The Two Wings of the Human Spirit

The Two Wings of the Human Spirit

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart the desire to know the truth — in a word, to know himself — so that by knowing and loving God, men and women can come to the fullness of the truth about themselves” Pope St. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio

Pope St. John Paul II opened his 1998 encyclical, Fides et Ratio, with these beautiful words. In the encyclical, the Pope argues that the rational search for truth is an essential part of human nature. The human being, he says, is “one who seeks the truth” in all his thoughts and actions. And this search for truth necessarily involves both human reason and faith. While human reason seeks the truth, the ultimate truth about who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going cannot be found by reason alone as it is limited. Faith is also necessary to come to know the fullness of truth about humanity and the universe.

When I served as campus minister at St. Mary’s Catholic Center at Texas A&M University, I heard stories about young people who left the faith because a professor or another student   destroyed their confidence in the teachings of the Church through one simplistic scientific argument or another. These young people were not properly catechized and thus were led to believe that faith and science were somehow incompatible, incapable of being reconciled to one another. Of course, we know that this is not true. While human reason is remarkable in its capacity to discover scientific and theological truths, it is limited in its ability to discover the fullness of truth by its own power.  Someone has said that God is a mystery not because he is incomprehensible, but because he is endlessly comprehensible. The inexhaustible mystery of God is beyond human reason and the scientific method and cannot be reduced to a scientific formula or fully grasped by human logic alone apart from divine revelation and faith. This is not a critique of science or human reason, but simply an acknowledgment of our limitations.

One example of this limitation of both the scientific method and human reason is the search for the origins of the universe. In 1927 Fr. Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest, mathematician, astronomer, colleague of Albert Einstein and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain postulated what has come to be called the Big Bang Theory. Fr. Lemaître argued from his scientific study and observations that the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate.  He reasoned that if everything was expanding, then everything must have at one point been all together and through some explosion of energy had a beginning. 

The groundbreaking work of Fr. Lemaître was a starting point for scientists to explore the origins of the universe and to employ the tools of the scientific method to understand this phenomenon.  There is, however, a limitation on what scientists are able to discover about the origins of the universe by the scientific method because the scientific method, though a powerful tool, only deals with things that can be measured. But before the Big Bang, there was no matter to be measured.  If there is no matter, then what banged? Or you could ask the question this way: who was the banger who caused the Big Bang to bang?  These questions require other tools than simply those of the scientific method.  

This is where Pope St. John Paul II’s analogy of faith and reason as two wings of a bird is helpful. When human reason reaches its limitations, the eyes of faith allow us to contemplate the truth from a different perspective. Faith compels us to ask that fascinating question about what initiated the Big Bang. Both human reason and faith teach us that something does not come from nothing and, as such, both are essential in our search for the truth. If either one of them is removed from the equation, then we fall into the predictable error of either scientism or fideism.

Scientism is the belief that science is the only way of exploring the truth that can be trusted. It is a commitment to science as the only means by which humanity can understand reality, which necessarily rejects the possibility that there is a personal God.  Scientism would lead, for example, to relegating the creation account of Genesis to merely an ancient myth with no value when considering the origins of the universe.  A proper understanding of the scientific method solves this error. The scientific method does not deal with questions that cannot be empirically measured, acknowledging that there are phenomena in the universe that are not repeatable, observable, or falsifiable. The origin of the universe before the Big Bang is such a question. If a scientist believes that science now proves that there is no God, then he or she is making a faith claim, not a scientific one. Many scientists making full use of human reason and who are devout believers in God recognize the boundaries of the scientific method and allow their eyes of faith to give them a fuller perspective on truth and reality.  

Fideism is the opposite error and contends that faith is the only source of true knowledge. For example, fideism might lead someone to deny the Big Bang Theory because they believe it somehow contradicts the Genesis account of creation. A fideist will ignore or reject scientific evidence if they suspect it does not align with their understanding of God, the universe, or the biblical witness. Of course, such a position fails to understand the limited scope of philosophy and theology regarding scientific matters or to recognize the purpose of scripture or the complexities of literary genres in ancient texts. As Galileo said, “The bible shows us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

Ultimately, the truths of science and the truths of faith cannot conflict with one another because God is the author of both. As the human spirit rises in its contemplation of the truth, both faith and reason carry us into a better understanding of the universe and elevate us so that we may better know and love God. We were created, after all, to live in a relationship with God for eternity. This is of the utmost significance for the human person because ingrained into every one of us created in the image of God is the desire to know who we are, where we come from, why we are here and where we are going. 

On Sunday, Nov. 21, the Church will celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, also known as Christ the King. This solemnity marks the end of the year in the liturgical calendar. It also directs the faithful to the truth that the risen and ascended Christ is the same “Logos” through whom the universe was made and who now reigns over the expanse of the universe forever. This truth should give us hope for the future, regardless of the challenges that face us in these difficult days. Jesus Christ has conquered death and reigns forever. In Baptism, we were joined to Him and the power of His resurrection. In the Eucharist, we are nourished and strengthened by His body and blood. 

These truths are best known by the union of telescopes, microscopes and particle colliders with scripture, prayer and preaching. We need both of our wings to rise to contemplate the beauty of God and better understand the fullness of the truths of this universe and our human existence. We need the sacraments of the Church to sustain and strengthen our faith so that we might better live in the mysteries of the faith and grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit grant us such grace as we prepare our hearts for Advent and Christmas.