Ratio et Fidei--part 1

Nonetheless, despite what I've written in previous posts, the question can still be asked: what specific relationship do reason and faith have? Or perhaps better said, how does faith, as itself a species of reason, inform cognition and the larger patterns of tacit rationality that include intuition, emotion, context, and bodily sensorium?

Truth has a deep connection to being prophet, priest, and steward. The Christian begins with the knowledge that Jesus is the Logos incarnate. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. . . . The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-4, 14). When John (under the Holy Spirit's inspiration) applied logos to Christ, he was making a radical claim, though it is a matter of debate how Greek or Hebrew his understanding was. Logos in Greek philosophy is an impersonal rational order that directs and controls the universe. Thus, John can claim that through the Word "all things were made." But he can also state that "The Word became flesh." That impersonal force, he tells us, is actually a personal Being who entered history. Jesus came to show us what God is like.

Rationality I have argued in various ways so far is incarnate, kenotic, and revelatory. If John is also invoking the ancient Hebrew notion of wisdom, then to be "full of grace and truth" is to express all that Jewish tradition claimed for sophia. Hebrew truth is lived truth, never offered in the abstract alone. This is not the same as American pragmatism. Truth is always experiential, active, and enacted.

Educationally we are called to teach students to unpack the Christ-centered pattern of the universe. The concept of a logos suggests that reality is inherently linguistic in structure, that we need words to relate to, understand, and exist with the world. It equally implies that an order and harmony exists in creation that is uncoverable, and for this too, we need words. Wisdom is found in abiding by this structure and harmony, and in Christ alone is this experienced in any coherent fashion. Furthermore, it is Christ the Logos who shows us the pattern by which we relate to the cosmos and more importantly to the cosmos' Creator. Language only has meaning in the end because God has ordered the creation.