Teleconference January 28^th 2005: "Faith and Reason"

Congregation for the Clergy

The everlasting novelty of the teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas

(Fides et Ratio 43-44)

Prof. Paolo Scarafoni, L.C.

Rector of the Pontifical University Regina Apostolorum

Christian faith is not popular belief: "If faith is the acceptance in grace of revealed truth, which "makes it possible to penetrate the mystery in a way that allows us to understand it coherently", then belief, in the other religions, is that sum of experience and thought that constitutes the human treasury of wisdom and religious aspiration, which man in his search for truth has conceived and acted upon in his relationship to God and the Absolute" (see Dominus Iesus, 7).

Among the significant stages in the relationship between faith and reason, Saint Thomas Aquinas deserves a particular position. He lived during a historical period during which Aristotle’s philosophy and the Arab and Jewish schools of thought risked contrasting and separating the revealed faith from the natural conscience and reason. He was able to unite them, proving how they could reciprocally really enrich each other. In this sense Saint Thomas remains a constantly valid reference point, a model and a stimulus throughout the centuries, facing all the challenges presented by the history of culture.

According to Saint Thomas the meeting point was reality, the metaphysical environment, regards to which the knowledge of reason and of faith find their compulsory verification, the last judgment of truth. The first reality is God, the source of all other realities, whose knowledge is achieved by reason starting from the effects within the creation and the human spirit (happiness, good, and morals). God is known within the faith thanks to the revelation of Jesus Christ, and also appreciated and loved in Christ thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit within us.

The second great reality is man, who Saint Thomas studies in view of natural knowledge and Christ; he perceives the absolute value of the human person, his eternal destiny in God. But the interior reality is the object of the search for the truth for Saint Thomas whose perspective is really universal, objective and transcendent.

Thanks to a metaphysical vision, Saint Thomas considers the reality of God both as an object of knowledge and as a source of knowledge. In this sense he analyses in depth the meaning of a judgement of truth; within the framework of revealed knowledge, he attributes particular importance to the supernatural gift of knowledge, bestowed by the Holy Spirit. While "faith accepts the divine truth as it is", the gift of knowledge can judge according to the divine truth. The knowledge of natural reason is true in relation to the real object; supernatural knowledge is more radically true since it is referred to the Mind of God, the source of all reality and knowledge before every reality. Such premises encourage both a philosophical knowledge of what is real within the reason’s natural limitations as well as theological knowledge based on the Revelation and examining the contents of the faith.