Faith And Reason

When I visited St Paul Cathedral last month, I was intrigued by the symbolism in its architecture, which uses space to facilitate worship in the same way a musician uses harmony in hymnals.

And these two Angels sitting at the main entrance fired my imagination. The angel carrying a cross (Faith) standing opposite an angel carrying a torch (Reason/Science) signify tat ultimately there is no conflict between the two.

In a way, Pope Benedict's approach to civilisational dialogue here in reminiscent of the epochal contribution of St Aquinas, who lived at a time when aristotelian thought were brought in via contact with moslem scholars etc....

Aquinas realises the problem of relying on revelation and church tradition as authority on moral or religious issues when the other folks have other sources of authority in other scriptures/traditions...

His proposal (to resolve this impasse) is that there are some truths we can know by reason, apart from revelation... We can develop a "natural theology" from rationality, empirical observ etc not from special revelation in scripture or angels or prophets etc..

From here, we can show tat God exists and that the Church is divinely instituted (without appealing to revelation) and from then on, establish the authority of the church on moral/religious issues.

Of course today, this approach is not without controversy even among christians.
Some of our friends who identify with Emergent would probably wanna avoid the 'logocentric', privileged position of rationality to assess truth since there is no 'unbiased' person who thinks with absolute objectivity etc etc...

Some of our friends who are Reformed would reject natural theology because of a commitment to sola scriptura, tat what we know should start from scripture alone and nowhere else...

But that's where the Pope believes the Roman Catholic church should approach dialogue with our Muslim friends - based on rationality. (which is not altogether a bad idea, if u ask me) He may need all the diplomatic skills of his predecessor on top of his robust theological acumen, but let's watch and see...