Faith and reason
In his address to the University of Regensburg, the Pope defended the reasonableness of the Christian faith and said that to act unreasonably is contrary to God’s nature. His core text was John 1 v 1
In the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God.
and he translates ‘logos’ as ‘word and reason’. He even says that this identity of God and the logos is ‘the final word’ on the biblical concept of God.
He goes on to say that, being made in the image of God, there is an analogy between our reason and God’s reason, so that God is not wholly incomprehensible to us.
He has a positive view of the encounter between the biblical faith and Greek philosophical and scientific enquiry, that resulted (though he does not say this) in the great dogmas of the catholic church. He speaks of the ‘intrinsic necessity’ of a ‘rapprochement’ between biblical faith and Greek enquiry and sees Paul’s Macedonian call as a ‘distillation’ (or sign or starting point) of this.
Is he right? Is the emphasis on the reasonableness of our faith a good one? And was the marriage of the faith of the gospel with Greek philosophy holy and pure? I believe these two questions need to be examined separately and hope to do this tomorrow. Meanwhile I invite your comments.