Fides et Ratio
Overview
Written in 1998, Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) is Pope John Paul II's treatment of the relationship between faith and reason. The pope re-iterates the Church's teaching that faith and reason are not only not in conflict, but are in their essences bound up together. Faith without reason tends toward superstition and reason without faith tends toward nihilism. The pope calls for their re-integration and defends the Church's responsibility to intervene in philosophy when its errors threaten revelation. The letter is divided into seven sections: "The Revelation of God's Wisdom," "Credo ut Intellegam," "The Relationship between Faith and Reason," "The Magisterium's Interventions in Philosophical Matters," "The Interaction between Philosophy and Theology," and "Current Requirements and Tasks."
Top Highlights
“A legitimate plurality of positions has yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism, based upon the assumption that all positions are equally valid, which is one of today’s most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth.” (source)
“What is distinctive in the biblical text is the conviction that there is a profound and indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason and the knowledge of faith.” (source)
“The First Vatican Council teaches, then, that the truth attained by philosophy and the truth of Revelation are neither identical nor mutually exclusive: ‘There exists a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards their source, but also as regards their object.” (source)
“Therefore, reason and faith cannot be separated without diminishing the capacity of men and women to know themselves, the world and God in an appropriate way.” (source)
“This means that the human being—the one who seeks the truth—is also the one who lives by belief.” (source)