“On November 5, 2023, the entire freshman class participated in a mandatory training titled “Continuing Education: Diversity, Inclusion and Community.” University representatives told students that they could under no circumstances miss the session and would be reprimanded if absent”…read more (12/22/23)
“Kudos to President Dudley for defending Matt Walsh’s campus speech, despite substantial faculty and student blowback against the event … But the battle for a campus open to different ideas is not yet over. University administrators can still use opaque rules to stymie event planners and deter campus discourse”…read more (10/5/23)
“Six weeks prior to the commencement of the [1924] Democratic bloodbath, Washington and Lee University students had convened their already well established quadrennial mock convention. The W&L fireworks began with a bitter — and prophetic — platform fight over Prohibition”…read more (2/15/23)
President George Washington picks Liberty Hall Academy to receive his gift of stock.
Letters from a former First Lady speak highly on one of W&L’s greatest leaders.
A kind commendation of General Lee by President Roosevelt during the Lee Centennial of 1907
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“I personally do not believe the Single Sanction should be gotten rid of,” Yoong said. “However, if that opinion is shared by some students, it should still be represented and cannot be a cause of removal from the jury in an open hearing”…read more (12/5/24)
Participants share their opinions on the holiday and its connection to Washington and Lee University.
Yoong met with The Spectator and discussed his views about the Executive Committee.
Teaching the Constitution, serving the community, and educating the whole person are goals for Southern Virginia University’s new president.
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Fides Et Ratio: On Faith and Reason
Brother Guy Consalmagno’s VMI visit raises important questions on faith and reason.
(Divine Mechanics by Camille Flammarion. | SOURCE: Adobe Stock)
Scientists are well aware that “the search for truth, even when it concerns a finite reality of the world or of man, is never-ending, but always points beyond to something higher than the immediate object of study, to the questions which give access to Mystery.”
These words appeared in paragraph 106 of Pope Saint John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio (on Faith and Reason), which he wrote to Catholic bishops in 1998. Brother Guy Consolmagno echoed Pope John Paul’s sentiment in his recent visit to the Virginia Military Institute.
Consolmagno, the head of the Vatican Observatory in Tuscon, Arizona, visited VMI to discuss faith and reason. After explaining the observatory's astrophysical work and expounding on the Jesuit tradition of encountering God through scientific endeavors, Consolmagno fielded questions from the audience. One Washington and Lee student asked a question that led Brother Consolmagno to discuss concordism.
The theory of concordism seeks to conjoin scientific truths and advancements with Biblical narratives. For example, a concordist might hold that television is predicted by Revelation 1:7, which states that “every eye will see him,” referring to the second coming of Christ.
In response, Consolmagno warned against artificially grafting scientific theories onto biblical interpretations. For example, given the centrality of mankind in the divine drama recounted by the Bible, some medieval philosophers concluded that a geocentric view of the universe was most compatible with Christian truth. After all, after the making of light, the following days of creation were all spent creating Earthly features and creatures.
Consolmagno remarked that people today look down upon their forefathers for being blinded by dogma and unable to see scientific truths that are considered fundamental today. Geocentricism is a primary example of such a failure in scientific understanding. However, in 500 years, who is to say whether Catholic Priest George LeMaitre’s Big Bang Theory will still hold physical water?
While it may be true that “let there be light” appears to be compatible with a scientific theory which holds that the universe began with a large explosion, reading the Big Bang into Genesis is just as much a fool’s errand as reading geocentrism into the same text. In either case, to read a scientific theory into the Biblical narrative of creation is to misunderstand and even bastardize both the science of the natural world and the philosophy of faith.
It is self-evident that everything in this world, whether it be a thing or an idea, is constrained by certain boundaries. An object may not exceed the speed of light. Every living thing must die, and time must always move forward, but never backward.
Likewise, science, reason, and faith each have boundaries. This is not an indictment of reason, science, or faith but rather a proper bridling of each respective discipline, which allows growth without excess and allows all three to inspire and enrich each other.
Modern man understands that faith has its limits, though he often increases these limits so far as to choke his faith to the point of death. In an abstract sense, faith is a part of our daily lives. I have faith that the chair in which I am sitting will not collapse underneath me. Through the basic principles of physics, I have faith that the force of friction is dependent entirely on the normal force and the coefficient of friction, and is entirely independent of the contact area of the two surfaces inducing friction, and I believe this despite never having proven it for myself.
However, faith in the context of religion has a more specific definition. It is not a belief in something, but a trust in the one creator: “Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1814).
Faith is held "because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived,” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 156) as opposed to the direct result of deductive reasoning. Faith is the only logical response to the existence of a creator God who transcends any categorization. Though he transcends definition, the existence of such a God may be deduced from reason alone, as has been done by Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy, St. Thomas with his Five Proofs, and other philosophers throughout history.
God created all things we examine empirically, and our empiricism is a mere mirror of his divine intellect. Therefore, since he transcends science and is its creator, he is beyond the scope of its study. An artist may create a work that bedazzles for centuries; however, people who see his work may never use their own means of interpretation to override the artist’s creative intent. Likewise, God himself is the creator of reason, so our reason may never override his divine revelation.
Moreover, the placement of faith in God is the result of God’s nature, which we understand to be truthful because he has revealed himself as such through his divine scriptures. Thus, while a scientific model such as the Big Bang theory could be worthy of faith in the colloquial sense (and to the same degree that one ascribes to the equation for the force of friction), such a theory can never be awarded faith in the theological sense. The Big Bang theory is not a component of God’s divine revelation, which alone can be believed without need of empirical evidence.
Likewise, reason itself and its child science are subject to certain constraints. While a theory such as String Theory can explain how the universe works, it cannot explain why it works the way that it does.
If you want to know how the sky is blue, you should consult a scientist. He or she can explain that blue has a shorter wavelength, which leads to a greater scattering of blue light within the atmosphere relative to other colors. If you want to know why the sky is blue, science has no answer. Science deals empirically with natural processes, not with the reasons why the material processes are what they are.
Why didn’t the creator make red light more scatterable than blue light, and thus the color of the sky? Maybe because a red sky would feel dark and foreboding. But why do we associate red with certain feelings, and blue with others? Again, maybe the psychologist could provide a working mechanism, but it would take a philosopher, theologian, or maybe even a poet to explain why the mechanism is so.
In many cases, the reasoning behind mechanisms is simply too much for the human intellect to fully grasp. How the sky is blue is a matter easily explained by scientists, but why it is blue is a much harder question to tackle.
In all likelihood, the poets give us more insight into this query than anyone else. Lord Byron remarks in The Dream that the characters in his dream: “were canopied by the blue sky, \ So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful \ That God alone was to be seen in heaven.”
This understanding of the color of the sky is in no way empirical, but it need not be. The physics of optics and the study of light in no way preclude the place of faith to explain the mystical role of the blue sky in our spiritual life. Not just with the physical world, but even more so “our vision of the face of God is always fragmentary and impaired by the limits of our understanding. Faith alone makes it possible to penetrate the mystery in a way that allows us to understand it coherently” (Fides et Ratio 13).
Therefore, to read the Big Bang theory into Genesis, to name one example, is a fool’s errand. Rather, if we understand science and faith as constrained to their proper realms, each one is allowed to flourish. Faith may dictate that God created from nothing and that all he created was good. The goodness, and related intelligibility, of creation provide the framework for all science.
In order for science to provide humanity with useful knowledge, the object of science itself must be logical and consistent. Moreover, in order for the natural world to be worth studying, it must be good. Faith provides these two foundations.
Likewise, reason and science may dictate the laws of nature. Since these laws were created by God, understanding them leads to an enhanced understanding of the nature of God. Case and point, Maupertius’s Principle of least action has a direct equivalent to the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity in the field of ethics, and the principle of providence in the theological realm.
In the words of Pope John Paul II, understanding faith and reason in their proper contexts permits us to see that “our vision of the face of God is always fragmentary and impaired by the limits of our understanding. Faith alone makes it possible to penetrate the mystery in a way that allows us to understand it coherently.”
