Ask Anything
Pope Benedict’s writing is so amazing. I was reading what he was supposed to say to a University in Rome tomorrow. That speech was cancelled due to protests but the text is here. It is quite thought provoking especially if you have been following the pope’s previous remarks on faith and reason. It was interesting to see him not rule certain questions out of bounds. He even embraces a question from Socrates that wonders about the existence of God. We are designed to wonder about such things. We are designed to seek the truth. Nobody wants to believe in God if it isn’t true. No matter how comforting that might be we are just unable to accept falsehood.
So where does faith come in? Proper faith does not avoid the question and therefore eliminate reason. Proper faith purifies reason. That is it develops a way of thinking that is rational and can stand up under the constant questions that we can’t stop asking. So we have faith not so much in facts but in arguments. Faith in facts shut the mind down. Faith in arguments energize the mind. So we can’t properly believe Jesus is Lord if we lose touch with why we believe Jesus is Lord. If we know why we believe it then every time we experience doubt it becomes an occasion to revisit the argument. That has the effect of re-energizing our belief in Jesus as Lord. If we don’t understand why we believe then the doubts become a burden and we start to avoid critical thinking because we don’t think our faith can stand it.
This is why I have become so excited about the church. As a protestant I believed a lot of things. I thought they were based on scripture and often they were biblical ideas. Still I did not have the ability to prove them convincingly from scripture. I would have some idea but there were just to many issues and to many exegetical theories. To know them all seemed impossible. When I tried to learn it I found myself in more doubt because there were so many questions I could not answer from scripture.
When I became Catholic the argument became way simpler. All I had to do was remember why I embraced the church as God’s instrument on earth. Once I did that then all the dogmas of the catholic faith would be established. I don’t need to understand all the arguments in great depth. The argument from authority is typically enough. So questions don’t shake my faith but instead they re-energized it. So now I love talking about faith. I want to give a reason for the hope that is within me. The reason is so beautiful it makes me want to praise God every time I think about it.
So, once again, we see the church as a great gift and Sola Scriptura as inadequate. A faith that does not allow questioning is a fundamentalist faith. That is the only practical alternative for the Sola Scriptura Christian. There is such a wide variety of questions his own mind constantly poses. They cannot be answered by scripture alone. There is just to many ways you can interpret things. He might have a proof text but then he has to rule out all other readings of that text. Why? More questions to avoid. Only the acceptance of the visible body of Christ as the answer will allow us to keep asking without limit. It will allow us to fully embrace reason without compromising our faith.
Fundamentalists can be bible believers. They can be Koran believers. They can even be Catholics. When Catholics accept the church without knowing why they accept it they are really being fundamentalists. They are shutting down reason and refusing to let themselves ask certain questions. That is a big reason why many Catholics don’t evangelize. They have a faith in facts rather than a faith that has purified their reason. So they cannot explain why they believe the church is trustworthy. They have simply accepted it. They are afraid to subject that acceptance to critical thinking. They wonder if they will lose their faith. So they keep quiet and just pray, pay, and obey. Their faith is badly in need of being re-energizing but they are afraid to go there. Deep down they think that if it isn’t true they don’t want to know. But it prevents them from knowing deep down that it is really true. So they become another argument for atheism rather than a living witness to the power of Jesus.
