Faith and Reason.

Fresno's Thomistic Baptist pastor offers his cogent thoughts on the subject of "faith and reason," which immediately led to a "fideistic" rebuttal by "Gecko."

Here's my contribution to the discussion:

Thom,

Your comments are ever-timely.

Particularly, in light of my recent forays into the "Truly Reformed" sphere. I honestly can't fathom the mentality that responds to some argument I make based on observation and reason with the show-stopping objection that my argument is "unbiblical." In the thread I linked to, for example, the TR blogger argued that we can't use our understanding of human nature to understand scripture; we can only use scripture to understand human nature.

Well, sure, like all great literature, we can use scripture to illuminate our understanding of human nature, but the reverse is true also, and we definitely aren't glorifying God who gave us reason and an natural world to examine if we ignore those aspects of the human experience.

Likewise, the TR blogger condemns the arguments of a deeply reflective Catholic blogger as follows:

And for the grand finale, I'll just put these words of CrimsonCatholic here in boldface. Or should I say baldface?

To put it another way, you don't need the Bible to do what God gave you a brain today. If you make reason dependent on the Bible, then you spurn God's greatest gift to man, the one on which the Bible itself depends.

Because, obviously, that statement is entirely wrong from his Truly Reformed perspective. From that perspective, man is immeasurably weak, irrational and totally depraved etc.

It's sad, really, because this kind of argument leaves the field to the atheists and materialists, who at least can demonstrate materialist "miracles" to sway the undecided.

In his seminal encyclical - which shares the name of your post - Fides et Ratio, John Paul the Great warned us to walk the tightrope between "fideism" and "materialism":

52. It is not only in recent times that the Magisterium of the Church has intervened to make its mind known with regard to particular philosophical teachings. It is enough to recall, by way of example, the pronouncements made through the centuries concerning theories which argued in favour of the pre-existence of the soul,(56) or concerning the different forms of idolatry and esoteric superstition found in astrological speculations,(57) without forgetting the more systematic pronouncements against certain claims of Latin Averroism which were incompatible with the Christian faith.(58)

If the Magisterium has spoken out more frequently since the middle of the last century, it is because in that period not a few Catholics felt it their duty to counter various streams of modern thought with a philosophy of their own. At this point, the Magisterium of the Church was obliged to be vigilant lest these philosophies developed in ways which were themselves erroneous and negative. The censures were delivered even-handedly: on the one hand, fideism (59) and radical traditionalism,(60) for their distrust of reason's natural capacities, and, on the other, rationalism (61) and ontologism (62) because they attributed to natural reason a knowledge which only the light of faith could confer. The positive elements of this debate were assembled in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, in which for the first time an Ecumenical Council—in this case, the First Vatican Council—pronounced solemnly on the relationship between reason and faith. The teaching contained in this document strongly and positively marked the philosophical research of many believers and remains today a standard reference-point for correct and coherent Christian thinking in this regard.

JPII warns against fideism as much as rationalism:

There are also signs of a resurgence of fideism, which 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. One currently widespread symptom of this fideistic tendency is a “biblicism” which tends to make the reading and exegesis of Sacred Scripture the sole criterion of truth. In consequence, the word of God is identified with Sacred Scripture alone, thus eliminating the doctrine of the Church which the Second Vatican Council stressed quite specifically. Having recalled that the word of God is present in both Scripture and Tradition,(73) the Constitution Dei Verbum continues emphatically: “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture comprise a single sacred deposit of the word of God entrusted to the Church. Embracing this deposit and united with their pastors, the People of God remain always faithful to the teaching of the Apostles”.(74) Scripture, therefore, is not the Church's sole point of reference. The “supreme rule of her faith” (75) derives from the unity which the Spirit has created between Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church in a reciprocity which means that none of the three can survive without the others.(76)

Moreover, one should not underestimate the danger inherent in seeking to derive the truth of Sacred Scripture from the use of one method alone, ignoring the need for a more comprehensive exegesis which enables the exegete, together with the whole Church, to arrive at the full sense of the texts. Those who devote themselves to the study of Sacred Scripture should always remember that the various hermeneutical approaches have their own philosophical underpinnings, which need to be carefully evaluated before they are applied to the sacred texts.

Other modes of latent fideism appear in the scant consideration accorded to speculative theology, and in disdain for the classical philosophy from which the terms of both the understanding of faith and the actual formulation of dogma have been drawn. My revered Predecessor Pope Pius XII warned against such neglect of the philosophical tradition and against abandonment of the traditional terminology.

JPII explains the reason for the attractiveness of these two polar opposites of thought and the audacity of faith:

56. In brief, there are signs of a widespread distrust of universal and absolute statements, especially among those who think that truth is born of consensus and not of a consonance between intellect and objective reality. In a world subdivided into so many specialized fields, it is not hard to see how difficult it can be to acknowledge the full and ultimate meaning of life which has traditionally been the goal of philosophy. Nonetheless, in the light of faith which finds in Jesus Christ this ultimate meaning, I cannot but encourage philosophers—be they Christian or not—to trust in the power of human reason and not to set themselves goals that are too modest in their philosophizing. The lesson of history in this millennium now drawing to a close shows that this is the path to follow: it is necessary not to abandon the passion for ultimate truth, the eagerness to search for it or the audacity to forge new paths in the search. It is faith which stirs reason to move beyond all isolation and willingly to run risks so that it may attain whatever is beautiful, good and true. Faith thus becomes the convinced and convincing advocate of reason.

I like so much of that passage. People who have faith in the existence of an objective truth and the ability of reason to bring intellect into consonance with objective reality are those with the courage and audacity to run risks to know and share "the beautiful, good and true", and, really, what else is worth striving for - because we know Who is ultimately the beautiful, good and true.

Fideists like the TR blogger and Gecko are not so much demonstrating a noble humility as they are exhibiting a craven cowardice; they are letting their side down in the struggle for humanity. They are retreating to a tiny citadel of egotism where there is no objective reality, but only a single person's personal decision.

So, at least, people like us are fighting the good fight for the thing that really matters.