Is Faith Irrational?

Fr. James Martin offers a short opinion in the International Herald Tribune on the reasonableness of faith. Here's an excerpt.

But the problem with the atheist's argument is its premise. Why should we believe that anything our reason cannot grasp does not exist?

To me, this seems arrogant. Just because the human mind cannot fully "apprehend" God, to use Aristotle's words, or there is no rational explanation for suffering, does not mean that God does not exist. Besides, on the level of personal experience beyond the rational - that is, emotions, insights, desires, longings, and interior peace - there are plenty of "proofs" for God. You can't prove love either, but it still exists.

So the next time someone tells you that being religious means checking your brain at the door, remind them of religion's fundamental place in Western learning. Remind them that the very logic that they treasure wouldn't even be around if it weren't for those medieval monks. Or remind them that theology is fides quaerens intellectum. At the very least, you'll seem smart for knowing some Latin.

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Certainty

My favorite part of my Traces magazine is always the first section, the text from Fr. Giussani, the late founder of the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. But over the last six months, I have been holding on to these articles more tightly. It came about because, during a difficult time, I found the answers to my questions on those pages. But I also found it too easy to lose track of these lucid answers without returning over and over to them. Simply, I found certainty in my situation from these teachings of Fr. Giussani.

Who ever talks about certainty in matters of faith? We hear about morality, charity, forgiveness, important things. But it's rare that anyone, from the pulpit or elsewhere, addresses the issue of faith and certainty. If there's anything characteristic of our times, it's skepticism and uncertainty. You can't be sure of anyone; you can only count on yourself. Faith is a nice addition to life, if you go in for that sort of thing. But it's completely subjective and personal. Pope Benedict's challenge at Regensburg went right to the heart of our uncertainty which comes from an anemic faith severed from reason.

The most recent month's article by Fr. Giussani is titled "Being Certain of a Few Great Things." The certainty he talks about is one which overcomes every circumstance and leaves one with true gladness. Instead of reacting to issues in a critical, fearful way, as we Christians tend to do from the trenches, with certainty, life is faced with creativity, in a new way.

“We have to become poorer,” using this word in a truly Christian way, going to the core of its value. Poorer… What does “poorer” mean? Do you remember what he said? “Being certain of a few great things.” The poor man is he who is certain of a few great things, so that–certain of a few great things–he builds the cathedral and lives in a hovel, a hundred thousand times more a man than those whose ultimate horizon is a totally comfortable apartment and then, if that desire is fulfilled, goes so far as to give an offering for the Church. Poor: certain of a few great things. Why does poverty mean being certain? Because certainty means abandoning oneself, overcoming oneself; it means that I am tiny, nothing, and that the true and great thing is an Other; this is poverty. This is the poverty that makes us full and free, that makes us active and vital, because the law of man, the stable dynamism of the natural mechanism that is called man, is love, and love is the affirmation of something else as the meaning of oneself. For this reason, it’s not easy to find people among us who are certain because there still isn’t poverty among us. Poverty, in fact, is a very adult conquest. […]

This is a poverty which removes fear and thrives on trust. It is one which acknowledges that Christ is greater than everything, including my weakness and my circumstances. Fr. Giussani states that, "[W]e all say `Christ', but it's as if this Christ didn't exist." This is the way we often live, and the culture around us suffocates us with the lie of not acknowledging this greatest certainty. Because, as the Psalm says so lucidly and beautifully, "Your love is better than life."

I read and reread this so that I will begin to know it and to start looking at everything from the point of view of this certainty in Christ. The victory is His, now.

To Shed Light on the Truth about Man

Pope Benedict addressed university professors recently to meet the challenge of the marginalization of faith from the use of reason to address human problems.

Christianity must not be relegated to the world of myth and emotion, but respected for its claim to shed light on the truth about man, to be able to transform men and women spiritually, and thus to enable them to carry out their vocation in history.

Dialogue with a Muslim Friend

In the January issue of Traces, a booklet was included titled Broadening Reason. One instance of that dialogue the the Pope called for in his famous Regensburg address happened in Milan on October 26, 2006. Two fascinating talks are offered there, one by Wael Farouq, Professor of Arabic Language and Philosophy in Cairo, as well as the response by Fr. Julian Carron, Professor of Theology and President of Communion and Liberation. A summary of this event is available online.

The occasion was an introduction to Fr. Giussani's book The Religious Sense in Arabic translation. Farouq discussed the importance of experience in knowledge and started his talk with the point that friendship is a way to understanding. The "religious man", Farouq said, is different for Fr. Giussani because he is not one "who shows off his morality or who lives in a heaven far removed from the reality of this world." This is what Farouq experienced with friends at the Meeting in Rimini.

That experience of friendship challenged him to face the problem of the Pope's lecture at Regensburg in a different way. Instead of succumbing to prejudice, he decided to "enter directly into a reasonable and critical relationship with this reality and this lecture."

Farouq searched his own Islamic tradition to find resonance with this reasonableness of religion. He quoted the philosopher Al-Kindi (801-873):

Those who they who have gone away from Truth. They nourish an enmity for philosophers so as to defend the false roles they have taken on without deserving them, only in order to stand out and to make 'commercial use' of [exploit] religion, while they are without religion. Because whoever would make commercial use of something would be selling it, and whoever would sell something, then it would not be his. And whoever exploits religion has no religion. It is right to discredit from faith whomever sets things in opposition to true science, calling [science] unbelief.

A final section is very interesting and discusses the difference in the conception of Arab reason as opposed to the European. Farouq points out that agricultural communities place a strong emphasis on "place". For the nomads, however, belonging is attached instead to the tribe. Words that would indicate a fixed location in Western societies instead suggest a passage for the Arabic mind. Memory becomes the "instrument and container of knowledge". Whereas for the West morality comes from knowledge, for Arabic reason, morality is conserved in memory and knowledge comes from that tradition of values. He explained:

[T]he function of reason would be to prevent man from committing evil and to incite him to do good. In this context, the summit of art is poetry; the art of the voice (which is also a movement in time), and the society's memory.

The booklet is well worth the $3.00, plus you get the current issue of the magazine Traces. For a copy, write to: The Human Adventure Corporation, 420 Lexington Ave. #2754/55, New York, NY 10170; ask for Traces 2007 No. 1.