By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 3
“Scientists are the discoverers of God’s intentions,” taught Pius XII to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. There is no contradiction whatsoever between divine Revelation, which requires our assent in faith, and true, unbiased science. Simply because the God who created the universe, and established in it all the natural laws of biology, botany, geometry, physics, and astrophysics, is precisely the same God who revealed Himself to mankind through Moses and the prophets, through Jesus and His apostles.
Superficially minded scientists think that a mystery of faith is unreasonable, simply because they cannot understand it. As if they had already understood the mysteries of the created universe!
Take the mystery of the Holy Trinity, or the Incarnation, or the power to forgive sins. Our reason cannot prove them, and cannot disprove them either. All we can say is that we do not understand them fully. Our reason is blind to such realities.
A blind man who hears about the existence of the rainbow after the rain can neither prove that it exists nor disprove it. He has no sense of sight; therefore he must take it on the word of trustworthy witnesses who can see the rainbow. But the rainbow is there, regardless of his inability to see it.
A deaf man can read all about Mozart, Beethoven, and Vivaldi. But he will never understand the differences among their musical compositions. He has to trust the trustworthy testimony of people who hear those musicians. But the differences are there, regardless.
If you catch a cold and are invited to a fine French restaurant, you will not be able to smell the good food, or even to enjoy its delicate taste, and you will have to trust the opinion of your table companions about this or that dish. The food is delicious to them, but for you it is like Styrofoam. But it delights your friends, regardless of your miserable state.
The same is with divine Revelation and its mysteries. We depend on the trustworthy witness of the apostles and of those who handed their teachings on to us today, the Magisterium of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
The Bible itself depends on the trustworthy witness of the Church: We never met the writers; we cannot compare our printed versions with the original inerrant manuscripts, because they were lost many centuries ago; and even if the originals were available in the Vatican Museum, you would have to know Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek to ensure that your Bible at home was properly translated.
A similar thing happens in science: Unless you are a scientist yourself, you have to trust in the writings you find in the scientific journals, but you do not go to a laboratory to double-check their experiments. That is why it takes a lot more faith to believe in scientists, who are sometimes frauds, bent on disproving religion by whatever means at their disposal, than it takes to believe in the mysteries of faith preached by the apostles and their successors.
The apostles laid down their lives for the mysteries they preached. Have you ever heard of a scientist who laid down his life in holy martyrdom for his theory?
In short, the universe is filled with mysteries, which fascinate us and attract us to delve into them to learn more. Now, if the mysteries of God’s creation are many and often incomprehensible, how much more difficult would it be to comprehend God Himself? Atheistic scientists are fools. We do not waste our time with them.
That is why true faith and true secular sciences can never conflict. The God who revealed the one also created the other. Truth cannot contradict truth. We must realize that God is not afraid of our reason — He made it. He wants us to study His Revelation with the same zest and enthusiasm with which we study His creation.
A good student of theology is moved by the same thrilling enthusiasm that Indiana Jones felt when he went to find the Ark of the Covenant or the Chalice of the Last Supper. To delve into the study of the Catholic faith is a thrilling adventure for those who know how to do it. That is why The Wanderer encourages its readers to study the articles by Don Fier and by yours truly.
But faith and reason have as their object, or purpose, two different kinds of knowledge. Through reason we attain to the knowledge of natural truths; through faith we attain to the knowledge of supernatural truths. At times there may be an apparent contradiction, but once it is properly investigated, there will be nothing properly called a contradiction. When it happens, it is because the truth of the faith was not properly explained according to the mind of the Church, or the conclusion of a given affirmation of science is biased with the intention of falsifying evidence.
But faith and reason sometimes work together toward the same goal. For instance, God’s existence can be proved by pure reason (as in philosophy and metaphysics), science (as in physics, thermodynamics, and genetics), which helps the propagation of the faith.
In his encyclical Fides et Ratio, Pope John Paul II taught that “faith and reason are like two wings by which the human spirit is raised up for the contemplation of truth.” I would like to recommend that our readers either buy a copy of that encyclical or read it online at the Vatican website to improve their understanding of the relationships between faith and reason.
Vatican I established this relationship in beautifully simple terms:
There is no true disagreement between true faith and true reason;
Reason establishes the foundations of faith;
Reason, using faith, develops the knowledge of divine realities;
Faith goes beyond reason, elevates it, provides with a greater knowledge and never contradicts it;
Faith prevents reason from falling into error, protects it, confirms its conclusions, and makes it more secure.
The truthfulness of scientific knowledge is based upon the objectivity of reality, not the intensity of the opinion of the scientist. Likewise, the truthfulness of faith is based upon the reality of God Himself, since He is the One who revealed the supernatural truths. In previous articles we have seen how it is perfectly reasonable to know God’s existence through reason — forgive the redundancy — and the possibility of Revelation, that is, of God communicating to men truths that are above men’s natural ability to know. He gives us His grace to enable us to understand — at least to some extent — and to believe in the truths He reveals.
In these days of faithlessness, relativism, and what at times appears to be the smoke of Satan inside the Church, there are people who believe that one can be saved in any religion, or even in no religion at all. As long as that person is nice to everyone and hurts nobody. Even people highly placed in the Church sometimes make ambiguous statements about the salvation of all, regardless of their faith or lack thereof. Ambiguity is a dangerous mental vice.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger had a strong view about it. In the famous book The Ratzinger Report (Ignatius Press: 1985, p. 150), he declared: “Ambiguity is the mark of the demonic.” That’s part of what we will investigate in the next lesson.
Next article: Is faith necessary for salvation?
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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www.RaymonddeSouza.com.)
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