BXVI on Faith, Reason, and the University

I would like to thank Richard Myers for passing along Ed Lyons’ discovery of Pope Benedict’s recent address on faith, reason, and the university. I also look forward to reading again the Pope’s address along with the address that Archbishop Miller was scheduled to deliver at Boston College this past Monday, September 11.

But back to the Pope’s discourse.

I have now read it several times. It is a rich document—elaborate but clear. It contains much to be studied. It offers prayerful guidance and reflection. I would like to comment briefly on a few of its elements in this posting.

The first is the story that the Holy Father weaves throughout his address involving a discussion between the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a Persian scholar and their examination of the theme of jihad (holy war). The Pope reflects on a Koranic passage, “there is no compulsion in religion.” There are likely several reasons why the Pope introduced this into his address, but I would like to think that one involves what I like to identify as authentic academic freedom: the freedom for exploring beyond one’s self on the path to God. Indeed there is freedom from external pressures for academic inquiry to take place. But, for faith and reason to flourish side-by-side and in concert, there must also be freedom for God—to search, meet, and embrace Him. As the Psalmist says in N. 8: “what is man that you are mindful of him…” (RSV) If God’s mind is seeking encounter with the human mind, should not our minds also be pursuing this engagement? I think so.

A second element is what the Pope identifies as the “de-Hellenization” of the Christian faith that relies on the rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry. He analyzes his hypothesis that some in the universities have sought to divorce “the profound encounter of faith and reason” expressed in Greek Christian thought. His examination investigates three stages: (1) the fundamental postulates of the 16^th century Reformers; (2) the 19^th and 20^th centuries’ distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (i.e., the separation of worship and morality); and, (3) the mood of the present day to emphasize cultural pluralism without taking stock of the inextricable link between the Greek culture and the early Christian church. This component of the Pope’s address may well include the objective of intensifying efforts to reconcile with the Orthodox Christians—a project very dear to the Pope.

A third element concentrates on the Pope’s examination of the pursuit of science that contains a self-imposed limitation on reason. The self-limitation is this: reason must be exclusively verifiable through empirical means. That approach would disallow the engagement of reason and faith and thus artificially limit human inquiry. If truth transcends the empirically verifiable, and I think it does, then the Pope is on to something. As he states, “[a] reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.” But, the Holy Father suggests that the academic enterprise, if it is true to its noblest qualities, must be courageous so that the whole scope of reason can be encountered and the denial of its grandeur may be eschewed.

RJA sj