Numerous perceptive Catholic commentators on both sides of the Atlantic have drawn out in various helpful ways the importance of this phenomenon. He has powerfully brought this to bear upon the increasingly powerful global cultures of secularism and Islam. He argued that our understanding of the world around us, not least through modern science, necessarily points to something beyond the objects which we understand. Otherwise our trust in reason is not justified. Any culture, such as those mentioned above, which does not deeply cohere with this fact will have weak foundations and inherent dangers.
As we have highlighted before, there is a relevant dimension of Fides et Ratio which has not been meditated upon enough in the public square. His overall argument practices what he preaches. He does this in two stages. Firstly he highlights that scriptural revelation affirms the rational nature of God, contrary to influential Islamic theology. The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Bertone, recently announced the active strengthening and encouragement of diplomatic, academic, and cultural links with majority Muslim countries.
The best Greek philosophy intuited that the human logos discovers evidence of a higher, founding Logos. Judaeo-Christianity reveals something that is in harmony with this Greek inference. The logos was made flesh Jn that he might fulfil the personality of each of us, spirit and flesh. Our minds and hearts are made for Him. Such a destiny reveals the grand dignity of human nature. Fr Luiz Ruscillo offers a profound reflection upon the unique quality of this scriptural revelation and its fulfilment of the Hebrew insights later in this issue.
Pope Benedict suggested that prominent Islamic theology and modern philosophy of science are examples of the watering down of the crucial insight that the truthfulness and value of all rationality and freedom flows from the objective Logos of God.
Both thought systems cut the intelligibility of human personality from its intelligible foundations. This reduction undermines the rational objectivity and fundamental dignity of man.
