Incarnation as Highest Thought

In chapters 2–4 of Fides et Ratio, Pope John Paul II presents the Incarnation as the highest existential thought. Faith and reason are fundamentally interdependent. The paradox of the Word made flesh fulfils human longing, liberates reason, and reveals a truth that surpasses yet perfects rational understanding.

Author: Nathan Tartak.

Beauty and Wisdom

In chapters 2, 3, and 4, His Holiness describes the beauty and wisdom of the paradox of truth as revealed in faith. Our innate desire for the search for truth is expressed in and through inter-personal relationships, as well as the arts and a shared sensitivity towards culture (Fides et Ratio, #21, #24;).

In chapter 4 particularly, His Holiness brings together the predominant themes of Fides et Ratio by explaining that there is a fundamental inter-dependency between faith and reason, otherwise each autonomous order of knowledge will most likely fall into a distortion (#47;#48).

Much of the confusion in today’s world is a result of thinking that faith and reason live in opposition rather than in unity.

Highest Thought

A Christian may profess in tongue, in words, in sentence, in language, that Christianity is the Highest Idea. Precisely: The Incarnation as presented in Christianity may be contemplated as the highest thought possible for man to formulate which relates directly to his existential condition (cf. #20).

In other words, it may be plausible for a Christian to assert that the Incarnation is the most perfect concept fathomable to consciousness that speaks to the very depths of man’s being, in his full existential proclivity, without denying that high thoughts, or higher conceptual thoughts, can be brought to bear upon consciousness in other realms of existence such as those that require complex thinking in science and technics.

The thought brought to bear on the consciousness of the Christian understanding of the Incarnation can only be thought as the highest thought in the existential realm of man’s condition; and since faith seeks to reveal the existential depths of man’s capacity for reason, the Incarnation is the highest thought for the Christian because it quenches the thirst of his/her existential longings. Reason alone cannot establish itself in the truth of Jesus Christ as the Word Made Flesh nor can it establish itself in the truth of the Triune God (#42).

But what reason can do is recognise the profundity of the truth of the Incarnation; and upon reflection, reason can realise for itself that the Incarnation is the perfection and fulfilment of the mythological incarnations of times past, because those that pre-dated it were nowhere near as perfect as that of the Christian conception.

Power of Paradox

Reason, due to sin, has lost its ability to seek the deepest of truth because it has forgotten the power of paradox. A paradox founded on opposing truths, is precisely that, a paradox – rather than a contradiction, because a contradiction cannot reveal a deeper underlying unity in the same way that a paradox can. The purity of reason leads itself into the realm of the paradox rather than the realm of the contradiction, even though paradoxes reveal themselves as illogical (#23).

Modern man, in his existential predicament as a fallen human being, not only wants to seek the truth, but is tempted to believe that reason is sufficient to attain full truth. Since faith liberates reason, in God man can establish for himself that reason is not bound to mere progress in technology nor to establishing secret powers within the strictures of nature (#46). In fact, in God, it becomes possible for man to realise in conscious thought that reason fulfils itself beyond the material universe of space and time when it learns to reflect on inter-personal experience.

Witness and Truth

Due to the genuine witness of others, we can each establish our faith in this seemingly illogical faith because purity of understanding does not rest on mere rationality but rather calls us to higher levels of transcendency (#20). The martyrs are a demonstration of this witness.

As His Holiness writes: “The martyrs know that they have found the truth about life in the encounter with Jesus Christ, and nothing and no-one could ever take this certainty from them….The martyrs stir in us a profound trust because they give voice to what we already feel and they declare what we would like to have the strength to express” (#32).

Too Good to Be True?

For the secular modern man, the Incarnation is too good to be true. Reason tells him that the Incarnation of Christianity cannot possibly be true because it simply sounds too good to be understood as something literal. But, if we understand our limitations, and reflect on the meaning of paradox (and possibly the absurd?), our reason can tell us that in so far as it is too good to be true, it is true. The revelation of Jesus Christ as the Word Made Flesh is, for the Christian, true precisely because reason alone could not formulate such an idea. And so, in faith, man realises that his capacity to reason has a source beyond itself and whatever ideas are formed in consciousness that quench his existential thirst are realities that exist outside his psychological relativity and can be affirmed as real, i.e., as realities that exist independently of the psyche.

Man alone did not nor could not formulate a conception of the divine as a singular Being who is infinite, beyond time and space, and at the same time, while necessarily remaining infinite paradoxically becomes a finite fully transparent human being. This pure idea does not in itself validate its authenticity, but since its singularity and sheer transcendency point to an incomprehensible immanency, the perfection of the idea in-itself is self-assuring because it becomes a fact of thought apart from man.

Therefore, where does this perfect idea come from? Only knowledge via revelation can reveal its source (i.e. God), but – and this is the key point – it is in reason that one is able to establish that this idea is perfect: “The parrhesia of faith must be matched by the boldness of reason” (#48).