While reading Pope Francis's first encylical, I was reminded of Chris Carter's admonition: 'the truth is out there.' The thematic angst that unified his series The X-files is akin to the fear of a totalizing truth that informs free and democratic peoples and governments. Lumen Fidei drives to the heart of the unspoken hermeneutic of suspicion brought to bear on 'the truth:'
Truth nowadays is
often reduced to the
subjective authenticity
of the individual, valid
only for the life of the
individual. A common
truth intimidates us,
for we identify it with
the intransigent demands
of totalitarian systems.
But if truth is a truth
of love, if it is a
truth disclosed in
personal encounter with
the Other and with
others, then it can be
set free from its
enclosure in individuals
and become part of the
common good. As a truth
of love, it is not one
that can be imposed by
force; it is not a truth
that stifles the
individual. Since it is
born of love, it can
penetrate to the heart,
to the personal core of
each man and woman.
Clearly, then, faith is
not intransigent, but
grows in respectful
coexistence with others.
One who believes may not
be presumptuous; on the
contrary, truth leads to
humility, since
believers know that,
rather than ourselves
possessing truth, it is
truth which embraces and
possesses us. Far from
making us inflexible,
the security of faith
sets us on a journey; it
enables witness and
dialogue with all [II, 34].
Francis speaks of a truth that is not arrived, has not yet been received: a truth in potentiality. Such a truth is poised to embrace the 'common good' in its availability to the 'encounter with the Other.' The pope inverts the relationship between truth and the individual as it resides in contemporary discouse by relocating it outside the subjectivity of the individual.
This truth is what faith is made of. In explicating Is. 7 [II, 23ff], the pope describes King Ahaz's dilemma. Isaiah advises the king that faith in God, not an alliance with the Assyrians, will secure his interests. By grounding Ahaz in the memory of a trustworthy and faithful God, Isaiah prepares the king for a living faith buttressed by knowledge and truth. And so we moderns too are challenged and admonished to stand in faith, or, perhaps not stand at all.
In
contemporary culture, we
often tend to consider
the only real truth to
be that of technology:
truth is what we succeed
in building and
measuring by our
scientific know-how,
truth is what works and
what makes life easier
and more comfortable.
Nowadays this appears as
the only truth that is
certain, the only truth
that can be shared, the
only truth that can
serve as a basis for
discussion or for common
undertakings. Yet at the
other end of the scale
we are willing to allow
for subjective truths of
the individual, which
consist in fidelity to
his or her deepest
convictions, yet these
are truths valid only for
that individual and not
capable of being proposed to
others in an effort to serve
the common good. But Truth
itself, the truth which
would comprehensively
explain our life as
individuals and in society,
is regarded with suspicion [II, 25].
Modernism loves its meta-narrative. Science and technology are its gods, and its methods and products are its religions. The truth is whatever works; were it to stop working, another truth will take its place. Apart from the immense practically of such an applied pragmatism, the resultant relativism of any idea of a 'common good' astonishes even the most complacent among us. Most cynically, the common good is whatever the economic and political currents determine it to be. Modernism cannot finally look to an overarching human project, just the many projects that emerge from time to time in election cycles or corporate strategic planning, even as technology, seeking meaningful application, sometimes provides little more than bland palliation.
Lumen Fidei seeks to contextualize radical faith not within any given culture but within authentic truth and knowledge. Indeed, faith without both is not salvific, but merely sentiment. Moreover, the encyclical grounds faith, knowledge and truth in memory as an antidote for a certain collective amnesia of the past, of tradition, of God's breaking into the created order, God's entering into history. Indeed, this document presents an invitation to ways of knowing beyond pure empiricism and pure reason.
My purpose in this post cannot be to comment completely on the systematic development that structures Lumen Fidei. Rather, I mentioned a few of its observations and exhortations. Much will be said of the encyclical, for it is the nexus between two papacies (I see no reason to doubt the assertions that Benedict had a palpable hand in this document, continuing as it does in the style and themes of Deus Caritas Est ), and it is so very pastoral in its message.
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