Benedict XVI on Science, Philosophy, & Faith

True science and true philosophy can never contradict the Faith, a fact which Benedict as both a theologian and a philosopher understood.

From The Imaginative Conservative

By David Deavel, PhD

While Benedict XVI may not himself have made great contributions to the natural sciences, he made what is much more important: a contribution to understanding a world in which the truth is one, is God’s, and, from atoms to archangels, is capable of being seen as connected.

A great deal has been written about the late Pope Benedict XVI. One area not often remarked upon is that of his contributions to the dialogue among theology, philosophy, and natural sciences. But both as a thinker and a churchman he was an indefatigable worker who strived to make the conversations among science, theology, and philosophy a matter of argument toward truth and not mere quarreling about territory.

First, his own official actions opened a space for honest dialogue about the relationship between Christians, in particular the Catholic Church, and science. Strikingly, in a contemporary world in which distrust has been said to (and sometimes does) characterize religious believers and scientists, Ratzinger’s words and deeds demonstrate a fearless belief that reason can bring us to knowledge of the truth.  Joseph Ratzinger’s fearlessness concerning science was made clear when he was serving as the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the chief doctrinal office of the pope, and helped to open up Vatican Archives to researchers investigating whether Church courts treated medieval scientists, including Galileo, fairly. In gratefulness for this work, two astronomers, L. D. Schmadel and F. Borngen, successfully proposed naming a newly-discovered asteroid “Ratzinger 8861” after the German then-cardinal. Indeed, this openness is a characteristic of his entire career.

The modern world is considered a very difficult place for many believers because of the pressure of various secular groups, particularly in the modern west. One option taken by many has been to reject the fruits of modern science in the name of theological truth claims and older understandings of history and science formed under a more congenial climate for religious belief. This is often called fundamentalism. Another popular option is to take the fruit of modern scientific and historical claims as alternative dogmas, then reorient and redefine all theological and moral teachings around them. This is often called liberalism.

Joseph Ratzinger steered between this modern Scylla and Charybdis. Ratzinger’s consistent position, in numerous books, essays, and official actions as a prelate, was always to take seriously the claims of scientific research because he understood that truth is one and that a proper understanding of scientific claims will be advantageous in understanding theological claims. But he also criticized, most notably in his famous (some would say “infamous”) 2006 Regensburg Lecture, the tendency of modern science to reduce reason to technical proficiency and to think of certainty only in terms of a mathematical and empirical approach. He recognized that such an understanding of reason has narrowed the horizons of scientific inquiry while simultaneously erroneously granting “science” the authority to speak fully about the human condition. The end result of this impoverished understanding is that everything about humans that does not fit into the narrow band of the natural sciences is then considered “subjective.” “This,” he said, was “a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.”

Ratzinger’s point was succinct and fundamental. A science without a deeper understanding of rationality than what is available from modern natural or social scientific method is in danger of being rejected by human beings who know that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in the modern scientific project. One might say that the fact that there is a heaven is the most important fact. The end result of a false understanding of reason is two-fold: 1) encouraging the pathologies of faith and reason he described, which might be characterized by irrationality and violence in religious groups as well as in modern secular groups; and 2) an inability to work toward a dialogue among world cultures, most of which understand that cutting off the question of the divine from the rational is “an attack on their most profound convictions.” This truncated “reason” rightly inspires suspicion—and undercuts any claims of science built on this incomplete and fundamentally amoral foundation.

But more critically, a broadening of the understanding of what is rational is essential to the modern scientific project itself. Unless we accept that what exists, including the natural world, is ordered and can be known by our reason, modern scientific method collapses. Scientific inquiry in the natural and social sciences is inextricably dependent upon the exercise of reason beyond scientific inquiry. As he noted, again in The Regensburg Address:

Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought—to philosophy and theology.

As one can see from this brief examination of one part of his thought, Joseph Ratzinger’s contribution to the human question is one that actually is in service of religion and philosophy and of the sciences. Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option,” is famously named for both Benedict of Nursia and this pope he calls “the second Benedict.” The main aspect of this project is enabling religious people to create and sustain tightly bound religious communities that will resist the various religious and rationalist pathologies of our day. While there is a great deal of truth in this side of Dreher’s position, a truly Ratzingerian “Benedict Project” will also work to save what are the legitimate fruits of modernity in a world in which these fruits—and the idea of reason itself!—are seriously in danger.

Admittedly, this is only a very hasty account of what Joseph Ratzinger contributed to the question of the relationship of science and religion. To this, I could add many pages about his contributions to philosophical and theological accounts of what it means to be human in the world today. Ratzinger is, after all, the author of dozens of books, three papal encyclicals (really four, given that Pope Francis’s Lumen Fidei, is largely the work of his predecessor), and countless articles, essays, and addresses that attempt to shed light on questions of ethics, politics, economics, ecology, aesthetics, worship, and music—not to mention the more properly theological questions about the nature of the rational God who created this world to be explored by scientists and scholars.

There have been few people who are in the position of offering a model for thinking about these questions in a learned, witty, and gentle way that invites others to join in this project of inquiry. To give but one example of the way in which Joseph Ratzinger was capable of bringing faith and reason to bear in discussions that affect humanity, his January 19, 2004, dialogue with J Habermas on “The Pre-political moral foundations in the construction of a free civil society” showed his capacity for dialogue on the highest intellectual levels. What struck observers at the time was not only the tone of the debate—pleasant and civil—but also the high level of agreement that could be brought to bear between two figures so different. Habermas did not convert to Catholicism on the stage but was shown to have a much greater intellectual sympathy with classical Catholic thought than many of his followers perhaps would have granted. Ratzinger’s ability to speak in the languages of faith and reason in a unified way is impressive even to the great secular skeptics. And what is so remarkable about this great intellect is that his writing is so clear that even undergraduates can read and understand him.

While Pope Benedict may not himself have made great contributions to the natural sciences, he made what is much more important: a contribution to understanding a world in which the truth is one, is God’s, and, from atoms to archangels, is capable of being seen as connected.