‘Fides Quarens Intellectum’ Faith Seeking Understanding
Philip Burchill, Member in Discernment for Ordained Ministry
July 23, 2023
In the last sermon I gave we looked at the subject of Miracles defined not as a contradiction to nature rather as an effect exceeded by the power employed. Another words God initiates the cause and the operation of natural effect takes over such as prayer for a healing, the virgin birth and resurrection of the body. Continuing from miracles, I want to continue with the second step on ‘faith seeking understanding.’ Knowledge is secondary reflection on experience and it’s here we can to look into the relationship of science and knowledge to Faith?
Suddenly (when he was in the garden) I heard the voice of a boy or girl chanting over and over again, “pick it up; read it; pick it up, read it.” (Translated from the Latin “Tolle Lege, Tolle Lege” and pronounced “tol-lay lah-jhay”— it means “take up and read.”)
I quickly returned to the bench…snatched up the apostle’s book…and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes fell: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:13)…. “I had no desire, no need, to read further. In the instant that sentence ended, it was as if a peaceful light shone in my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished.”
This was the conversion story of St Augustine in the 4th century who became the early church Father, Bishop, philosopher and theologian. Who later in reflection stated, ‘I would not be a Christian if it were not for miracles.’ Interestingly St Augustine did was not a sensationalist who merely admired miracles. In fact he became arguably one of the most significant theologians of two thousand years in Church history. Augustine’s encounter and experience of the miraculous played an instrumental role in his conversion from a neo-platonic philosopher to become a Christian theologian. Ironically a man of exceeding intellectual power, well versed in the arts of reason and rhetoric was not converted by means of rational argument as by spiritual experience.
This story draws an important observation faith is the origin from where we seek to understand our beliefs and outlines a pattern of God’s interaction with humanity who leads us from experience to understanding. For ‘Faith seeking understanding’ presupposes faith is already there and it is from this starting point the quest for understanding the mystery of God begins.
The question arises how can man know God? For all knowledge originates and depends upon sense experience. Yet the Christian claim is God is beyond the senses he is transcendent infinite invisible Creator. God must therefore reveal himself to humanity in a theophany a manifestation of God the call of Abraham, appearance of three angels, to Moses the burning bush and ultimately in the person of Jesus Christ.
In the case of Israel under the slavery and oppression of Pharoah, God performed miracles to liberate Israel from the yoke of slavery and takes Israel into the wilderness to give the ten commandments, the first four sacred law concerning their vertical relationship to God the last six civil commandments concerning our horizontal relationship with one another. Jesus Christ went on to distill the essence of the Ten commandments into the golden rule ‘Love the Lord your God with all your soul mind and strength and love thy neighbor as our self.’
I’d like to draw our attention To God’s dealing and encounter with mankind is man first had an experience and then the giving of the law, the knowledge of God comes after. When we obey God’s commandments we are in effect saying thank you for your saving action, for the Israelites the parting of the red sea and the deliverance from Egypt and for Christians God’s saving work on the Cross. We can see how ineffective it is to push the law of religion upon someone who has not first had an experience with God and why many are averse to religion being mandatory in School or forced by parents growing up. In the scriptures authentic fidelity to the law is out of free, and voluntary choice.
A further point I’d like to draw out is loving God with our heart, mind and strength is saying to respond to God with our whole self not merely a rational ascent to a doctrine. It is word and deed. Hesed the Hebrew word for love is also covenant and loyalty. This brings up an important point the theme of our talk the difference of scientific knowledge and spiritual knowledge.
In my own experience with religion as I mentioned before I had to have a tangible experience of God’s presence, a foretaste the divine reality to thirst for more. Before the experience I was an agnostic after my first encounter with God it became the start of a journey in an infinite quest for more knowledge of him. As a byproduct of my first experience with God I discovered a new implanted desire for knowledge. Before then I was getting C’s, D’s and failed chemistry. After this experience in one semester I doubled my GPA, got student of the month in geometry and underwent an entire intellectual transformation. I came to discover my love for learning appreciation for knowledge was a bi-product of my newly discovered relationship with God.
In the remaining time I’d like to share insights I’ve learned about the differences of knowledge in science and revelation and their relationship. In today’s world we value knowledge and almost all things for their utility, practical value under the judge of monetary worth. For nearly several thousand years since the Greeks there was an alternative view now seemingly the minority view that knowledge is a good worthy in itself to be pursued as an end. A helpful analogy to conceive of this difference is if we consider our experience in going to a shopping mall in contrast to our visit at an art museum.
At the mall we visit the department stores, shop purchase goods, perhaps stop at the food court. Here there is a transaction, exchanging consumption acquisition of goods to satisfy desires and needs. In visiting the art Museum we go to see a paintings such as a Van Gogh to admire the vibrant colors, the skill in harmonious composition behold the beautiful French countryside through Van Gogh’s eyes and feel with him the harmony of viewing the landscape. In this experience there is not a monetary use or return. This experience of beauty is an end in itself and ‘dis-interested interestedness’. Meaning is not on the basis of appetite or monetary value and has transcendent value.
Such is why the materialist atheist has a short sighted and closed minded view. For them existence is an ultimate silence of the universe where no meaning is found only the projections we voluntarily attach and the world. All the physical world can be measured by instruments of science for us to conquer explore and master. On the contrary a link is missing. It seems only logical something must lie behind nature. Lewis points out if there is something behind controlling power outside the universe, ‘it could not show itself to us as facts inside the universe no more than an architect of a house could actually be a wall or a staircase or fireplace in that house.’
The writer of Hebrews tells us ‘faith is substance of things hoped for conviction of things not seen.’ Faith is not opposed to science, it is the invisible territory of knowledge lies beyond the horizon of natural sight. Consider the ruins of a monastery or castle in the countryside that dates back hundreds or years. What remains is part of the structure the façade the pillars and the arches. We see physically the part remaining but our imagination produces the invisible whole. Faith and science are two sides of a whole. Blaise Pascal the philosopher puts it this way, ‘Faith states clearly what the senses do not, but not opposite of what they see. It is above them not against.’
Isaiah 55: 8-9
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts”.
Faith deals with realm of spirit the why questions and science measures the physical universe and the how. These are not opposed to one another they are different inquires. ‘For if God is the author of the book of nature and revelation the two shall not contradict.’ Faith and Science are comparable to different tools uniquely proportionate to their object like sonar is required for water and arial instruments in the sky. One cannot effectively be applied in the domain in the other. Such is why science cannot prove or disprove religion on the basis of limits it’s determined.
It's important to consider what is the role of knowledge and faith. A branch of Christian theology exists called apologetics that takes lead from Peter that we should give a reason for the faith we profess. Though faith and spirit is beyond material proof it does not mean Christianity has not left traces of evidence for reason. There is substantial evidence for Christianity the historical sources of 23,000 manuscripts of historical records in Greek Hebrew Aramaic for the gospels when the Illiad and other ancient texts don’t have nearly the substantially historical backing of the Scriptures. Reason points the direction to faith it is completion as we heard in St. Augustine, ‘faith is a necessity because it has limitations.’
Faith is essential for our time and an antidote to despair. This week I was at the gym on the tv screen I saw the U.S. Surgeon General asked what is the greatest health crisis facing our country today? The surgeon general replied the greatest health crisis concerns is obesity and heart disease. But his primary concern is the mental health crisis and the fact the suicide rate was up 57%. And he went to point out mental health is perhaps the most important because it spills into every area of life how we relate to ourselves, our family, work, productivity for it is the fuel our human engine functions. It is not coincidental correlation we live in the loneliest generation in human history according to U.S. Gov., church attendance has dropped enormously faith in God is waning alongside the development of new technologies social media coincide with this mental health crisis.
Church attendance in past seven days, 1939-2023. In May 2023, 31% of U.S. adults said they attended church in the past seven days, remaining below the 34% measured before the pandemic and the 40% measured in most years before 2013. (Gallup
One of the recommendations made was to bring employees back to work to have more in person collaboration cultivate a deeper sense of being known by one’s peers. Which attests to the fact we have lost natural human contact by being unnaturally divided by the wall of the digital screen. As a result of these technologies we are anonymous, unaccountable to others. We more easily take online risks because they don’t have any real life consequences. This creates a safe, controlled, disembodied world that fosters increasing indifference and mistrust. Faith also means trust that is lost is not only in God but also the goodness of our fellow man. This is a huge problem for the basic necessity to have quality of life is meaningful relationships. As Aristotle reminds us, ‘Without friends life is not worth living even if we possess all other goods.’
The crisis of loneliness in our relationship with others reflects the crisis in our separation from God. Sin is to be turned in on oneself not looking out to the other who reflects God’s image. Openness to trust in God will seep into our relationships others and the first step and remedy is FAITH In God, the end of all our searching.
‘I think of the great Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, who wrote War and Peace, Anna Karenina. He also wrote another book called A Confession in which he told his life story.
And he described how as a child he rejected Christianity. And he started to search for meaning and purpose in his life. And at first he thought: ‘Life’s just about having a good time! Just make the most of life! Have fun!’ And he entered the social whirl of Moscow and St Petersburg. He drank heavily, he was promiscuous; he led basically a wild life. And he found that kind of left him feeling a bit empty.
He thought, ‘Well, maybe money is the answer.’ He’d inherited a lot of money, and he started to make a lot of money out of his books as well. And he found money’s kind of like seawater: the more you drink of it, the more thirsty you are. That didn’t satisfy.
And he thought, ‘Well, maybe like fame, importance, success – if I can be really successful.’ And he wrote what the Encyclopaedia Britannica describes as one of the two or three greatest novels in the whole of world literature. It still didn’t satisfy him.
And Tolstoy saw that that wasn’t the answer.
And he thought, ‘Well, maybe it’s all about kind of relationships: marriage, family life.’ He married in 1862 and had a very happy family and thirteen children – which he said distracted him from his search for the overall meaning of life!
He was surrounded by what looked like – everyone looking at Tolstoy would say, ‘Wow, you’ve got everything! You’ve got complete happiness.’ And he said yet one question drove him to the verge of suicide, and the question was this: ‘What meaning has my life that the inevitability of death does not destroy?’
And he started to think, and he thought: ‘Well, the philosophers must have an answer to this. The scientists must have an answer.’ So he started to search in every field of science and philosophy to answer to the question ‘Why do I live?’ And the only answer he came up with was this: ‘In the infinity of space and the infinity of time, infinitely small particles mutate with infinite complexity.’ He didn’t find that very satisfying!
And then he looked around at his friends, his contemporaries, and they weren’t really even facing up to the question. And eventually he found, in the very poor people of Russia, that they had found the answer in their faith in Jesus Christ.’ And concluded, ‘faith gives life a meaning.’ (Alpha, Is There More To Life Than this?)
Tolstoy’s story is told in his ‘Confessions’ the same genre tradition wrote started who wrote of his conversion story. St. Augustine put it this way, ‘Our hearts are restless until we findeth thee.’ God has placed eternity in man’s heart and only the eternal can satisfy the infinite longing of our hearts not to be found in knowledge though knowledge directs us Faith is completion where we find rest in transcendence. In closing I would like to draw for our consideration one final point the relationship of faith to mystery and humility. In our reading we heard from Pascal ‘reason reaches it’s last step once it realizes their lies infinite things beyond it’. There is a horizon of knowledge available to man that we cannot see analagous to a vast seascape and the veil of death we cannot see past. Faith places man into a posture of humility finite, limited up against vast dimensions such as being beneath a glorious cathedral or looking above the starry night sky. We are reminded God is God and man is not.
In my survey of some of the greatest minds from the ancient world to the present day I’ve found one trait in common. Each affirms the presence of mystery and soberly recognized in spite of their colossal intellectual talents they reach a precipice beyond which human reason cannot surpass. Johannes Wolfgang von Goethe the polymath of Germany Poet, Scientist Statesman wrote in a letter to a friend one month before he died in February 1832,
‘We must learn to realize what we have seen and recognized in the simplest forms must also be supposed and credited in the complex ones. For the simple conceals itself in the manifold, and this is the point for me faith enters in, which is not the beginning but the end of all knowledge.’
Ultimately the quest for understanding begins and ends with faith. Faith implicitly recognizes limitations are a gift extends into our practice, decision making and actions. We know all to well in our everyday experience of technology how perplexing and paralyzing vast options can be. On a single device we are available by phone call, text, email, social media platforms with news alerts. Anxiety Kierkegaard says is the dizzyness of freedom.’
Freedom on the contrary is not open to all options. It is as Immanuel Kant calls self imposed law to govern out actions to direct our lives to a determined end. It is taking the helm of the ship to guide according a determined course not to be tossed by the tumultuous elements of life’s storms. C.S. Lewis defines, ‘faith is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted in spite of changing your moods.’ So when Christ said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’. The life of faith is not content abstract knowledge. Contemplation leads to action with our whole way of being in relationship to truth which is not merely a teaching but the Divine Son of God. Activities of prayer, meditation on scripture, attending church prevents our vessels drifting away from the course of faith and to voyage onward to our celestial horizon. Amen.