Sign and Mystery: On the 25th Anniversary of the Encyclical "Fides et Ratio" [Faith and Reason]
The African perspective helps us understand that the truth is a mystery "wrapped up" by tangible categories (signs) and accessible progressively to sense experience, reason and faith.
(Reading time: about 10 minutes.)
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Introduction
An Eastern fable recounts how a king once summoned three blind men and placed them in front of an elephant. One touched its trunk. The second touched its feet. The third touched its tail. He then asked them what type of being it was. They then each describe —a different—mysterious, monstrous creature based on their limited experience.
This oriental fable underscores something the African upholds: humans tend to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience, even as they ignore other people’s also-limited, subjective experiences; and all of these experiences afford us only aspects of the truth, not the big picture. The one thing that the blind men agreed on was that the being presented to them was somewhat mysterious. Indeed, reality is a mystery. This is the impression one gets on reading John Paul II’s encyclical letter Fides et ratio, whose 25th anniversary is this year.1
According to John Paul II, underlying the Church’s thinking is the awareness that she is the custodian of a mystery hidden for long ages (cf. 1 Cor. 2:7; Rom 16: 25-26) but which is now revealed in Christ.2 This presupposes a fact: there is knowledge and, therefore, truth that transcends human reason. With respect to this truth, reason is ‘blind’.3 Yet the fundamental questions that pervade human life (Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after life?), that is, questions of the natural order, are also, by and large, mysteries.4 Even in the realm of reason and nature, there is mystery.
St. Paul defines faith as “sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium” (the substance of the things we hope for, an argument of the things we do not see) (Heb. 11:1). Faith is, therefore, quintessentially about mysteries. Reason, on the other hand, is intellect incarnate. It is highly dependent upon matter. Material being is the first thing that falls within the knowledge of the intellect.5 Yet, in principle, the intellect has as its object the essence of each thing. Its operation is an intus legere, that is, a “reading into” being. The essence, in its turn, has the property of being universal when it is abstracted, that is to say, it is beyond sense perception. Faith is de non-visis (about the unseen things); but, in a manner of speaking, so is reason And so there exists a twofold order of mystery, distinct as regards their sources (reason and faith) and their object.6
The Visible Leads to the Invisible
Both these “mysteries” are immersed in time and space (history),7 that is, they have taken on tangible categories.8 The tangible categories (signs) “serve to lead the search for truth to new depths, enabling the mind in its autonomous exploration to penetrate within mystery”.9 The signs contain a hidden truth to which the mind is drawn.
Indeed, the indissoluble unity between the signifier and signified makes it possible to grasp the depths of the mystery. This unity is illustrated by the continuity that obtains between sense perception and intellectual cognition. The knowledge process consists in a movement from the things to the mind (motus a rebus ad animam), by means of which the mind acquires its knowledge from images and from sensory perception which has its highest expression in the cogitative. The pathway could be summarised as follows: from a whole range of external sensations, we come to the image; from many images and memories we gain experience; and from many experiences, we form a universal concept, out of which judgements are made. There is, therefore, unity—and continuity—between the signs (grasped by the senses) and the ideal content in the mind. The visible (sign) leads to the invisible (signified). This same idea is illustrated in the realm of faith in the mystery of the Eucharist: Christ is truly present and alive, working through His Spirit; yet, as Saint Thomas Aquinas said so well, “what you neither see nor grasp, faith confirms for you, leaving nature far behind; a sign it is that now appears, hiding in mystery realities sublime”.10
The sign and the signified. Indeed, in the African mind, things are conceived as symbols of each other. Symbols, on their part, not only unify the objects they symbolize, but are also believed to participate somehow in the reality which they express. The African is not content merely with living in the world and experiencing its rhythm, but desires also to interpret the symbolism of created things, and to enter into sympathetic communion with them. For the human being who has daily contact with it, the world is an ensemble of signs and messages to be interpreted. The initiated is the one who knows the secret (symbolic meaning) of things. Although there is no clear-cut distinction between the sign and the signified, the African holds that all beings in the universe —human, animal, vegetable and inanimate— possess an invisible force (or “vital force”) of their own: and these forces are capable of strengthening the vital energy of the strongest being of all creation, the man.11
The African perspective sees the sensible as a sign of the invisible. This is analogous to the relationship between reason and faith. Therefore, the African perspective is a certain disposition to believing. The relationship of sign and mystery—the visible and the invisible—obtains both in the natural order and the supernatural order. The two-fold mystery (natural and supernatural truth) is set within our history as an anticipation of that ultimate and definitive vision of God, which is reserved for those who seek this truth with a sincere heart.
There is, therefore, but one object for both reason and faith (man, the world or God); an object the search for which is the task of philosophy and theology alike – applying different methods. With our minds we can but grasp a tip of the great iceberg (the object) – the vast portion of it is beyond reason’s perception (compare this with the visible spectrum...). Yet the contemplation of the object reveals that there is a remarkable unity and continuity between the knowledge conferred by reason and knowledge conferred by faith.12
This unity and continuity is manifest in the fact that in reasoning about nature, man can rise to God: “from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their creator” (Wis. 13:5; Cf. Rom. 1:20 ff.). The unity of truth is a fundamental premise of human reasoning, as the principle of non-contradiction makes clear.13 And this unity of truth, natural and revealed, is embodied in a living and personal way in Christ: “truth is in Jesus” (Eph. 4:21 cf. Col. 1: 15-20). He is the eternal Word, exemplar of creation. The Incarnate Word reveals the Father (cf.John 1: 14-18).
Look and Look Again
The account of the oriental fable shows that faced with an object as rich as reality (being), one must bring all cognitive faculties into play.
All knowledge, natural and supernatural, must proceed according to a two-fold methodological principle: auditus (observation) materiae and the intellectus materiae14 — first observing (experiencing) and then understanding. This is not the purview only of the natural sciences (cf. the scientific method). It is common to all inquiry, including philosophy and theology.
Hence, the object must be contemplated by both reason and faith; reason alone is inadequate.15 Faith sharpens the inner eye, opening the mind to discover hitherto unknown horizons about man, the world and God: “the human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps” (Prov. 16:9).16 When faith and reason are separated man is handicapped; he is rendered “a fool” (Ps 14:1). Were we to restrict the scope of the object under study to what sensorial evidence and reason can attain, the scope of enquiry would be seriously impaired.17
With this we also include human belief as opposed to supernatural faith.18 Knowledge through belief is grounded on trust of persons (the truth of persons). Here the person himself is the sign.
The results of a reasoning may in fact be true, but these results acquire their true meaning only if they are set within the larger horizon of faith. Faith liberates reason (cf. Rom. 1:21-22).19 The mystery of the Cross is the reef of the boundless ocean of truth. Here we see not only the border between faith and reason, but also the space where the two meet. Only in the mystery of the Cross does the mystery of pain and suffering take on light.20 (Cf. the questions at the beginning of this article: Who am I? Why evil? etc.)
The light of faith helps us interpret the link between the visible and the visible. Notice how important the discovery of this link is in our sacramental life, in our ascetical life. The Church, like her Founder and Spouse, is a sacrament, the new ark of salvation. Her visible institutions and sacraments portend a unfathomable richness for those who live by faith. For instance, just think of the Eucharist: do we really make contact with Christ during Holy Communion? Or think of sign and mystery in obedience: the person giving the orders is a sign (the truth of the person) of the underlying authority of God, etc. Or turn to sign and mystery in the liturgy: the very raison d’être of liturgy is to depict, in a dramatic way, the saving actions of Christ, Eternal and High Priest in the presence of his Father (heavenly liturgy).
Christ, true man (and true God), is the sign par excellence. The mystery of the Incarnation is the central point of reference for an understanding of the enigma of human existence, the created world and God. Even in revelation, human language embodies the language of God, a mirror of the logic of the Incarnation. Yet the challenge of this mystery pushes philosophy to its limits.21 And, I repeat, the African perspective is a certain disposition to believing what is revealed.
Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio, 14th September 1998.
Cf. ibid., no. 7.
Cf. Ibid., no. 8.
Cf. Ibid., no. 1.
“Primo in intellectu cadit ens” (In I Metaph., lect. 2, n. 45).
Cf. no. 9.
Cf. The Prologue of the Gospel of St. John and Hebrews, 1:1-2.
Cf. Fides et Ratio, no. 11 and 12.
Ibid. no. 13.
Sequence for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord; Cf. Fides et Ratio, no. 13.
Cf. Charles Nyamiti, ‘Ancestor veneration in Africa’, African Traditional Religion, http://www.afrikaworld.net/afrel/nyamiti.htm. See also P. Mimbi (2022). The Overlooked Factor: The Power of Being Fully Human, (2nd ed.). Strathmore University Press: Nairobi, 210.
Cf. Fides et Ratio, no. 16.
Ibid., no. 34.
Ibid., no. 65.
“Thinking of this problem frequently and intently, at times it seemed I was ready to grasp what I was seeking; at other times it eluded my thought completely, until finally, despairing of being able to find it, I wanted to abandon the search for something which was impossible to find. I wanted to rid myself of that thought because, by filling my mind, it distracted me form other problems from which I could gain some profit; but it would then present itself with ever greater insistence... Woe is me, one of the poor children of Eve, far from God, what did I set out to do and what have I accomplished? What was I aiming for and how far have I got? What did I aspire to and what did I long for?... O Lord, you are not only that than which nothing greater can be conceived (non solum es quo maius cogitari nequit), but you are greater than all that can be conceived (quiddam maius quam cogitari possit)... If you were not such, something greater than you could be thought, but this is impossible” (St. Anselm, Proslogion, Proemium and nos. 1, 15; PL 158, 223 224; 226; 235 quoted in Fides et Ratio, no.14).
“They (Christians) were not naive thinkers. Precisely because they were intense in living faith’s content they were able to reach the deepest forms of speculation” Fides et Ratio, no 41; Cf. Ibid., no. 16; (Compare with the cases of Copernicus, Georges Lemaître, etc.).
Cf. Fides et Ratio, no. 31.
Cf. Ibid., no. 32.
“Faith asks that its object be understood with the help of reason; and at the summit of its searching reason acknowledges that it cannot do without what faith presents” (Ibid., no. 42; Cf. Ibid., no. 20).
Cf. Ibid., nos. 22 and 23.
Cf. Ibid., no.80; Vat. II, Dog. Const. Dei Verbum, 13.