Tag: faith

The dialect of faith

Language

1471 words, 7 min read

At the beginning of this year, pope Francis baptised 34 babies in the Sistine Chapel and afterwards addressed their parents with the following opening line: “There is just one thing I want to tell you, something that is up to you: the transmission of the Faith can only be done in “dialect”, in the “language” of the family, the “dialect” or “language” used by the father and mother, the grandfather and grandmother.”

I immediately liked the way Francis framed the question of how faith is transmitted – a topic that has been, and in many cases still is, fraught with difficulty and plagued by pathological perversions like proselytism – and thought that his likening it first to language and then to dialect was a stroke of genius. Also, I couldn’t help but hear “language” in my own “dialect”, which, naturally, speaks with a Viennese accent and thinks in the categories of the later Wittgenstein. I couldn’t help but think about his concept of the language-game (“Sprachspiel”), its setting in an infantile context and its complete rootedness in participativeness, self-othering and community, all of which fit Francis’ intentions like a glove.

More recently I have been thinking about what this dialect of faith is like that has been passed to me in the games my family played when I was a kid, which is what I’d like to reflect on in this post.

For a start, a bit of context: I grew up in a communist country, in a family that was deeply involved in the life of the underground Catholic Church. This gave its dialect a distinctly edgy and adventurous twang. My mum and dad took great risks for the sake of the language game of faith, which made progress the more rewarding and the stakes scarily high. As is the case with most kids though, my siblings and I were, thankfully, not fully aware of the dangers at the time. Our parents took us to events organised by a then very young movement in the Church, whose activities – like any other non-commumist-party-organized group activities at the time – were wholly illegal. This lead to the need for elaborate ruses, like pretending that it was someone’s birthday (and everyone knowing whose birthday it is supposed to be in case the police arrived) when the actual purpose of a gathering was to read the Gospel, share experiences of putting it into practice and encourage each other in doing so even under the extreme circumstances at the time.

Not only did we participate in such events, but my dad deliberately built our house to allow for large meetings to take place there. Our living room has always seemed excessively large to me, until I discovered that my dad built it (no, not “had it built”, “built it”) with a floor especially reinforced to hold the groups of 60+ people who often met there. Looking back, this was made even more reckless and dangerous given who our neighbour was – a veteran and hero of the communist resistance army from WWII and a zealous party member, who could have denounced us to the secret police in a heartbeat.

Miraculously, my dad at one point got a job in a neighbouring, non-communist country – an event reserved for the very few and only for the party faithful. My dad getting the job with all he was doing in secret and with his brother being a priest was baffling and lead to even greater risks. My mum and dad immediately saw this as an opportunity for serving the underground community they were part of by connecting it to its members on the other side of the Iron Curtain. They regularly smuggled books and audio recordings across the border for which they would have been sent to prison. One of my most vivid memories from that period is crossing the border, which was quite an elaborate game! You’d first get stopped some miles from the border itself at a barrier with armed soldiers, who would check your papers, telephone the border post and after what seemed like half an eternity, raise the barrier and let you enter the barren no man’s land behind the barbed wire fence – a stretch of land dotted with guard towers. At the border, papers would be checked again, questions would be asked, the underside of the car would be inspected with mirrors and dogs would put their olfactory senses to official use. Our parents always told us to not answer any questions whatsoever – just to say we don’t know and say that they, our parents, would answer. We, kids, found this rather odd and asked: “What if they ask my name?”. Sometimes the game at the border involved having the car practically disassembled – seats being unbolted and removed, knives being stuck into any food we were carrying to make sure they didn’t contain the seeds of the communist regime’s destruction.

At the same time those “seeds”, sought so diligently by the communist regime were there, for everyone to be seen in plain sight: my dad’s constant kindness and politeness when dealing with the border guards. Over the years he’d learn their names, strike up conversations and do precisely what the game of our Christian faith was all about: to love all like Jesus loved us. This, in fact is the first and most persistent rule of the dialect that was spoken in our home.

What sticks most vividly in my mind here are the first minutes of pretty much any car journey we took from home. No matter where we were going, whom we were going to visit or what errand needed to be run, by the time we go to the bottom of the hill my mum and dad’s house is on, my dad would – following the implicit rules of our game – ask: “Why are we going to [visit X / do Y / or travel to Z]?” And we, who played the game well too, would answer – sometimes enthusiastically, at other times out of a sense of obligation – “To love whomever we meet there!” It didn’t matter what were about to do, this “handshake” was a tuning of our instruments, a directing of our minds and wills towards the good of those we were going to encounter.

Now, for the game to be effective the “rules” had to be practiced and their application had to be demonstrated. And there was no shortage here! My dad would give his hat and gloves to a man guarding a car park in the middle of winter (and winter where I come from is winter indeed, with temperatures down to -20°C), would let a homeless man stay in our basement, providing him with clothes and food too; my mum would visit sick friends or acquaintances in hospital, cooking the most delicious meals for them and care for them at times when others could or would not visit them. My parents would be the ones there at the ends of their lives. Our house was always a cross-roads of people staying for shorter or longer periods, coming for advice and support (including a student whose priestly vocation was sustained by my dad during his military service and who is now a bishop), not to mention the hundreds of people over the years for whom my dad helped find work, a service so central to what it is to be human, as Pope Francis frequently emphasises.

Like all good games, the one we were taught was not a walk in the park or even just a challenge that took hard work but where the rewards were sure to follow. There was plenty of misunderstanding, clashes of personalities and even downright slander and ill will. A painful example here has been the expulsion of my dad from the heart of very community for which he risked his and his family’s freedom during the communist regime and to which he gave so much over many decades. Yet, this was also an opportunity for him to show us, his kids, how the game of the Gospel is played, with what dialect it is spoken in our family. In spite of the injustice done to him, he never turned on those responsible for it and has instead been both on the look-out for continuing to participate, albeit at the periphery, and supportive of us – his children – to continue being involved in it.

Thinking about my childhood, but also my adult life, I can see clearly how it is the Gospel that my mum and dad have made the language, the dialect of their family. The Gospel, where God’s self-noughting, self-othering love draws humanity into itself and where humanity, like a child, giddy with enthusiasm at times, nursing its wounds at others, learns and re-learns to take wobbly steps towards its family, the Trinity.

Reason in Faith: God’s exile of love in the world

Emmaus4

1592 words, 8 min read

The questions of how faith and reason relate to each other and to reality are of central importance in contemporary dialogue, and while I have previously focused on this topic with the desire to either make religious thought accessible to a non-religious reader or vice versa, I would here like to share a view “from inside”, a view that is deeply embedded in Christianity. I will do this by providing an English translation of a few passages from a book I have just read, in which the great Christian philosopher, Giuseppe Maria Zanghí, gives an account of his personal journey through philosophy. It is an account that is profoundly internal to its author, whose roots as a poet give the narrative both a mesmerizing beauty and, at times, call for his words to be be wrestled with repeatedly, putting us in the position of Jacob’s encounter with the angel (Genesis 32:22-33). Even if the result is defeat, and a hip injury, I believe that Zanghí’s words will leave us with an inner conviction that then allows for free, universal dialogue with all.

Zanghí, who in his youth met and then throughout his life followed Chiara Lubich, recounts this foundational piece of advice early on in the book:

“It was Chiara who […] made me pay attention to all expressions of human enquiry, because, she told me, each of them had been, is in love with the truth and in one way or another had, has touched it. In all there is a patrimony of suffering, invocation, anticipation, which must be respected with humble attention and strong participation. “You have to learn from everyone,” she said, “so that you may draw near to all with love.””

It is with this conviction, that behind all human enquiry there is a desire for truth and that all human enquiry also arrives at some truth, that its various forms can be approached with humility and be candidates for participation.

In this context, Zanghí understands our engaging with reality as:

“a unitary discourse set in a reality that is wholly given as God-Love’s word of love. An intuitive discourse, in which a face of reality, infinite in its original source that is the Word of God, opens itself up rationally and thereby offers itself to our weakness, to be reached in its entirety by the unity of knowledge that is wisdom.”

Since the above is a highly concentrated expression of what engaging with reality consists in, Zanghí proceeds to spell out what he means and anchors thought in Jesus’ forsakenness on the cross (pp. 26-27):

“The philosopher’s1 approach to reality does not presuppose a previous mathematical approach (as Plato wanted): it captures, in one go, an aspect of reality in which reality speaks-gives itself all-in-a-piece. To the philosopher (like the mathematician, physicist, artist), in their “innocence”, reality gives herself wholly, without mediation through other kinds of knowledge, but she presents herself with a face that expresses all of her concealed in her entirety.

Every field of knowledge grasps all that is real, but reality is given to it in a way that hides while revealing.

And here the fulfillment of Jesus’ question – the commandment of mutual love (John 15:12-17) – opens itself to the thinker (and the artist). Because it is in the actuality of this that the one reality can be approached by a perichoresis of different kinds of knowledge, in a circular dance of knowledge, that is light and in tune with the profound harmony of God. Each kind of knowledge is custodian of its approach to reality; reality that unfolds fully in the mutual embrace of the different kinds of knowledge, an embrace in which individual thinkers will be lead to stripping themselves of their own approaches, making them gifts for the others. To receive as a gift the real in its entirety, that transcends individual kinds of knowledge.

Jesus forsaken is always the teacher: being and non-being. Knowing how to face the “emptiness” that follows the true gift, “losing” one’s own knowledge out of love in the attentive listening to the other, joined in their knowledge by my knowledge, mine and no longer mine, and waiting for their gift of a response in which I find again my knowledge made more complete by theirs. Without making their knowledge pass through the maze, the grating of my knowledge, that would result in me being joined by none other than myself.

In this communion one can, in some way, catch, in the faces of reality through which it is reached by our knowledge, the one face that it speaks and does not speak, to reveal itself to our reciprocal love. Catching the face of the triune God, of Trinitarian perichoresis, that speaks itself while hiding in realities and opens itself in their communion.”

What Zanghí presents here in highly dense and poetic language is an understanding of reality, knowledge and God that is unlocked by what Jesus revealed about the Trinity, and therefore love, in his abandonment on the cross. Since love is about loving in a way that requires a total self-giving, to the point of becoming empty, and about being loved, where my emptiness is filled by the other’s total gift, and since the God whose very life is such love is the source of reality, it too can only be grasped in that same dynamic of love, and knowledge too follows the logic of self-giving to an empty recipient. As a result, reality (spoken by God) makes itself known to our mutual self-giving. Knowledge is received when we empty ourselves and offer ourselves as gifts to each other. In such a world, dialogue is fundamental, since it is the space where knowledge is received as gift. It becomes the privileged locus of understanding and participating in reality and the lives of others, rather than being a mere PR exercise or an attempt at influencing others and changing their minds.

With the above world-view, let’s finally turn to Zanghí’s reflection on faith and reason (pp. 38-39):

“Faith and reason are not two ways of knowing. Faith without reason would remain blind, suspended in emptiness. Reason without faith would remain unfulfilled desire. They would remain one outside the other, one foreign to the other, ripping man apart.

And reason could never offer its light, out of love, to penetrating in faith the mystery of God and as far as possible to opening his riches to a creature, allowing itself to be lead to the pinnacle of its power, and immersing in those riches the created realities. Reason, without faith, would remain folded in mortifying impotence.

And faith could not let penetrate to the heart of man the light of God who is God in his loving self-offering to the efforts of the creature – efforts which, moreover, are provoked by that very light. The promise of knowing in the way in which it is known (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:12) would remain unfulfilled, the order of created things would not be illuminated by the divine Order, by the Trinity, but would have to give itself a poor and unsatisfactory foundation and unfolding.

We must unite the divine that is offered in faith immersed as “form” in reason, and the human that is open in reason, pulled to himself by God, in faith for being filled with light. Without confusion and without separation.

For me it has been a beautiful experience to follow the rush of reason unfettered by cultural blocks, to the point of feeling it welcomed by God, who responds to it in faith, in a perichoresis, still on a journey, of the divine and the human.

Faith, due to one of its aspects, is, in some way, reason itself being led by God, in the ecstasy of cognitive love, outside itself, remaining itself but permeated by Christ.

Reason in faith is, in some way, the voice of God in its exile of love in the world.

Reason is the material offered to God who gives it human-divine form in faith.

Reason as the seal of divine love that participates in man, as a creature, his Logos.

Faith as the tenderness of God-Love for his creature, whom He does not want to burn with His divine power but lead, respecting it in its creaturely weakness, in a consuming embrace in which the creature, while entering the searing heart-mind of God, must remain herself.

Faith, in short, as a moment of mediation between that which I can here, as a man, know of God through the Revelation of God, and that which I will then know of God in God’s own way, no longer mediated through faith. Remaining man, like Jesus at the right hand of the Father is always the man of Nazareth.”

What strikes me as I re-read these passages for at least the tenth time is that clear both-and instead of an either-or that Zanghí establishes between faith and reason. On the one hand, the picture he presents can be seen as showing reason as supreme, since faith only plays a temporary role, as tender protection against the overwhelming power of God and therefore as a means for preserving our identity in the face of God. On the other hand, his words can also be heard as exalting faith above reason, since faith is reason transfigured, Christified, an expression of God’s love.

1 I will render Zanghí’s “metafisico” as “philosopher” even though it might be more correct – but arguably more cumbersome – to say “metaphysician”.

Ravasi: art and faith – the invisible in the visible

2 Lucio Fontana Conceito espacial 1968

Today I’d like to bring you my, rough English translation of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi’s 2011 talk, entitled: “The invisible in the visible: art and faith,” which has given me great joy and which I hope will delight you too:

The title of this talk, “The invisible in the visible: art and faith”, points spontaneously to two great painters of the last century. On the one hand Paul Klee and on the other Joan Miró, who in different ways, but with the same substance, have declared that art does not represent the visible, but the invisible that is in the visible. […]

For Vasari, the holy and the beautiful, holiness and beauty, intertwine. Not as extrinsic realities, but almost as if they were, among themselves, sisters. So, in a certain sense we can say, and I would like to demonstrate only […] this sisterhood between art and faith. […]

As a premise, we know that a single expression is used, curiously, to indicate two realities that are similar, but that are also profoundly different. Isn’t it true that one speaks about the inspiration of the Scriptures, of the word of God? The word of the Scriptures is inspired. And doesn’t this same expression also get used to speak about artistic inspiration? It can therefore be seen that both faith and art, the witness of the divine word and of the human word, have inside them a seed of eternity. A seed of the infinite. A dimension that precedes them and that exceeds them, that surpasses them.

The artist, in a certain sense like the prophet, has inside them a voice that comes from the beyond and the other. And Beyond and Other need to be written with capital letters. The invisible that is in the visible.

It is interesting to note that, e.g., in the Scriptures, chapter 35 of Exodus speaks about Bezalel, who is an artisan, an artist, who built the ark and the mobile temple of the desert that the Hebrews carried with them. Having left the drama of their enslavement in Egypt behind, they carry with them a mobile temple. So, what is said about this artist is that he was filled with the spirit of God (cf. Exodus 35:30-31), exactly like a prophet.

And think about how in the first book of Chronicles, in chapter 25 […] musicians are mentioned, the singers in the temple. It is said that they were inspired by God. And do you know what Hebrew expression is used? Navi – the same one as used for prophets (cf. 1 Chronicles 25:1). Prophets and musicians are almost the same reality, infused by the spirit of God.

This is why speaking about art and faith isn’t speaking about two external realities. Unfortunately, however, as we know well, a divorce has been consummated and art and faith do not walk together anymore. Therefore we must struggle to rediscover [..] the harmony that is beneficial for art, precious for art, so that it no longer has to lose itself in the vague, the inconsistent, the banal, and may rediscover the great narratives, the great symbols, the great themes, the great challenges: the invisible. On the other hand it is beneficial for faith because we must say “God” in a beautiful way, as the Bible says in Psalm 47: “sing to God with art!”1

My reflection […] is linked to two movements that revolve around a single symbol. A symbol that, I have to say, is a bit strange and that might puzzle you. […] I take this symbol from a phrase of the then-Cardinal Ratzinger, from one of his articles on faith and art. He wrote the following words, in which you will see the symbol that I’ll then use: “Beauty wounds, and by doing so reminds the person of their ultimate destiny.” Hence, beauty, art as a wound. And we will see that faith too is a wound.

So, let’s start with this theme: the wound. The wound makes us bleed. The wound unsettles, torments. It doesn’t let you sleep. It is a plague. Hence, art, like faith, have this scope. To make you tremble.

What is the great illness of our times? […] Indifference, superficiality, banality. The French Catholic writer, Bernanos, in one of his novels […] – The Impostor, tells the story of a priest – Fr. Cenabre – who loses his faith and becomes an atheist. He writes: “There is a fundamental difference between emptiness and absence. Emptiness is nothing, a lack of substance. Absence is not a nothing.” When I go home, to my sisters, in the north, in Milan, we still have the two empty chairs of my dad and my mother. They are apparently empty. But, in reality, they aren’t. They are an absence. An absence that, in this case, is filled with memories, and for the believer also with another type of presence, by a nostalgia. Our times have lost the absence of God, the nostalgia for great values. These are empty times, lacking substance.

Some of you will know the great painter, Braque, friend of Picasso, cubist, who then also went beyond cubism, and so on, and who died in 1963. And Braque said this phrase, which is not entirely true, but that has its meaning: “Art is made to disturb, science to reassure.” Technology. We are children of technology. Technology will solve all your problems. Don’t ever ask yourselves the great questions.

This is why we must return greatness to art. When I speak about art I don’t only have figurative arts in mind – sculpture, painting, etc. – I speak about art in general, with all of its thousand manifestations that pass from literature through music to photography to the cinema. We have a need for returning to, rediscovering this restlessness.

[…] Henry Miller, who as a profoundly anti-christian writer, even a scandalous one at a certain moment, wrote a book entitled “The wisdom of the heart.” And in that work there is the following paradoxical phrase on which we must meditate: “Art, like faith, is good for nothing, other than to give you the meaning of life.”

You see, if you have to look for food, for the immediate, are chasing fashions, you have no need for art. On the contrary! Poetry. What’s it for? Hölderlin wrote an entire poem: “Wozu Dichter?” [“Why poets?”] Apparently they are good for nothing. But, like faith, they point you to the meaning of life.

That is why we need this wound, this restlessness, in a time that is so superficial, in which we are dragged along, in which we have passed from immorality, which means that we are at least aware of it, to amorality, total indifference. […]

The wound keeps you awake. And it therefore keeps you continuously looking. So, there is another element that associates art and faith in this context of the wound. Wonder. When you are in front of a work of art, that work of art isn’t to be explained, to tell the truth. You can say something about its origin, about the image it depicts, about something. But, you have to, in the end, if you want to enter in harmony with it, succeed in establish a bond of wonder, of contemplation, as is indeed the case with faith. Yes, there is need for reason, but in the end, art is an intuition, something that dazzles you.

The poet, Ezra Pound, said:2 “Do you perhaps explain the charm of an April wind? Do you perhaps explain the luminous beauty of one of Plato’s thoughts? Do you perhaps explain the unexpected beauty that you perceive in a woman’s face?” They don’t have explanations. You discover them, unexpectedly. They are an epiphany. So, we still need clear eyes. Eyes that has been dirtied by so many images of extreme vulgarity and superficiality and violence … We need to regain the eye of a child that is filled with wonder when faced with the marvels of being and of human creatures. In front of the marvels of the divine. This is why faith and art are like each other.

The English writer […] Chesterton, wrote these words: “The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world.” And he continued: “The world will never starve for want of wonders; […] There are plenty of them, I assure you […], but only for want of wonder.” Because it is no longer able to contemplate, to look, to go beyond the skin, the surface of things.”

This was my first reflection, the simpler one, the second one is a little more complex, also because I would like to enter the theme in a more profound way.

Art and faith as wound, as we have said, that generates restlessness, that makes you tremble, that looks for something that isn’t there in our times anymore: the question about the meaning of what you do, who you are, of what is.

In the second reflection I will take that same symbol of the wound [“ferita”] that in Italian has another word that derives from it: “slit” [“feritoia”].3 So, I would say that art, like faith, is a slit through which the absolute, the transcendent, mystery can be accessed. I would, therefore, like to invite you now to look for where these slits are so that we may discover a mystery, something that exceeds us, that transcends us, which is what true art and great, authentic faith need to do. I would, in this regard, like to put forward five ways, which in the end justify the fact that there exists a religion like the Christian one, which is the celebration of art.

Let’s start from a Biblical text what, paradoxically, begins with a negation of art. You remember the first commandment of the decalogue, the great, so called aniconic commandment, i.e., that wipes out images: “You shall not make for yourself an idol or a likeness of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth” (Exodus 20:4). Avert your eyes from the golden calf! Sure, it is idols that are condemned here, but then you know that during the course of history some have taken this by the letter, and have drowned art. Think of Islam which, for some time already is moving in this direction. God must never be represented, and human beings neither, because there is always this risk of idolatry. […] It is not for nothing that at a certain moment Protestantism has exalted music in a particular way. Bach was a protestant. Schütz was a protestant. Pachelbel – protestant. Then there is Handel. A whole line that goes towards music, towards its sound that is extraordinarily potent in speaking to us about the eternal and the infinite, while avoiding recourse to images. Why is it then that Christianity has instead, over the centuries, returned to and celebrated the image.

Overcoming this silence, the silence of the images of art therefore, has been done in certain ways, which I would now like to evoke because they are ways in which the famous slit appears.

In parenthesis, regarding slits, I would like to tell you something that you may not have heard before. […] You all know a great painter, who was important in the last century: Lucio Fontana. I knew his widow, and I know many of his works since I am from Milan and he was from Milan too. Why is Fontana famous? Because, at a certain moment, he made that famous gash in a canvas. He painted it and slashed it. And do you know that when others asked: “But why?,” critics elaborated complicated discourses to explain it. But when they asked the artist himself, he responded with a phrase that is almost the formulation of the thesis of this second movement. He replied: “For me, this cut is a glimmer of the absolute, of the infinite.” It is almost a going beyond the canvas, beyond matter, to look for depth, for the secret.

First of all there is a place where the Bible sees a slit opening towards the infinite, the eternal, the divine. And this reality, a reality that is fundamental also, e.g., for literature, is the word. If you look closely, God, precisely because images are forbidden, is presented in the beginning of the first line of the Bible using this expression: “God said: Let there be light, and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3). The silence of nothingness is slashed by a word. Also, how does the New Testament begin? Ideally, with the prologue of John: “In the beginning was the Word.” (John 1:1). Absolute primacy.

When Moses, and maybe you have never heard this phrase, because it is from a book that is read little, speaks in Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible, in its fourth chapter, verse 12. When in Deuteronomy Moses describes the entire experience of Sinai, of what the Hebrews have experiences up there, once they were back down in the valley. Moses says: “Then the LORD spoke to you from the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of the words, but saw no form; there was only a voice.” (Deuteronomy 4:12) God is a voice. He is a word that creates, that saves, that liberates. So, the first place where we find a slit: the word. It is not for nothing that the Bible is at the center of our faith. It is a word. And this word pierces and shows you the horizon that is God.

Jesus, for example, is his word, his lips, his parables; his 32 parables, or 72 if one also includes the extended metaphors, are an expression of the power of this word. I don’t know whether you have in your minds that episode recounted in the seventh chapter of John. One day the priests of the temple decide to shut up this voice that is so annoying – Christ, so they send their police, i.e., the temple guard, and tell them to go and arrest him. These simple people go and return. But they come back with empty hands. And the priests ask: why haven’t you brought him? And their response is, in my opinion, illuminating for this first way: “Never before has anyone spoken like this one.” (cf. John 7:32-46) And the hands drop. Words can’t be imprisoned.

This is why it is important for the word, the word of God, to be at the center of our liturgy, of our lives. And it is important for art, for poetry for example, to continue to exist, to open this slit onto the infinite.

The second element, and I will do this one more quickly, because in a certain sense I have already called it out. The second place, the second slit is the cosmos, nature. Nature that is seen as a decipherable element, not as an accumulation either of cells or of matter. There is a phrase in the book of Wisdom (13:5), that is important. It says: “For from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen.” Analogos in Greek means a ladder – rung by rung. So, you see: this experience is to be had in nature. This is why art so often starts from nature. Not to represent her as such but to manage and create landscapes of the soul. All the great scenes of nature that are in the backdrops made by great artists are an evocation of something that speaks of harmony and that therefore speaks of beauty and of God.

Let’s think along this line about Psalm 19. Do you remember it? The song of the sun: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament proclaims the works of his hands.” (Psalms 19:2) When the Hebrews even now, today, in the synagogue celebrate what we call the feast of Pentecost, they call it Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, seven weeks after Easter, they sing a hymn that basically says this: Between heaven and earth, God has unfurled a great parchment that is nature and on it He wrote a message. We must tear a quill from a shrub to write on this parchment our response of praise: the alleluia.

So, you see this idea that in nature, in the beauty of nature, that art transfigures, there is the secret of God. A word of God that has been called the cosmic revelation, open to all. The revelation of the Bible is open to believers, that of the cosmos – the great book of the universe, as Galileo said.

The third way is a way that is particularly significant and that, in the context of art, has a particular meaning, but that we’ll base on a phrase of the Bible that is usually interpreted in a completely different way, which is not the correct reading of the text. It is an extremely famous expression. But, first, let’s start with saying what this way is. It is that way that in this moment allows you to communicate also beyond words. It is the way of faces. Faces. We know that communication happens through faces. They aren’t planes, surfaces. They are signals. Think, e.g., of two people in love. When they have exhausted all words, and if they are truly in love, what do they do? They look into each other’s eyes. This, looking each other in the eyes, is not merely about seeing the pupils of the other. It is, instead, a language. As Pascal said: “In faith, as in love, silences are far more eloquent than words.” A communion of faces.

In the Bible there is this phrase, in Genesis 1:27, that says: “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them.” Here we have that fundamental law of Eastern languages, that is the Biblical one, of parallelism. Things get repeated so that they may leave more of a mark in one’s attention, or also to explain them. “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them.” And then it continues and explains what the image is, what is it that corresponds to the image. “[I]n the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” So, the image, the statue that looks most like God, what is it? The Patristic tradition, the tradition influenced by the Greeks, responded that it is our soul. But the Bible doesn’t say that. What’s more, the Bible speaks about the soul in an altogether different way. The Bible considers the human being in its fullness.

So, what would it be instead? Is it that God is both male and female? Evidently not. The Bible has continuously fought against a sexist concept of the divine, as the nations who surrounded it had and that the Bible condemned. Peoples who, for example, believed that when there was a storm it was the orgasm of a male and a female god and the rain was the seed, the fertile seed of the god who thereby fertilized nature. And the cracked earth was like a womb that received the seed of the god. The Bible rejected this type of concept and continues to consider it an idolatry. So, what would this image of God be like? And here the slit can be seen in the faces of man and woman, the male and the female, through which we see God. And the answer is obvious because as Genesis unfolds, the history of salvation is built on generations. What this means is that that which represents God most for us are man and woman in their capacity to give live. If you will, their capacity to love. So, this is why the human figure of the male and female saint becomes so fundamental, because at the heart of this reality, which is that of the human person in their generative capacity, in their capacity to give live, is the reflection of the Creator Himself. Creation continues precisely because man and woman continue to generate and generation in man and woman is born of a wellspring of love. So, this is the third way, a slit open onto the divine.

Number four. And here we arrive at another face, a fundamental face, that is at the center of all of our churches. A face that also dominates artistic tradition, but above all it also dominates faith. It is the face of Christ. Colossians 1:15. What does Paul say? “[Christ] is the image of the invisible God.” God has His image in Christ and it is a carnal image. And it is because of this that when the temptation comes, which is the temptation of iconoclasm that I referred to before, that negates the possibility of art, artists and theologians like St. John Damascene continue to repeat: if we negate images, we also negate the incarnation. We negate that God has made himself visible in a face. And it is because of this that the face of Christ is a face that is repeated infinitely many times. And it is because of this that St. John Damascene encouraged the following experience: […] “If a pagan comes to you and ask you: “How is your faith? What is your faith?,” don’t answer them. Take them by the hand, lead them into a church and show them the paintings, the images.” You see, God is in the image of Christ that reflects the divine, that reflects the mystery, the transcendent.

In some cases though, and I wouldn’s say always, since we are starting to revive the sisterhood between art and faith, but in some contemporary, modern churches it is better not to bring pagans, atheists since they would completely lose their faith. […]

The fifth and last way that I would like to recall is the way of the liturgy. The liturgy is the place where […] music succeeds in passing through hearts. Therefore it is necessary ceaselessly to return to the beauty of temples, of art, where the liturgy is celebrated, to a proclamation of the word in a beautiful way, to song, to celebration that is a drama that has its own dignity and nobility. […] It is said that contemporary music is [inadequate] … That is not true, because in contemporary music, the music of our days, that has its own musical grammars, there is its own beauty. Think about what happened when in the 16th century, imagine being inside St. Peter’s, where before only Gregorian chant was heard. Gregorian chant is most pure in spaces like that because, thanks to the echoes that are there, it becomes a song that is enshrined and held in that space and it is a monodic song that rises up high and allows for the possibility of being welcomed by a sonorous womb. But, what happens in the 16th century? Palestrina introduces polyphony into the liturgy. Polyphony disrupts the unicity of Gregorian chant, it multiplies the voices, makes them cross each other, one above the other, it constructs new harmonies through a sequence of crossings. This must have been scandalous at the time! But then think about the masterpieces of faith that have been created thanks to it. Slits, also in this case, onto the beauty of the divine. Let’s just think of the absolute pinnacle of music, who is Bach. Or think of Palestrina’s Sicut cervus, with its absolute purity that, however, consists in a richness of voices and that celebrates a need of the divine, which is like an instinctive, physical need. Like the doe [cerva] that charges ahead towards the river bed, where it expects to find water but that is dry. And now it launches into a cry of lament, a lament of thirst … in Hebrew there is a thing that can’t be translated into our languages, because in Hebrew there is a single word – nefesh – that at the same time means throat and soul. So, when we translate: “My soul thirsts for the living God” (cf. Psalms 42:3), in Hebrew there is a joke – the throat, which indicates a need for God that is physical. So, all of this has been exalted through new music and it is because of this that I am struggling for contemporary art with its new expressions [to have its place]. Not always and only retracing the past, which, however, is the great, supreme heritage that we mustn’t forget or humiliate, we mustn’t discard it […] but we also have to be open so that the liturgy may once again become the highroad on which art and faith meet each other and walk together.

There was a very important thing in the statutes of the artists of Siena in the 14th century. In the statutes of these artists, one of the first paragraphs was this: “We, artists, have as our task to show to people who don’t know how to read the Bible the great marvels worked by God throughout history.” The artist, you see, was in the cathedrals, the great churches of the past, for a good reason. There was a Bible of stone, pages of stone, the bas-reliefs, or, instead there were pages of frescoes, or paintings, that spoke about God. The liturgy always needs to have in its interior, as Jean Guitton, the French Catholic philosopher, said – making a play on words in Latin – it needs to have at the same time mumen and lumen. Lumen, because it must be light, must be representation, must show reality straightaway in all its beauty. But, it is not just any old representation like you would have in some arbitrary building. It also must be mumen, that is mystery, which is beyond the slit.

I have presented two moments to you about this single symbol. I have concluded. We have presented, on the one hand, art and faith as wound. We need a thrill. We need to be a bit shaken. To return again to this intensity. It is always impressive to see, e.g., in great squares, and it is sad because it is often the young generations, people moving as if they were flocks. They move like that – without purpose. And they may even be next to marvelous monuments that used to speak in extraordinary ways […]. This flow, almost a drift … This is the great need of our times. To do things again so that this thrill may return.

I often quote […] a phrase from the diary of a Danish, Christian, Protestant philosopher, a strong believer, of the 19th century – Søren Kierkegaard. He spoke in the 19th century, but think how true this reality is in our days too … He said – he used this image […]: “The ship is in the hands of the cook’s mate and what the captain’s megaphone transmits is no longer the route of the ship but what we shall be eating tomorrow.”4 How many are, e.g., in front of a television, or a computer. They learn about everything. They know, they can look for everything. But what they are lacking, and let’s return to Miller, is the route, meaning.

Once, in Florence, I was walking along with a friend of mine, whom many of you know – one of the greatest poets of the last century: Mario Luzi […], and he – it was an afternoon or maybe evening – […] said to me: “Look,” the lights in the windows were coming on in the houses and in the flats you could literally see in almost all of them the bluish rectangle of the television. And he said a phrase to me – he spoke slowly – a phrase that has always impressed me. He said: “We don’t know whether these people, who are there in front of the television, have their hands up as a sign of surrender or adoration.” Effectively this is true. In the end it tells you everything about what you’ll eat tomorrow, about all that is happening – the banal and the vulgar. It tells you all about fashions, but about the route? Here is the open wound.

On the other hand we have also wanted to evoke the need for transcendence. Art and faith that take you towards the beyond, the divine, in these different forms, these five ways that we have called out: the word, the world, the human face, the face of Christ, and finally the celebration.

And now I’ll finish and conclude with two witnesses that I would like to seal together […]. I’d like to finish with a lay voice, the voice of a writer, since we need both the voice of faith and the voice of art. He is a famous writer whose books still sell even after a long time since his death. It is the German, Herman Hesse, who is much liked also by the youth. The author of Siddhartha, of Narcissus and Goldmund. He once wrote a historical novel that has two artistic protagonists already in its title: Klein und Wagner. So, on the one hand figurative art and on the other music. And at the end he says, he explains what art is. And, look, he wasn’t a particularly strong believer. He did have his own spirituality in his own way, imbued with oriental elements. And this is the definition he writes: “Art means: seeing God in everything.”5 The slit. Seeing God in everything.

But, I would like to conclude with the voice of believers, a choral voice, and I’ll leave the words as they sound. There are two subjects who speak, in a choral way representing also all of us.

On 8th December 1965, the Council concludes and messages are sent, where one is also addressed to artists. Let’s hear the words of the council fathers: “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. It is beauty, like truth, which brings joy to the heart of man and is that precious fruit which resists the year and tear of time, which unites generations and makes them share things in admiration. And all of this is through your hands.” The Council has thanked artists, the true, great artists.

On the other hand there is the voice from which I have started, the voice of Benedict XVI […] who addressed artists in the Sistine Chapel and his talk finished as follows. And I too will finish with these words that speak to artists, that speak about beauty and that are spoken by a pastor, a believer, by him who continuously feels the need for art and faith to be together. So, here are his words, spoken on 21 November 2009: “You are the custodians of beauty: thanks to your talent, you have the opportunity to speak to the heart of humanity, to touch individual and collective sensibilities, to call forth dreams and hopes, to broaden the horizons of knowledge and of human engagement. Be grateful, then, for the gifts you have received and be fully conscious of your great responsibility to communicate beauty, to communicate in and through beauty! Through your art, you yourselves are to be heralds and witnesses of hope for humanity! And do not be afraid to approach the first and last source of beauty, to enter into dialogue with believers, with those who, like yourselves, consider that they are pilgrims in this world and in history towards infinite Beauty! Faith takes nothing away from your genius or your art: on the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them, it encourages them to cross the threshold and to contemplate with fascination and emotion the ultimate and definitive goal, the sun that does not set, the sun that illumines this present moment and makes it beautiful.”

Thank you.

1 Note that this is a verbatim translation of the Italian rendering of the end of Psalm 47:8, the term “art” does not appear in most English ones. The New American Bible simply says “sing praise”, while the King James Bible, which – in this case – comes closest to the Italian that Ravasi uses, renders that phrase as “sing ye praises with understanding.”
2 This probably refers to the following passage from Pound’s The Serious Artist:“You don’t argue about an April wind, you feel bucked up when you meet it. You feel bucked up when you come on a swift moving thought in Plato or on a fine line in a statue.”
3 “Feritoia” in Italian can refer to a narrow slit or opening, e.g., in a wall that can can let light in, or an arrow loop through which archers can shoot out of a fortress’ walls.
4 It looks like this refers to the following entry in Kierkegaard’s diary from 24th January 1847: “Suppose there is only one megaphone on a ship and the cook’s mate has appropriated it, an act that all regarded as appropriate. Everything the cook’s mate to has to communicate (“Some butter on the spinach” or “Fine weather today” or “God knows if there’s something wrong below in the ship” etc.) is communicated through the megaphone, but the captain has to give his commands solely by means of his voice, for what the captain has to say is not so important. Yes, the captain finally has to ask the cook’s mate to help him so that he can be heard, if the cook’s mate would be no good as to “report” the order, which, it must be admitted, sometimes gets completely garbled in going through the cook’s mate and his megaphone, in which case the captain strains his little voice in vain, for the cook and his megaphone are heard. Finally the cook’s mate gets control, because he has the megaphone.”
5 Incidentally Benedict XVI quotes that same definition in his address to artists two years earlier.

Sin and faith: the gift of Christian identity

Ged quinn felix culpa s

A couple of weeks ago, Cardinal Walter Kasper gave an interview to EWTN during which he displayed great patience in the face of persistently being misunderstood (or willfully misrepresented?) by his interviewer. Why do I bring this up? Because, in the course of that interview, in a moment of exasperation, Cardinal Kasper presented the following, beautiful synthesis of how the Church needs to be a sacrament – i.e., sign and instrument – of mercy, which he derived from Jesus’ self-sacrifice having been in response to a rejection by his people:

“[M]arriage is an icon, an image of the alliance of God with his people. And notice that in Holy Scripture, how often the people of God abandoned him … And also Jesus was rejected by his people. He substituted himself [for them], went to the cross, g[a]ve them a chance. And before he went on Easter Eve he […] gave the Church, his apostles, the authority to forgive or not to forgive, to bind and to loose [cf. Matthew 18:18]. And all this, this is also a sign of mercy. It is not only the category of human justice you can apply here. You must, the Church must, act according to the action of God and God’s mercy, and the Church is sacrament of mercy. It means sign and instrument of the mercy of God. That’s our Catholic understanding of the Church. And if God gives, acts in this way, the Church can do it also.”

That Jesus gave his disciples the authority both to impose and abolish what the Church is to do and not do, to believe and not believe, to denounce and to value, is not just a turn of phrase to illustrate the completeness of passing “power of attorney” to His followers, members of His mystical body, but an imperative to keep her teaching be a means to union with Him in every present moment. Kasper prefixing the above reminder of Matthew 18:18 with a spelling out of the fact that even at the pinnacle of His love for us, at the moment of his loving self-sacrifice, Jesus was rejected by his people, is no accident either and, to my mind, serves as a stark reminder that the goods that the Church gives access to in the name of her head are not rewards, addressed to those who fully comply with her teaching, but expressions of His gratuitous, wholly undeserved and merciful self-giving.

As I kept returning to delighting in and thinking about Cardinal Kasper’s words, Pope Francis (five days later) chose the question of Christian identity (which is implicit in Kasper’s reasoning) during a morning homily at Santa Marta. Note also that identity is a key prerequisite to dialogue for Francis.

The angle chosen by Francis that day was that “sin is part of our identity,” that we are “sinners, but sinners with faith in Jesus Christ,” and that “it is God who gives us this identity as a gift.” Saying that sin is integral to our identity – an identity given to us by God as a gift – struck me as a rather stark claim (though one that immediately made me think of the “felix culpa” of the Easter Vigil liturgy). Placing it alongside Cardinal Kasper’s thoughts, it seemed to me that it is the key to understanding not only the idea of a Christianity that needs to go out and be prepared to get hurt in the process, which Pope Francis spoke about also in Evangelii Gaudium (§49), but also to the centrality that mercy has in Francis’ teaching.

Before going any further, let’s look at Pope Francis’ words in more detail in terms of what constitutes Christian identity:1

“We too must traverse a long journey during our lives, so that this Christian identity may be strong, so that we may give witness. It is a journey which we can defined as being from ambiguity to true identity.

It’s true, there is sin, and sin makes us fall, but we have the Lord’s strength to get up and proceed with our identity. But I would also say that sin is part of our identity: we are sinners, but sinners with faith in Jesus Christ. It is not only a faith of understanding, no. It’s a faith that is a gift from God and that entered us from God. It is God himself who confirms us in Christ. And he has anointed us, he has impressed his seal in us, he has given us the down payment, the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts. It is God who gives us this gift of identity.

It is essential to be faithful to this Christian identity and to let the Holy Spirit, who is precisely the guarantee, the pledge in our hearts, to bring us forward in life. We are not people who follow a philosophy; we are anointed and have the guarantee of the Spirit.

Ours is a beautiful identity that shows itself in witness. It is because of this that Jesus speaks of witness as the language of our Christian identity. And this is so even though Christian identity, since we are sinners, is being tempted, will be tempted; temptations always come and our identity can weaken and can be lost.”

Pope Francis describing himself as a sinner since the very beginning of this pontificate is not some humble-bragging, but a reminder that sin, weakness, failure are intrinsic to what it is to be human. It is also central to what it means to be Christian. We are not perfect, flawless, wholly-compliant, but addled with sin, with failure, with imperfection. What Pope Francis points out though in the above homily is that these flaws are not a source of resignation or pessimism, something that ought to trouble us, or something to be denied, but instead a basis for being open to God’s merciful love. I am a sinner, someone who gives in to temptation, who fails to love, who makes mistakes, but I know that I am loved by God and I entrust myself to Him and give space to him so that he may lead me – with all my flaws – ever closer to Himself.

This is in stark contrast to a position that seems to, at least implicitly, underlie the thought processes of many who oppose openness to all, regardless of their closeness to the Church’s teaching, and who seem to be operating on the assumption that participation in the life of the Church has perfection as a prerequisite. Failure here is a personal weakness that disqualifies one from participating in the mystical body of Christ and that needs to be overcome before re-integration can take place. Here the Church is an association of the flawless and of the self-sufficient.

This is not a Church I recognize, and neither is this the Church that presents herself in the Catechism. Already the Gospel is characterized there as “the revelation in Jesus Christ of God’s mercy to sinners” (§1846), which is followed by declaring that ““You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” The same is true of the Eucharist, the sacrament of redemption”. Next, sin is presented as undeniably part of us, and its recognition in oneself as a precursor to mercy:

“To receive his mercy, we must admit our faults. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”” (§1847)

And St. Paul goes even further, by correlating grace with sin:

“As St. Paul affirms, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” But to do its work grace must uncover sin so as to convert our hearts and bestow on us “righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Like a physician who probes the wound before treating it, God, by his Word and by his Spirit, casts a living light on sin: Conversion requires convincing of sin; it includes the interior judgment of conscience, and this, being a proof of the action of the Spirit of truth in man’s inmost being, becomes at the same time the start of a new grant of grace and love: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Thus in this “convincing concerning sin” we discover a double gift: the gift of the truth of conscience and the gift of the certainty of redemption. The Spirit of truth is the Consoler.” (§1848)

Truth, recognizing our sinfulness, is followed by God’s merciful action and His gift of redemption, which as Cardinal Kasper stated so clearly, the Catechism too links to the pinnacle of Jesus’ loving self-sacrifice:

“It is precisely in the Passion, when the mercy of Christ is about to vanquish it, that sin most clearly manifests its violence and its many forms: unbelief, murderous hatred, shunning and mockery by the leaders and the people, Pilate’s cowardice and the cruelty of the soldiers, Judas’ betrayal—so bitter to Jesus, Peter’s denial and the disciples’ flight. However, at the very hour of darkness, the hour of the prince of this world,the sacrifice of Christ secretly becomes the source from which the forgiveness of our sins will pour forth inexhaustibly.” (§1851)

A recognition of my sinfulness is no guilt-ridden pessimism, but instead a source of joy, since God’s love exceeds whatever flaws I have and envelops me, all of my brothers and sisters and the whole of creation. My flaws are an invitation to be merciful to all, regardless of their beliefs or way of life, since they are loved by God just as much as I am.

O felix culpa!

1 Since the quotes from Pope Francis homily were much more extensive in the Italian account that day, the following is my, crude translation of that text, rather than the official English text by Vatican Radio.

Faith in science

Hanson3

A couple of days ago I saw Prof. Steven Pinker tweet about an article (“No Faith in Science”) by Prof. Jerry Coyne, who argues that science does not involve faith. I was curious to see whether Coyne would come up with a convincing argument or whether the piece was going to be a rather ill-informed rant against religion (as has been the case previously).

My summary of Coyne’s argument – and do read it in full if you are that way inclined – is the following:

  1. Religious faith is “intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person” (Walter Kaufmann), “involves pretending to know things you don’t” and is “wish-thinking.” The term “faith” used in the context of science is “confidence derived from scientific tests and repeated, documented experience.” In other words faith when applied to religion is delusional pretense while when applied to science it is rational confidence. “The conflation of faith as “unevidenced belief” with faith as “justified confidence” is simply a word trick used to buttress religion. In fact, you’ll never hear a scientist saying, “I have faith in evolution” or “I have faith in electrons.””
  2. Confidence in a scientist’s statements “is based on the doubt and criticism inherent in science (but not religion): the understanding that their expertise has been continuously vetted by other [scientists]. In contrast, a priest’s claims about God are no more demonstrable than anyone else’s. We know no more now about the divine than we did 1,000 years ago.” Science is advancing while religion is arbitrary and static.
  3. Science is built on evidence while religion can’t be: “There is strong evidence for the Higgs boson, whose existence was confirmed last year by two independent teams using a giant accelerator and rigorous statistical analysis. But there isn’t, and never will be, any evidence for [religious claims].”
  4. “The orderliness of nature—the set of so-called natural laws—is not an assumption but an observation.”
  5. In summary – and in Richard Dawkins’ words – Coyne argues that “There’s all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority, or revelation.”

Since I completely disagree with the above, let me try to be explicit about my reasons, which will be made from my perspective as a Catholic (and scientist), but many features of which also apply to believers of other religions (and practitioners of other rational pursuits):

  1. Let’s first look at the Kaufmann definition: religious faith as “usually confident” and insufficient to “command assent from every reasonable person.” Here I’d first like to point to the pervasive presence of doubt in Christianity – starting right with the apostles themselves (Thomas being the obvious choice, but the rest of them were an equally incredulous lot too, much to Jesus’ frustration 🙂 and explicit in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which in its opening paragraphs says: “Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. […] We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God — “the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable” — with our human representations” (§40-42). Far from being over-confident, this opening caveat sounds eminently transparent and humble to me. Turning to the second feature of the Kaufmann definition, I struggle to think of many things that “command assent from every reasonable person” – least of all new scientific theories or even observations of phenomena that appear contradictory of the accepted science of the day. One could argue that such an attitude – of cautious assent – is good and is a feature of being critical. That is all well, but then it becomes problematic to use it as a test of reasonableness of faith. Finally, let’s look at the claim that scientists don’t make statements like “I have faith in evolution.” That may well be, but slight variants like “I believe evolution to be true,” or “I consider evolution to be a likely mechanism accounting for the variety of changing life-forms on Earth” are much easier to come by. Is Coyne arguing that the specific grammar and vocabulary of “I have faith in …” has some special features that its alternative formulations don’t?
  2. Next, there is the juxtaposition of “unevidenced belief” with “justified confidence.” Here I’d like to argue that beliefs, assumptions, working hypotheses, views, etc. of both scientific and religious nature can easily fall into these two categories. As a scientist, my adherence to theories whose consistency with observation I have not tested can be as much based on authority and tradition (I read them in text books and other scientists also hold them to be true), as those of a religious person with regard to the teachings of their faith. Conversely, many of my beliefs are very much backed up by evidence: that the merciful will be shown mercy (Matthew 5:7), that walking an extra mile (Matthew 5:41) or welcoming strangers (Matthew 25:35) are sources of joy, or that the pinnacle of love is self-sacrifice (John 15:13). I believe these not because someone has tricked me or made me believe them, but because I have experienced their truth. This is not to say that religious faith and the beliefs that form part of science are the same – they are not – but just to argue that the line is not between the two but among different beliefs in both.
  3. The claim that “we know no more now about the divine than we did 1,000 years ago” may well be true for a “we” that includes Coyne, but certainly not for a “we” that includes me or a vast number of Christians. Christianity is in constant flux and if a Catholic from 500 years ago time-travelled to the present day, they would be stunned by many of the features of present-day Christianity. The Church’s teachings change constantly based on the experiences of her members trying to put Jesus’ words into practice. For a simple, but very specific, example, see a previous post, and for a greater variety, just take a look at a number of statements made by Pope Francis over the last months – causing a stir with regard to atheists, homosexuals, the poor, etc. – even the cross he uses is a source of controversy, which couldn’t exist if Catholics were just a bunch of nodding sheep. To look at all that and say that there is no change in religion is plain irrational.
  4. Arguing from “giant accelerator[s] and rigorous statistical analysis” is just scarily naïve. Statistics is all about compliance with assumptions (about populations, sampling, distributions, …) and the scale of a device has no bearing on its capacity to access the truth. The scary thing to me here is the underlying naïveté by virtue of which observation is considered to be about the “given” (data) instead of realizing that it is all about the “taken.” There is no observation without theory (language itself being theory laden) – what you are looking for, how you measure, are a consequence of what your expectations are and the result can either be consistency or inconsistency (where in the latter case the theory can be revised or the content of observation questioned). This is not meant as a criticism – the process leads to progress and great understanding, but just as an emphasizing of observation and measurement not starting from scratch or being an independent entity with respect to theory.
  5. Finally, let’s look at the claim that the “orderliness of nature is not an assumption but an observation.” Beyond the implicit challenges of observation, I’d ask about what observation or observations result in the belief in orderliness, repeatability, the uniformity of the laws of nature? For this universally-quantified claim to be attributable to a finite set of observation, requires an assumption or even a belief in finite observations lending credence to the nature of other observations of greater cardinality and holding under conditions for which no observations were made (e.g., in the past) or for which no observations can be made (e.g. the future). Again, this is not a criticism of science – making the assumption of orderliness and repeatability is a useful and rational thing to do (it is inherent to rationality itself), but it is not a consequence of observation. Instead, it is a precursor. Without such a belief or assumption, observation would be pointless.

Ultimately it is up to you to decide for yourself whether my arguments above – the arguments of a Catholic – are “intense, usually confident, belief[s] that [are] not based on evidence,” “supported by nothing more than tradition, authority, or revelation,” or whether they make recourse to “evidence and logic” and can therefore co-exist happily with scientific convictions.

Athena and/or Jesus?

Athena

The other day I watched a greatly edifying and enjoyable video of Eugenio Scalfari and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi having a chat about a variety of topics in the context of the Courtyard of the Gentiles initiative launched by Pope Benedict XVI – a forum for dialogue between catholics and non-believers. What struck me in particular was a train of thought triggered by Scalfari commenting on Ravasi quoting him as having said that he was “in love” with Jesus. To this Scalfari responds:1

“Maybe it is an exaggerated phrase, but it is true. I have been following the life and preaching of Jesus ever since I was a kid, since I abandoned the faith. I grew up in a Catholic family […] but then I met Athena, together with Italo Calvino, with whom I shared a desk for three years at school …”

This follows the pattern I have seen so many times among my friends: I grew up a Catholic (or member of another church), but then I realized that belief in God was not reasonable and I became an atheist or agnostic. Scalfari tells the same story: upon encountering Athena (the Greek goddess of wisdom) his religious beliefs crumbled. Faced with a choice between faith and reason, he opted for the latter and while he still admires Jesus, he does so without any accompanying – irrational or at least arational – religious beliefs.

I particularly liked the posing of the above process with rationality personified by Athena, as it gave it a symmetry that less poetic accounts lack, and I was looking forward to Ravasi’s response, as this was a statement that he was sure to react to:

“[You tell the story of how you] made the choice of Athena, in a certain sense abandoning the choice of Christ in that moment at least. I think though that this choice, these two choices are not necessary and divisive, that they would split a person. Because I am firmly convinced, I personally, that, even though I have made the choice of Christ, I have not renounced my choice of Athena. Athena, reason, has always interested me.”

Ravasi then – very compellingly – proceeds to expand on Pope Francis’s speaking about the Truth in relational terms in his letter to Scalfari, and then shares the following, personal reflection:

“I, for myself, can’t say that I have the Truth, that I have God. I, every day, have to return – and in some moments it is likely that I drift into a territory where the heavens seem devoid of divinity … [pause] Precisely because there is this dimension of the subject [pointing at himself], that is limited and that walks in a reality that exceeds me. This is why I believe that the element of seeking, searching is fundamental.”

I believe Ravasi is absolutely spot-on here – faith is not an alternative to reason, but a position that requires reason for the sake of remaining authentic. Ravasi presents his relationship with God as a dynamic, persistent search for the infinite, transcendent-immanent by a limited and finite self contained by it. This is no rejection of reason, blind adherence to tradition or irrational ignorance of evidence that are often the objections leveled at faith, but a sincere, dynamic relationship with God, as experienced through the limited, fallible, imperfect consciousness of a human person.

Having focused on Ravasi – whose fan I admit I am, I would also like to express my admiration for Scalfari, who comes across as a highly intelligent, sincere and compassionate person and whose atheism I don’t in any way find issue with. If anything, the fact that shines through their conversation is that both are open and honest about their own understanding of reality and that both value the other’s thoughts and find inspiration in them.

To conclude, I’d like to share my motivation for this post, which was my überbestie, PM’s saying that he didn’t get why I keep talking about faith and reason as being opposed, when in fact they are not. This certainly made me stop, since I completely agree with him, and I in fact proceeded to read up on more formal treatments of rationality, reason and faith, with the desire to get to some low-level mixup that would explain the mistaken perception of this fictitious opposition. I very quickly realized though (how could I not have seen that straight-away?!) that such efforts lead me down the well-trodden, lengthy and criss-crossing paths of epistemology and ontology, for whose considerations the terms “reason” and “rational” were a lax shorthand. Not wanting to attempt a synthesis of a vast field of investigation here, I’d just like to argue again that faith and reason are not opposed – they are both means for making sense of our conscious experiences in ways which I (and the Catholic Church) believe to be complementary and fundamentally incapable of contradicting each other in their perfect instantiations.

Seeing the sincere experiences of Scalfari and many of my friends, who arrive at a different conclusion – i.e., of faith being opposed to reason – instead leads me to an examination of conscience. Why is it that the Church and I fail to present the inherent compatibility of faith and reason compellingly enough? Has too much baggage accumulated over the centuries? Have ulterior motives obscured the profound purity and rationality of Christian faith, motivated by insecurity and lack of trust in God’s love? Maybe the answer lies in personal dialogue though, instead of an attempt to address the question via some new systematic exposition. And Pope Francis’ clear, blunt and razor-sharp directness will help too, of that I am sure …

1 This is around 21:50 in the video (in Italian) and Ravasi’s reaction around 43:00.

Benedict XVI – Odifreddi: searching for Truth, with gloves off

Boxing gloves

[Warning: long read :)]1

If you are even remotely interested in the dialogue between faith and reason, between religion and science, the last fortnight has to be among the most electrifying periods in the history of mankind. Not only did it kick-off with the beautifully sincere and profound move by Pope Francis in his letter to the atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari, but it saw the publication of “the” interview that Pope Francis gave to Jesuit media and in which he spoke about science in terms that, to my mind, take the Church’s appreciation of science further than ever before. And if that wasn’t enough, today saw the publication of extracts from an 11-page letter that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote to the Italian atheist mathematician Prof. Piergiorgio Odifreddi, in response to his book “Caro Papa ti scrivo: Un matematico ateo a confronto con il papa teologo” (“Dear Pope, I write to you: An atheist mathematician confronting the theologian pope”).

Looking at the two letters (or, more precisely, the extracts from Benedict’s versus the full text of Francis’), Francis’ and Scalfari’s style is like a polite, yet illuminating, exchange between two gentlemen over a cup of tea, while Benedict’s and Odifreddi’s exchange is like a bare-knuckle fist-fight between a pair of prize-winning boxers who in the end sincerely shake hands and respect each other, but without giving an inch during the fight itself.

To begin with, let’s take a quick look at Odifreddi’s opening move – his 204-page book, addressed to Benedict as “between colleagues” – from a maths to a theology professor. Early on, Odifreddi identifies a point in common with Benedict’s thought, by pointing to the following passage from Benedict’s Regensburg address:

“the experience […] of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason”

While Odifreddi identifies this – the adherence to reason – as a common point of departure, he quickly objects to Benedict’s excessive use of it (“your almost obsessive use of the word “reason,” repeated around forty times, akin to a musical motif or continuous base”) and to the “scandalous” words from Benedict’s sermon before the conclave that elected him:

“[H]aving a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be “tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine”, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.”

While being critical of Benedict’s words, Odifreddi argues that “both religion and science are perceived as antidemocratic and absolutist” as a result of their focus on “ultimate truths” and then proceeds to arguing against a series of passages from Benedict’s “Introduction To Christianity” and his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy.

Since it is the full, fine detail that is key to understanding the nature of what is going on between Odifreddi and Benedict, let me just pick out a single point of contention (from among many important and interesting ones that I hope to return to soon!),2 which Benedict objected to most forcefully and which the following passage from Odifreddi’s book sums up nicely:

“There is little to say about the historical Jesus, literally, because there are virtually no traces of him in the official history of the period. In total, there are only few tens of lines about him in the works of Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius and Flavius Josephus. Some are of uncertain interpretation, like the “Chrestus” of Suetonius. Others are of dubious authenticity, like the interpolation of Flavius Josephus. […] If, therefore, Jesus truly existed, he must have been irrelevant to his contemporaries, beyond the narrow circle of his relatives, friends and followers.”

Odifreddi further accuses Benedict of side-stepping questions of fact by saying to him: “you seem uninterested in (or seem interested in not) discussing the historicity of the Gospels and the facts that they report” and attributes to him an opposition to historical-critical methods of Biblical interpretation, by quoting Benedict as saying that they “can effectively become an instrument of the Antichrist.”

Benedict’s response here is as sharp as the jab he received:

“What you say about the figure of Jesus is not worthy of your scientific status. If you put the question as if nothing were, ultimately, known about Jesus, as a historical figure, as if nothing were ascertainable, then I can only firmly invite you to become more competent from a point of view of history. To this end I particularly recommend to you the four volumes that Martin Hengel (exegete at the Protestant Faculty of Theology of Tübingen) has published with Maria Maria Schwemer: it is an excellent example of historical precision and of vast breadth of historical information. […] Further I have to forcefully reject your affirmation (pp. 126) according to which I have presented historical-critical exegesis as an instrument of the Antichrist. Discussing the account of Jesus’ temptations, I have only recalled Soloviev’s thesis, according to whom historical-critical exegesis may also be used by the Antichrist – which is an unquestionable fact. At the same time, however, I have always – and in particular in the foreword to the first volume of my book on Jesus of Nazareth – made it evidently clear that historical-critical exegesis is necessary for a faith that does not propose myths using historical images, but demands true historicity and therefore has to present historical reality in its affirmations also in a scientific way. Because of this, it is not correct either that you say that I have been interested only in meta-history: on the contrary, all my efforts have had as their objective to show that the Jesus described in the Gospels is also the real, historical Jesus; that it is a matter of history that really took place.”

Uff … I have to be honest and admit that I was at first a bit uneasy about the tone of both Odifreddi and Benedict, neither of whom are pulling punches and both of whom are blunt to say the least. Looking more closely though, and reflecting on my professional experience as a scientist, I recognize that this is the tone and strength of academic argument and doing anything less would be dishonest on the part of both the professor and the ex-professor. This is a very different context from the Francis-Scalfari one and it demands the unforgiving rigor, precision and detail of the quotes shown above. Treating Benedict like any other academic shows Odifreddi’s respect for him (which he is explicit about when saying “Having read his Introduction to Christianity, […] I realized that the faith and doctrine of Benedict XVI, unlike that of others, were sufficiently solid and fierce that they could very well face and sustain frontal attack.”) Benedict is equally complimentary about Odifreddi, when he tells him that he “considers very positively the fact that you […] have sought such an open dialogue with the faith of the Catholic Church and that, in spite of all the differences, in the central themes, there is no lack of convergence at all.”

What this, academic, dialogue is truly about is put best – and to my mind beautifully lucidly – by Odifreddi, who says that:

“[The aim], obviously, was not to try and “convert the Pope,” but instead to honestly present to him the perplexity, and at times incredulity, of a mathematician with regard to faith. Analogously, the letter from Benedict XVI does not try to “convert the atheist,” but to direct at him his own, honest, symmetrical perplexity, and at time incredulity, of a very special believer with regard to atheism. The result is a dialogue between faith and reason, which, as Benedict XVI notes, has allowed both of us to confront each other frankly, and at times also bluntly, in the spirit of the Courtyard of the Gentiles that he himself has initiated in 2009. […] Divided in almost everything, but joined by at least one objective: the search for Truth, with a capital “T”.”

Wow! I have to say I am very impressed with Odifreddi (having come to this clearly as Benedict XVI fan) and I look forward to seeing his next steps in this full-contact dialogue. In many ways, I believe, that the most important thing to take away from this first encounter is the seriousness and complete transparency, with which both parties approached the challenge of dialogue – a dialogue that is not a watering-down or a “playing nice” but a striving for Truth, regardless of how vast the abyss may appear between its opposing cliffs. It would be a mistake to get stuck on whether I happen to agree with one side or the other, as it would miss the masterclass in serious dialogue that we have just witnessed. In many ways, I read Odifreddi’s closing thoughts as a transposition – from an intra-Christian to a Christian-atheist setting – of Francis’ call to an ecumenism that starts now, while there are clear differences between the parties, when he says in “the” interview: “We must walk united with our differences: there is no other way to become one. This is the way of Jesus.”

1 Apologies, again, for the rough translation from Italian – once “official” translations are available, I’ll point you to them.
2 I can’t not mention the following zinger from Benedict, which points to the widespread use of “science fiction” in science, in response to Odifreddi’s claiming that it was religion that practiced the genre. Benedict here says, referring to Heisenberg and Schrödinger’s theories, and adding Dawkins’ “selfish gene” to the list, that “I’d call them “science fiction” too, in the good sense: they are visions and anticipations, to arrive at true knowledge, but they are, indeed, only imagination with which we try to get closer to reality.” 🙂 I agree and I’ll definitely pick this line up in a future post.

Pope Francis’ letter to non-believers

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That Pope Francis cares deeply for non-believers1 is nothing new, with his previous declaration that Jesus has redeemed atheists too having lead both to very positive responses and to a great media muddle. In today’s issue of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Francis continues in this dialogue with non-believers by responding to questions sent to him by the atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari regarding Francis’ encyclical Lumen Fidei, and I would like to share my favorite parts of his letter with you here.2

Francis starts out by arguing that dialogue between the followers of Jesus and non-believers is “necessary and valuable” today for two reasons: First, the paradox that “Christian faith, whose novelty and impact on human life have since the beginning been expressed through the symbol of light, has become branded as the darkness of superstition that is opposed to the light of reason,” resulting in an absence of communication between Christian and Enlightenment-based contemporary culture. Second, for those who seek “to follow Jesus in the light of faith, […] this dialogue is not a secondary accessory[, but …] an intimate and indispensable expression of faith instead.” This, Francis argues, is expressed by §34 of Lumen Fidei, from which he proceeds to quote:

“Clearly, then, faith is not intransigent, but grows in respectful coexistence with others. One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, since believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth which embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith sets us on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all.”

After a beautiful exposition of how Francis himself came to believe in God and how the Christian faith has Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection at its heart, through which all of humanity is shown God’s love and connectedness to each other – to every single human being,3 he proceeds to answering the three questions Scalfari put to him.

The first of Scalfari’s questions regards whether “the God of Christians forgives those who don’t believe and don’t seek faith.” Here Francis’s response, which I particularly like, is the following:

“Given that – and this is the fundamental point – the mercy of God has no limits if one turns to Him with a sincere and contrite heart, the question for those who don’t believe in God is about obeying one’s own conscience. Sin, also for those who don’t have faith, occurs when one goes against conscience. Listening and obeying to it means, in fact, taking decisions in the face of what becomes understood as good or as bad. And it is on the basis of this decision that the goodness or evil of our actions plays out.”

Wow! While this is in some sense nothing more than what the Catechism has been saying explicitly since Vatican II, having it presented in the above universal way is great. I have often argued in exactly these terms and have faced quizzical looks from other Catholics, who wouldn’t quite believe it. It also confirms me in the answer I have given to several of my best, atheist or agnostic friends when they have asked me whether they should want to believe in God, which was “no,” with the caveat of seeking to be honest in front of their consciences.

Scalfari’s second question asks whether “thinking that there is no absolute and therefore no absolute truth either, but only a series of relative and subjective truths, is a mistake or a sin.” Great question! 🙂 To this Francis responds by saying:

“To begin with, I wouldn’t talk, not even to those who believe, about “absolute” truth, in the sense that the absolute is that which is disconnected, which is devoid of any relation. Now, the truth, according to Christian faith, is the love of God for us in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the truth is a relationship! It is also true that each one of us takes it, the truth, and expresses it by departing from oneself: from one’s history and culture, the circumstances in which one lives, etc. This does not mean though that the truth is variable and subjective. Instead, it means that it gives itself to us always and only as a journey and a life. Didn’t maybe Jesus say the same: “I am the way and the truth and the life.”?4 In other words, truth, being ultimately all one with love, requires humility and openness when sought, accepted and expressed. Therefore, it is necessary to understand each other’s terminology better, and, maybe, to avoid the constraints of an opposition that is … absolute, deepen the framing of the question. I believe that this is absolutely necessary today, so that a serene and constructive dialogue can take place.”

Another fantastic answer! Anyone who has tried to pigeonhole Francis as a populist, as opposed to the thinker that Benedict XVI undoubtedly is, can proceed to eat their own words …

The third, and final of Scalfari’s questions asks whether “the disappearance of humans from Earth would also mean a disappearance of thought that is capable of thinking God.” Here, Francis’ answer, which I won’t translate in full, revolves around arguing that, in his experience and those of many others, God is not an idea, but a “reality with a capital ‘R’.” Instead of going into more detail here, I’d instead like to translate Francis’ closing thoughts, before which he expresses his hope that his reflections would be “received as a tentative and provisional response, but one that is sincere and faithful to the invitation of walking along a stretch of road together.”:

“The Church, believe me, in spite of all the slowness, the unfaithfulness, the mistakes and sins that it may have committed and may yet commit in those who compose it, has no other meaning and end than that of living and giving testimony to Jesus: Him who has been sent by the Father “to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19).”

I have to say I am delighted by these words of Pope Francis – both the emphasis on conscience that I have held dear for a long time and the insights about truth as relationship and love – and I would be keen to hear from my atheist, agnostic, humanist (and even Christian 🙂 friends what they made of them.

UPDATE (12 Sept. 2013): This morning Vatican Radio broadcast a short interview with Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi on the topic of Pope Francis’ letter discussed above (which is now available in an official English translation here). Ravasi, who leads the Pontifical Council for Culture and in its context the “Courtyard of the Gentiles” initiative, whose aim is dialogue with non-believers, naturally welcomed Francis’ letter with great positivity, including it among the initiatives foundational documents. He then also proceeds to elaborate on the, to my mind key, point Francis made about the truth being a relationship:

“Already Plato affirmed [that the truth is a relationship] when he said that the chariot of the soul runs along the plane of truth, which means that the truth is not a cold reality like a precious stone that you can put in your pocket. Instead, it is an immense plane, a horizon – or, to use another image by a writer from the last century5 – we can say that the truth is a sea that one enters and navigates. So, in this light, I believe that the concept of truth not as absolute, but personal, interpersonal, will be very fruitful for dialogue, without losing the dimension of objectivity, of identity in itself, typical of the truth.”

1 Picking what term to use to refer to those who do not believe in God is tricky and I am going with the term Francis is using himself, not necessarily because I believe it is the most appropriate one, but because my aim here is to share his message with you today. I am mindful though of Prof. Cox’s point about the undesirability of negative labels, but since the positive alternatives (e.g., humanist) may not be self-applied by all whom the Pope intends to address here, I am sticking with his terminology. If you belong to his target audience (and to some extent everyone does – including me, a Catholic) and have a suggestion for what term to use, please, let me know.
2 Since I haven’t found an English translation of this article yet, the following quotes are my own crude translations, for which I apologize in advance.
3 I’d like to return to this great synthesis of Christianity in a future post and, if you understand Italian, I’d wholeheartedly recommend reading the full letter to you straight-away.
4 John 14:6.
5 Ravasi refers to this quote in an earlier talk, where he attributes it to Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, although I couldn’t find it there.

Lumen Fidei: Love and truth are inseparable

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Pope Benedict XVI’s long-awaited encyclical on faith (completing the trilogy of encyclicals with those on love and hope) and Pope Francis’ equally eagerly awaited first encyclical are out – and they are one and the same – the encyclical entitled “Lumen Fidei” – “The Light of Faith.” As Francis puts it, “It’s an encyclical written with four hands, so to speak, because Pope Benedict began writing it and he gave it to me. It’s a strong document. I will say in it that I received it and most of the work was done by him and I completed it.”

I couldn’t agree more – it is a very strong document indeed, and one rich in insights that merit reflection and repeated analysis. It is a document that is beautifully written, in rich yet purposeful language, with razor-sharp logic and with a tremendous openness to the world as it is today. The references alone are worth highlighting, as they range from theological classics like the works of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, through ancient non-Christian texts like the writings of Celsus, up to more recent and also critical voices like Nietzsche, Wittgenstein or T. S. Eliot. This is not a piece of propaganda, but a carefully thought out presentation of what faith means to a Christian, from a Catholic perspective, and how it relates not only to matters internal to the Church but to secular thought as well. As such, if you are not a Christian and curious about what we mean when way talk about faith, I would recommend a reading of Lumen Fidei (a recommendation I don’t make lightly).1

Since Lumen Fidei is a hefty document, and one where “padding” is minimal, I won’t even attempt an overview of the topics it touches upon and will instead just highlight the section where Benedict and Francis talk about how faith, truth, knowledge and love are related.

This train of thought starts already in the introductory chapter:

“Faith […] appear[s] to some as an illusory light, preventing mankind from boldly setting out in quest of knowledge. The young Nietzsche encouraged his sister Elisabeth to take risks, to tread “new paths… with all the uncertainty of one who must find his own way”, adding that “this is where humanity’s paths part: if you want peace of soul and happiness, then believe, but if you want to be a follower of truth, then seek”. Belief would be incompatible with seeking. From this starting point Nietzsche was to develop his critique of Christianity for diminishing the full meaning of human existence and stripping life of novelty and adventure. Faith would thus be the illusion of light, an illusion which blocks the path of a liberated humanity to its future.”

Faith is here portrayed as an illusion that at best can be an anxiolytic, but that is opposed to a seeking of truth and to free human fulfillment. This is certainly a view I have come across in person and I was pleased to see it be the position with which Lumen Fidei sets out to contrast it’s understanding, where it first declares what it understands by faith, before then considering its consequences:

“Christian faith is […] faith in a perfect love, in its decisive power, in its ability to transform the world and to unfold its history. “We know and believe the love that God has for us” (1 John 4:16). In the love of God revealed in Jesus, faith perceives the foundation on which all reality and its final destiny rest. […] Our culture has lost its sense of God’s tangible presence and activity in our world. We think that God is to be found in the beyond, on another level of reality, far removed from our everyday relationships. But if this were the case, if God could not act in the world, his love would not be truly powerful, truly real, and thus not even true, a love capable of delivering the bliss that it promises. It would make no difference at all whether we believed in him or not. Christians, on the contrary, profess their faith in God’s tangible and powerful love which really does act in history and determines its final destiny: a love that can be encountered, a love fully revealed in Christ’s passion, death and resurrection.”

To my mind the above does two important things: first, it underlines that faith is all about love and second, that this love is real here and now – that it is an incarnate, material, tangible love and not some ethereal, abstract, wholly otherness. Lumen Fidei goes on to underlining these important features of faith:

“Far from divorcing us from reality, our faith in the Son of God made man in Jesus of Nazareth enables us to grasp reality’s deepest meaning and to see how much God loves this world and is constantly guiding it towards himself. This leads us, as Christians, to live our lives in this world with ever greater commitment and intensity.”

Having established the focus of faith on love and on its incarnation in the world, Lumen Fidei, proceeds to linking it to truth:

“Faith without truth does not save, it does not provide a sure footing. It remains a beautiful story, the projection of our deep yearning for happiness, something capable of satisfying us to the extent that we are willing to deceive ourselves. Either that, or it is reduced to a lofty sentiment which brings consolation and cheer, yet remains prey to the vagaries of our spirit and the changing seasons, incapable of sustaining a steady journey through life. […] Only to the extent that love is grounded in truth can it endure over time, can it transcend the passing moment and be sufficiently solid to sustain a shared journey. If love is not tied to truth, it falls prey to fickle emotions and cannot stand the test of time. True love, on the other hand, unifies all the elements of our person and becomes a new light pointing the way to a great and fulfilled life. Without truth, love is incapable of establishing a firm bond; it cannot liberate our isolated ego or redeem it from the fleeting moment in order to create life and bear fruit.”

This, to me, is both a beautiful and a particularly lucid way of putting faith’s dependence on truth, knowledge and honesty. Looking back to the quote from Nietzsche’s letter to his sister, the above agrees with him on the deficiency of the kind of faith Nietzsche criticizes as being divorced from the truth and points to a (Hegelian dialectic) resolution of the initial, seeming opposition.

Lumen Fidei then goes further and emphasizes that it is not only “love [that] needs truth, [but that] truth also needs love.”:

“Love and truth are inseparable. Without love, truth becomes cold, impersonal and oppressive for people’s day-to-day lives. The truth we seek, the truth that gives meaning to our journey through life, enlightens us whenever we are touched by love. One who loves realizes that love is an experience of truth, that it opens our eyes to see reality in a new way, in union with the beloved. […] It is a relational way of viewing the world, which then becomes a form of shared knowledge, vision through the eyes of another and a shared vision of all that exists. [… F]aith-knowledge does not direct our gaze to a purely inward truth. The truth which faith discloses to us is a truth centred on an encounter with Christ, on the contemplation of his life and on the awareness of his presence. Saint Thomas Aquinas speaks of the Apostles’ oculata fides — a faith which sees! — in the presence of the body of the Risen Lord. With their own eyes they saw the risen Jesus and they believed.”

Since they derive from love, faith and truth are neither a private matter, nor are they oppressive, imposing or colonizing:

“But if truth is a truth of love, if it is a truth disclosed in personal encounter with the Other and with others, then it can be set free from its enclosure in individuals and become part of the common good. As a truth of love, it is not one that can be imposed by force; it is not a truth that stifles the individual. […] Clearly, then, faith is not intransigent, but grows in respectful coexistence with others. One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, since believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth which embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith sets us on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all.”

The above is a great manifesto not only for a Christian’s understanding of their own faith but of its inherent pointing outward towards others, with an openness and a welcoming disposition aimed at profound dialogue.2Unsurprisingly, the above faith sees science as a great good and sees itself as being a source of wonder that is also the motivational root cause of scientific endeavor, as readily agreed to by atheist and religious scientists alike:

“Nor is the light of faith, joined to the truth of love, extraneous to the material world, for love is always lived out in body and spirit; the light of faith is an incarnate light radiating from the luminous life of Jesus. It also illumines the material world, trusts its inherent order and knows that it calls us to an ever widening path of harmony and understanding. The gaze of science thus benefits from faith: faith encourages the scientist to remain constantly open to reality in all its inexhaustible richness. Faith awakens the critical sense by preventing research from being satisfied with its own formulae and helps it to realize that nature is always greater. By stimulating wonder before the profound mystery of creation, faith broadens the horizons of reason to shed greater light on the world which discloses itself to scientific investigation.”

I have barely scratched the surface of Lumen Fidei here, but what I have found has been a joy to read, reflect on and try to share with you here. Thank you, Benedict and Francis, for such a beautiful piece of thinking!

1 Plus, if you are interested, take a look at the second paragraph here for a suggestion of how to read both this blog and the Lumen Fidei encyclical.
2 I can’t not mention again one of Benedict XVI’s most astonishingly beautiful insights that is echoed here: “As far as preserving identity is concerned, it would be too little for the Christian, so to speak, to assert his identity in a such a way that he effectively blocks the path to truth. Then his Christianity would appear as something arbitrary, merely propositional. He would seem not to reckon with the possibility that religion has to do with truth. On the contrary, I would say that the Christian can afford to be supremely confident, yes, fundamentally certain that he can venture freely into the open sea of the truth, without having to fear for his Christian identity.” (Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia, 2012)