Faith & Reason

The pre-modern thinkers, retroactively called scientists, themselves believed that theology and religious texts were relevant to their own work and vice versa. As an example of this interplay are the four points argued for by Augustine, that not only became fundamental to theology but are key to the science – religion interaction.

First, there is the doctrine of the unity of truth which states that there cannot be a truth for theology and another truth for science – there can only be one truth. Consequently, seeming contradictions have to be acknowledged and confronted, and not simply swept under the rug; they must be resolved intellectually by the use of reason.

Second, there is the doctrine of the Two Books – the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. These were seen as two complementary ways in which God reveals himself to man; and since they had the same author they could not fundamentally contradict each other.

Third is the doctrine of accommodation, the idea that Biblical expressions were accommodated to the understanding of their original audience. Both books required careful interpretation, with Biblical passages being multi-layered in meaning possessing literal, allegorical, analogical and moral meaning (Literal interpretation did not mean what it does today; for example, St Augustine’s Literal Interpretation of Genesis denies a six-day, and even a six-period, creation). Realising the difficulty of Biblical interpretation, Augustine believed some explanations of Biblical passages should be held provisionally, with the assiduous use of reason to be employed in there interpretation. Augustine believed that Biblical interpretation should be informed by current scientific understanding; failure to do so opens the interpreter, and Christianity as a whole, to the ridicule of being unlearned and uninformed.

Fourth and finally, St Augustine asserted that, in terms of the pursuit of religious as opposed to philosophical and scientific knowledge, religion has primacy, with scientific knowledge being a key ancilla (handmaiden) that assists true religion. This subordinate status is a reflection of the relative values given by society at the time to the two realms of inquiry. Augustine believed knowledge of the natural world to both reveal the majesty of God’s creation and be indispensable for correct Biblical exegesis.

In 1998, Pope John Paul II issued an important encyclical entitled Fides et ratio (Faith and Reason). The document sketches a useful history of the relationship of faith and reason; its teachings reaffirm St Augustine’s formulations. It emphasizes the indispensability of both faith and reason, which it calls the “two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” Faith held simply and without the exercise of reason is condemned and “runs the grave risk of withering into myth and superstition.” Fideism (blind faith over reason) and biblicism (reliance on biblical texts alone) are explicitly rejected. Conversely, unaided human reason is unable to attain or prove the ultimate truths of existence. The faith statements that run most strongly throughout the document are not specific dogmas of Christianity but, rather, that human life has “meaning” and that “there exists an eternal and transcendent truth.” These two faith statements are designed as guides to the exercise of reason. As a result, certain recent philosophical currents are criticised, including radical relativism, nihilism, and scientism. As regards science, warning is given that scientific studies uninspired by a higher meaning risk devolving into trivial means of material production or of other abuses. Science thus becomes ancilla to minor needs, questionable desires and insatiable wants.