Book review of John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio

For a contemporary mind, faith and reason belong to two completely different realms

and they do not have anything in common. Faith is often considered as a private act of a

person that more or less freely decides to hold an irrational, or at least curious, belief. Reason

instead is associated with truth and knowledge, though by reason it is generally understood

what can be proved in a lab. Coming from a peculiar development of the history of thought

which took place in the Modern Age, this understanding of faith and reason and their

relationship has been challenged by pope John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et Ratio.

Without denying the achievements of modern thought, John Paul II challenges the

modern world to acknowledge the fact that the revelation of God in history has changed

definitively the way in which man approaches the truth. Through revelation, man has been

given by God truth and knowledge besides that which he can acquire through the use of his

reason. Since the event of revelation, faith and reason are two sources through which man

can arrive to truth: they are two ‘wings’ through which ‘the human spirit rises to the

contemplation of truth’ (FR, preamble). Moreover, the pope shows how the potentialities of

faith and reason can be exalted only if they work together. Reason needs faith to be oriented

towards the truth and to expand its own field of investigation (credo ut intellegam). At the

same time, faith needs reason in order to understand properly the significance and the

consequences of what has been revealed (intellego ut credam). Otherwise, faith and reason

are both humiliated if they are unjustly separated.

The encyclical is a masterpiece not only for its content but also for the way in which it

is written. The relation between faith and reason is approached and analyzed from different

perspectives. In this review, we want to look briefly at two of these: how faith and reason

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come together in the way in which the human person acquires truth and how they came

together in history.

Let us look first at the way in which John Paul II relates his reflection on the

relationship on faith and reason looking at what is for him the most important intellectual and

pastoral interest, the human person. He begins with the assertion that every person has in-

built the desire for truth. The existential questions that a person faces in his life are the

manifestation of this desire for truth. Philosophy begins from the unavoidable questions

which every person has to face: such has whether there is meaning in life, whether there is an

explanation for death or whether there is or not an afterlife. In order to provide answers to

such fundamental questions, philosophers have searched for a universal and absolute truth

which may serve as a basis for all things. In this desire for meaning and truth there is hidden

also the desire for God. Indeed, the desire for truth is also a desire for the ultimate reason

which governs and sustains everything. However, the capacities of a person’s mind to know

the truth are limited by the human condition. Not only can a person be easily mislead in his

enquiry but, even in the best situation, man cannot arrive to the fullness of the truth. His

discoveries will be always partial. Then, the person’s desire for truth, which has been

expressed by him through literature, arts, and especially through philosophical enquiry, is

quenched by the revelation. This is the case, for example, of Paul in Athens. Paul’s

announcement of the Kerygma does not rule out the discoveries of the Athenian philosophers

rather it brings them to the complete truth. According to John Paul II, the fact that revelation

quenches man’s desire of truth is respectful of what he calls the “modes of truth”, the ways in

which man acquires truth. The pope writes that a person usually acquires truth and

knowledge not by his own rational speculations but rather through believing the witness of

someone else.

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 The other privileged perspective that the pope uses in the encyclical to show the

relationship between faith and reason is the historical analysis. As we have already

mentioned above, the modern separation between faith and reason goes back to the beginning

of the Modern Age. The worst effect of the modern separation is the diminution of both,

reason and faith. Man no longer makes the most of reason, not using it to answer the

fundamental questions regarding reality and God himself, nor is faith considered any longer

to be a source of knowledge. However, the pope points out that things were different before

modernity. The ancient Greeks took advantage of the capacity of reason, making use of the

potentiality of the human mind to know the ultimate principle of reality. Hence, the ancient

people of Israel affirmed that the truth which man can discover is one and the same that God

himself reveals and, therefore, that through revelation we acquire knowledge. The contact

between the Greek thought and the Semitic religion, which took place before Christ, acquired

a new vitality with the unfolding of Christianity that developed within these two contexts

especially in its early stages. Starting from Paul, Christians have understood that in Christ

there is the unity of wisdom. The logos that the Greek philosophers were searching for is one

and the same that God has revealed in his son Jesus Christ. Therefore, Christianity is not in

contradiction with philosophy rather it is its fulfillment given that Christ is the logos. Laid

down by Paul, this understanding of the unity of wisdom in Christ has been, for centuries, the

framework within which faith and reason have worked together. Great examples of those

who continued within this framework are the Apologists, Augustine and other Fathers of the

Church, Anselm, Thomas, etc. Though with different emphasis, all of them affirmed the unity

of wisdom, the fact that faith has extended enormously our knowledge and that what is

revealed seeks to be fully understood through the power of our reason.