The possibility of a Christian philosophy was fiercely debated in the late 1920s and the early 1930s, especially in France, where several distinguished historians of philosophy, including Émile Bréhier, vigorously denied that there had been, or could be, any such thing.¹ It was, Bréhier said, as absurd as a Christian mathematics or a Christian physics.² Genuine philosophy, in his opinion, had been suffocated by Christian dogma in the Middle Ages, and did not reemerge until the seventeenth century, when Descartes picked up about where the Greeks had left off.

The Catholic medievalist Étienne Gilson led the counterattack. He opened his...

There is a tremendous irony at work in Fides et ratio: the pope, the very symbol of faith, is busy defending reason against unreason. A century ago we would have found the pope defending faith against reason—or at least against the vast claims made in the name of reason to test the reasonability of any claim made by faith and to dismiss any faith-claim that was deemed unreasonable according to the standards of the day. But reason has fallen on hard times in this era of postmodernism and so now reason finds itself in need of some defense.

An...

The philosophy of the person contained in Pope John Paul II’s most recent encyclical Fides et ratio is remarkable for its dynamism, its depth, and its call. This encyclical reaffirms the ontological priority of persons over systems of thought, individual experiences in faith, and arguments of discursive reason. For purposes of analysis this essay will consider the human person in relation to three areas of discourse: reason and faith, philosophy and theology, and philosophers and theologians.¹ Each area of discourse has its own parameters, yet reason, philosophy, and philosophers operate in one order of knowledge, while faith, theology, and theologians...

In the middle of the eighteenth century, on the Feast of the Purification, John Henry Newman held Mary up as the perfect model of theological wisdom. In a sermon addressed to the students of Oxford, Newman names Mary the exemplary theologian because she is the “pattern of Faith, both in the reception and in the study of Divine Truth. She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she develops it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it.”¹ Newman saw in Mary’s fiat...

That philosophers suffer no indignity in being implicated in the practical, indeed, that it is impossible for philosophers to be purely philosophical, are lessons Plato has Socrates teach us in the Apology. A philosopher is not a god but a citizen—more than just a citizen, but never not a citizen. The knowledge of the philosopher is by nature the highest theoretical excellence. As such it transcends the flux of human affairs, but never leaves the philosopher an alien to his culture, never divorces him from the unfolding of human history. Quite the contrary. When Plato displays the distinction between...

Fides et ratio is destined to be seen as the intellectual capstone of this most academic of popes. It is at once provocative in its account of philosophy and theology, harmonious with tradition, and engaging in its style. It is that rare text that will engage faculty across the country in fruitful discussion—not just arguments. Its importance for Catholic higher education, however, has as yet been under-recognized.

The initial interest from the press was significant, and although the encyclical is no longer news, I believe it will attract a growing readership. In fact, Fides et ratio will have a...

The openness of Fides et ratio to the wisdom of philosophical traditions from diverse cultures is a cherished implication of one of the encyclical’s main themes: there is no reason for competition between reason and faith, for they both proceed ultimately from the same divine source. Yet, not everything is of equal value in any one of these traditions, and there can be blind spots just as well as insights. Thus, the steadfast openness commended by the pope is by no means an indiscriminate pluralism that accepts all positions as equally valid (§5) but a readiness to sift afresh what...

The complexity of John Paul II’s approach to medieval philosophy and theology in Fides et ratio is apparent in the question whether the following statements from that document give rise to a contradiction. We read there that “The Church has no philosophy of her own nor does she canonize any one particular philosophy in preference to others. The underlying reason for this reluctance is that, even when it engages theology, philosophy must remain faithful to its own principles and methods” (§49). Nevertheless, at the same time the encyclical praises the medieval period over all others (§§45, 58, 62), calls Thomas...

In his popular novel, The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco entertains the possibility that the reemergence of the fabled second half of Aristotle’s Poetics—the part concerning comedy and laughter—ignites a spark that eventually consumes a Medieval monastic library and, symbolically, the entire edifice of pagan and Christian learning.¹ Imagine, then, to what deeds of splendid destruction Eco’s mad librarian might have been inspired if, by some magic feat of time travel, he had received a rather advance copy of Immanuel Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, or worse still, of Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ? Indeed, the...

John Paul II’s encyclical of September 14, 1998, on “Faith and Reason” takes up a theme that has been a staple of Western theology since at least the time of Augustine in the fourth century. St. Anselm in the twelfth century and St. Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth, argued brilliantly for the harmony between faith and reason. The medieval synthesis, already wounded by the inroads of fourteenth-century Nominalism, was sharply contested from two sides in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At one extreme were self-assured rationalists, who belittled the role of faith, and at the other, skeptical fideists, who distrusted...