculate which is proper to the human intellect produces a rigorous mode of thought; and then in turn, through the logical coherence of the affirmations made and the organic unity of their content, it produces a systematic body of knowledge... [T]his has brought with it the temptation to identify one single stream with the whole of philosophy. In such cases, we are dealing with a "philosophical pride" that seeks to present its own partial and imperfect view as the complete reading of all reality....
Although reason creates a "systematic body of knowledge," the Pope avers, its completeness is illusory:
5 Yet the positive results achieved must not obscure the fact that reason, in its one-sided concern to investigate human subjectivity, seems to have forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth that transcends them. Sundered from that truth, individuals are at the mercy of caprice, and their state as a person ends up being judged by pragmatic criteria based essentially upon experimental data, in the mistaken belief that technology must dominate all. It has happened therefore that reason, rather than voicing the human orientation towards truth, has wilted under the weight of so much knowledge and little by little has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being. Abandoning the investigation of being, modern philosophical research has concentrated instead 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.
Without a grounding in spiritual truth, he continues, reason has: