In his first published work after being elected to the See of Peter, Pope Benedict XVI addresses the challenges facing the West at the beginning of the third millennium. Entitled The Europe of Benedict in the Crisis of the Cultures, the book focuses on the renewal of Western society, but curiously Pope Benedict spends much of his time defending belief in God, answering agnostic and atheistic objections to belief, and urging Christians to witness to the truth of the gospel. One could even argue that the main thrust of the book is apologetics.
But as his ideas unfold, the reason for his focus on belief in God becomes obvious rather than curious. After all, just as our individual moral choices are based in some way on our acceptance or rejection of God, so too are the choices that make up a society’s public moral culture. That is why God is at the center of Benedict’s plan for the renewal of Europe: The future of the West is only as strong as Western belief in God and Jesus Christ.
Pope Benedict proposes that there is something we need more than laws, programs, and educational efforts:
What we need above all in this moment of history are men who, through an enlightening and living faith, render God credible in this world. . . . We need men whose intellects are enlightened by the light of God and whose hearts have been opened by God in such a way that their intellects can speak to the intellects of others and their hearts can open the hearts of others (my translation from the original Italian).
In short, what we need most in this world are Christians who know and live their faith. The Pope has issued an apologetical mandate to all believers: Defend, spread, and live the Christian faith, or else Western civilization will self-destruct.
Faith: The Foundation
Benedict recognizes that there are certain trends in contemporary Western thought that belittle or deny the value of religious belief. These voices claim that faith is too childish for the maturity of modern man, that faith reduces human dignity and makes man a slave to superstition and authoritarianism. In our public discourse about morality, they claim, the only knowledge that counts comes from science. Ideas about God or human nature are said to belong to the realm of private judgment and should not influence our public life.
The Pope responds in an interesting manner. Instead of first defending the dignity and reality of faith, he analyzes the types of knowledge relied upon by those who deny faith. He shows that there are many actions in their daily lives that are based not on scientific “certainty” or personal experience but rather on the testimony of others whom they trust.
He points out that we who live in this age of technology constantly place our trust in science—trusting it even with our lives. We trust the experts without personally verifying their knowledge.
“Who can calculate or verify the statics of a building?” Benedict asks. “And the functioning of an elevator? Not to mention the sphere of electricity and electronics with which we are more familiar. What about the reliability of a pharmaceutical compound?”
Yet we enter buildings every day without fearing they will fall down on us. We ride the elevator without fear of plunging to our deaths. We depend on electricity and electronics without needing to know how the lights in our house work. We take medicine without worrying about it poisoning us.
This natural faith (as opposed to our Catholic faith, given by God through the supernatural action of grace) is the source of much of our knowledge, the foundation of many of our actions, and the basis of our common life together. The Pope writes:
A faith of this type is indispensable for our life . . . for the simple reason that, were we not to have this faith, nothing would function anymore: Each one would always have to start all over. But, more profoundly . . . human life becomes impossible when one cannot place trust in others anymore, when one cannot rely on their experience, on their knowledge.
That is, rather than being childish and immature, the practice of faith is the very foundation of human existence.
Components of Faith
After discussing our use of natural faith in everyday life, Benedict analyzes the structure of the act of faith and identifies three principal components of faith. His analysis offers us insights into the role of apologetics in helping others respond to God’s gift of faith.
In the first component, the believer turns to someone who is an expert on the question, someone who is qualified and worthy of faith. In the case of natural faith, it might be a scientist or an engineer to whose expertise we trust our lives. This is the stage in which the believer completely relies on the knowledge of the other. In a Christian context, this component is the “expertise” of Jesus Christ concerning the salvation of man. The Pope makes it clear that the essence of Christian faith is a participation in the Son’s knowledge of the Father. If we are to accept Jesus, we first must be confident that he is a trustworthy messenger of God’s plan for us.
In reflecting on this component of faith, we gain an apologetical insight: the necessity of showing others that Jesus Christ tells the truth about God and his will for us. But before even discussing Jesus, we need arguments for the existence of God and the reality of our spiritual dimension and freedom. Then we can help others understand and see the truth of Jesus’ message, his life, his deeds, and the lives of those who have followed him. We can help others see the trustworthiness of Christ as the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, a miracle worker who spoke the truth, and the founder of a Church that has witnessed to his truth by its constant teaching, the miracles worked in its midst, the holy lives of its members, and its survival through history.
Proclaim the Truth
The second component in the act of faith is when the believer becomes ever more convinced that the belief is true through the experiential knowledge of the multitude who have gone before him. In other words, the believer becomes more convinced that the engineering of a bridge is correct when many people drive across it and it does not collapse. At this stage of faith, the believer increases his own knowledge by trusting in the personal testimony of others.
The believer, after having considered the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ, looks to those who have gone before him in belief. What has Jesus Christ done in the lives of those who believe in him? For Pope Benedict, the witness of the faith is as important as the claims made for the truth of Christianity. If arguments for the trustworthiness of Christ are instances of “intellect speaking to intellect,” then the testimony of the Christian experience is “heart speaking to heart.” The Pope emphasizes that “only through men who are touched by God can God return to make his appeal to men.”
Benedict is telling us that apologists not only must defend and share the faith, but they also must live the faith. Our arguments for the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ are going to be effective only if we let his light shine forth in our lives.
The third component of the act of faith, according to Pope Benedict, is the verification of the knowledge in the daily experience of the believer himself. At this stage, it can be said that the believer shares fully in the knowledge of the expert. He has experienced it for himself and is able to consent to its truthfulness. He can say with all his being that the bridge is built well, even if he cannot yet give the mathematical evidence of his claim.
This reminds us that it is necessary for the believer to experience Jesus Christ for himself. Arguments and testimony are not enough; the believer must allow the Lord to communicate his truth and love directly to him. Indeed, this is something of a humility check for apologists, as the openness of the believer depends entirely on God. We can make sure only that we are not obstacles to such openness.
This dimension of the act of faith reminds us that faith is a gift from God, not something that we can create in others by our work. While our apologetic work is necessary, it is not sufficient. In the final analysis, the believer must accept Jesus Christ with his free will.
By analyzing the structure of natural faith, the Pope has given us insight into the structure of Christian faith. That insight makes us more ready to help others receive that gift in our apologetical work. But what about those who accept natural faith but deny the plausibility of faith in things that cannot be measured or experienced with the senses? What do we say to those who claim that knowledge of the existence of God exceeds the limits of human reason?
Can We Refuse to Choose?
This position is called agnosticism. It is common among today’s intellectual elite and therefore very influential in Western culture. Agnosticism does not deny the existence of God but says that we cannot know whether God exists. The agnostic, according to Benedict, decides to abstain from answering questions about God and human destiny, all the while waiting with vigilance and devotion for science to provide the answers.
Benedict cautions against a hasty reply to agnosticism from believers. Rather, following its logic and examining whether it offers a plausible account of human knowledge and existence, he invites us to examine it fully. He frames the agnostic problem in very clear terms: “Can we ourselves, as men, purely and simply set aside the question of God—that is, the question of our origin, our final destiny, and the measure of our being?” Can human beings simply choose not to answer this question, which determines the way we answer so many other questions?
Agnosticism, the Pope explains, presupposes that the question of God is purely theoretical—and this is its fundamental error. The question of God is “eminently practical,” having consequences in all spheres of life. Those who hold the agnostic view do not understand that the question of God is related to every other question in our lives. They do not understand that the decisions we make in the littlest details of our lives make reference in some way to whether we accept God.
In the end, the agnostic must make a choice. He cannot escape the question of God. He must live as if God does not exist, which amounts to atheism, or he must live as if God does exist. In short, agnosticism does not work. While it seems honest and humble in theory, the Pope shows that in daily life agnosticism “slips out of [the agnostic’s] hands like a bar of soap; it dissolves itself because it is not possible to escape the choice that he precisely wants to avoid.”
We cannot avoid the question of God. When discerning how we ought to order our lives together, we must choose to either include God or exclude him. There is no other way: We are either theists or atheists. Either the One who made us and knows what is best for us is in charge, or we make ourselves vulnerable to the law of power. Therefore, we must ask whether we can know God through reason or we must accept atheism.
Reasonable to Believe?
For Pope Benedict, whether we can know God through reason is critical for the future of Western civilization. If it is possible through natural knowledge to know that God exists and to know something about his essence, then this knowledge is theoretically accessible to everyone, whether or not they are religious believers. Moreover, this knowledge can be a sure foundation for modern Western democracy. But if we cannot have natural knowledge of God, then we are left with revealed religion as the sole point of reference for God’s place in culture, which is difficult in a pluralistic democracy.
Rather than beginning with arguments for the existence of God, the Pope turns to Paul’s letter to the Romans. He observes that Paul was faced with the same problems in first-century Rome that we face today. The Romans—the superpower of the world at the time—had begun to fall into moral decay and disorder. They had forgotten their tradition and their customs—the fruit of the virtuous reflection of their forefathers. Their civilization was ripping apart at the seams because they were being governed by the arbitrary passions and whims of those in power.
“To this metaphysical and moral cynicism of a society in decadence, dominated only by the law of power, the apostle offers a surprising answer,” the Pope explains. “He declares that in reality their society knows God very well: ‘What can be known about God is plain to them’ (Rom. 1:19).”
In short, the Romans should know better than to act as if there were no God because “ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20). The Romans, says Paul, “by their wickedness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18).
Power, Truth, and Justice
By beginning with Romans, the Pope is speaking first to Christians. He is reminding us that God can be known through reason. As to proofs for the existence of God, it is up to us to learn them and make them, helping those who do not yet believe by carefully and charitably answering their objections. And there is much at stake here:
When man puts his egoism, pride, and comfort above the truth, everything in the end is turned upside down: What is adored is no longer God, to whom alone is owed adoration; the images, the appearances, the current opinions take hold of man. . . . What is against nature becomes the norm; the man that lives contrary to the truth also lives contrary to nature. His creativity is no longer at the service of good but becomes a genius and a refinement of evil. . . . A civilization of death is formed.
According to Pope Benedict, the history of humanity is marked by the battle between those who “suppress the truth” and those who live the truth free from injustice. He observes that there has never been a culture in the history of the world that has not made some reference to God but also that there has never been a culture without forces of injustice that seek to silence truth in favor of their own comfort, power, and profit.
In the history of religions, we find, although under different figures, the significant conflict between the knowledge of the one God and the attraction of other powers considered more dangerous, more close, and for that reason more important for man than the God who is distant and mysterious. All of history is marked by this strange dilemma between the non-violent or tranquil demand of the truth on the one hand and on the other hand the grab of profit and the need to live in good rapport with the powers that leave their mark on daily life.
But is this view of the world still valid in light of the technological advances of our time? Aren’t we solving all our problems by creating an increasingly more comfortable life? Won’t science eventually give us all the answers? The Pope observes that, even today, man still wants to know who he is and what he ought to do—questions that technology and hard science are incapable of answering satisfactorily. Even though there are theories that elevate the non-existence of God to the level of scientific fact, Benedict assures us that we ought not to fear:
That the rationality of the universe cannot be explained rationally on the basis of irrationality is an evident fact. For this reason, the Logos—the origin of everything—remains, more than ever, the best hypothesis. Even if it is a hypothesis, it is true that it demands on our part that we renounce the position of lordship and risk that of humble listening.
And yet, the Pope admits, there is a certain dimness surrounding the question of God. It is this dimness that pulls man away from his openness to God and toward the transitory joys of profit, pleasure, and power. If man is to enter into a relationship with God, God must take the initiative and reveal himself to man. It is in accepting this initiative of God that the dimness becomes light and man becomes fully alive.