Intersubjective Communion.

In his encyclical Fides et Ratio, Pope John Paul II presents faith and reason as complementary paths to truth, grounding human dignity in intersubjective communion. Philosophy prepares the person for divine revelation, fulfilled in Jesus Christ. True knowledge culminates not in concepts alone, but in mystery, relationship and filial trust in God.

Author: Nathan Tartak.

Faith. Reason. Communion.

In his encyclical Fides et Ratio, His Holiness Pope John Paul II speaks about the relationship between faith and reason. And in so far as he does, he provides a plausible path to contemplate such a complex relationship in a way that allows scope for the subjective and objective truth of the human person to be maintained without falling prey to a moral relativism that has continued to plague modern philosophy since the time of Descartes. 

One key purpose of philosophy (i.e. the pursuit of reason, the pursuit of rational discourse) is to discover the importance of inter-personal relationships and community in communion. It is in contemplating the essence of the other that I discover myself, but as long as the other appeals to my call in mutual reciprocity. Philosophy, understood in the sense that it deals with the human person in a peri-state before the embark of religious experience, sets up and grounds the human person for appeal to a certain kind of knowledge that can only be attained via direct revelation from God (i.e. the divine, the transcendent, the supernatural).

But why do we in Christianity equate the divine source of knowledge, the divine source of reason, with Jesus Christ? Why equate the divine with Jesus Christ if other religions such as Judaism or Islam also believe in the authenticity of divine knowledge?

It may boil down to the fact that Christianity – in virtue of the Incarnation, in virtue of God becoming Man, breaking into history, into time and space, and manifesting His immanence in a radical way – has a personalist theology, a humanistic strain, that is unique and incomparably deep in comparison to other traditions, and a communal theology that is universal (Pauline) rather than sectarian (Mosaic).

Philosophy. Faith. Relationship.

If this is so, one is able, as a Christian, to approach God in Jesus Christ, attain divine knowledge, and penetrate the mystery of being most deeply even though one shall understand that he/she cannot solve or comprehend the mystery like a technological puzzle or scientific experiment (Fides et Ratio, # 13). 

Philosophy has had a “powerful influence on the formation and development” of human culture in both the West and the East (#3). Due to the nature and beauty of human wisdom, each culture possesses the potential to attain true wisdom and attain genuine philosophy. Yet, the temptation of humankind is to identify one specific philosophical discourse or system with the totality of truth, subsequently reducing the dignity of other traditions.

His Holiness writes: “In effect, every philosophical system, while it should always be respected in its wholeness, without any instrumentalisation, must still recognise the primacy of philosophical enquiry, from which it stems and which it ought loyally to serve” (#4). 

In other words, even though each genuine philosophy is unique and has its own merit, there are fundamental axioms that undergird all great philosophies. These include: the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful; the need and importance of inter-personal community in communion; the human as free and intelligent; and the rules of logic such as the principle of non-contradiction (# 4).

From this, His Holiness points out that the human person has the inherent qualities and potential to know God in both the objective sense to assent to proclaiming His existence, and in the subjective sense to assent to having a filial relationship with Him. It is in the subjective sense that faith takes on its proper meaning. It is one thing to believe that God IS, but an entirely different thing to believe IN God, in the sense of placing one’s trust in Him.

This only makes sense if humans first have the capacity to reveal themselves to themselves(to love themselves first, to help themselves first before they can help others), and to reveal others to themselves. Intersubjective relationship is the necessary mediation for man to love God. Man cannot love God apart from loving his fellow men.

Philosophy. Mystery. Fulfilment.

Philosophy is the pursuit of inter-personal or inter-subjective relationships. On the other hand, theology, or divine revelation in Jesus Christ, reveals the true depths of our inter-subjective relationships, because when we dwell in the mystery of our being, of our existence, we realise we cannot reduce or distort our most fundamental human experiences (such as faith, hope, and love) to conceptual rigour or find completion and meaning in the mere pursuit of pleasure and technology (#5;#15 ).

Since the mystery of our lives can only find fulfilment proper in God who is by His nature infinite, our earthly relationships by their nature must be inexhaustible and beyond conceptualisation.

The attainment of mystery as knowledge reveals more than the attainment of knowledge as knowledge, because any conceptual grasp of knowledge that one can attain presupposes something beyond knowledge in the strict sense of the term.

In other words, knowledge is only possible because it is grounded in mystery, that is, in inexhaustibility: “the knowledge proper to faith does not destroy the mystery; it only reveals it the more, showing how necessary it is for people’s lives” (#13).