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Yes, as Aristotle said already :
" the one who wants to know, has to believe ",
but also all beliefs necessitate reasonings.
So, how be a theologian today without having meditated beforehand fact that not only we transcend constantly the things for judging them, but also, that we are henceforth able of knowing matter's interior by penetrating in it ?,
we, being creative entity who animates us and who reasons by the I (me, ego, subject, spirit).
Thus, common understanding of the transcendence state and of the reason is completely changed because so that it is possible, this entity has to be transcendent on account of her nature (essence, order) and not after only her implication in man.
For example, our understanding differs much from the one of the pope Benedict XVI ; remember his speech at the University of Ratisbonne (on September 2006) concerning " Faith, Reason and the University".
Excerpts :
"I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.[1] It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor …
"God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death ...
Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance ...".
Certainly we do according acts that we can qualify of reasonable (what is quite different of : "we act according to the reason"),
but we can not speak of a reason which is creative, reason is not an "operator" ; actually, reason is a representative concept of faculties which enable recognitions, judgements, choices, …, creations and actions.
As for faith, evidently it is not fruit of the soul.
As the body, our physical identity, which is receptacle of biologic structures (the cells),
soul which is representative of our spiritual identity, is receptacle of the transcendent activities, of divine character, which characterize every being,
of transcendent activities that notably enable from expressing our world's understanding and our beliefs, when they emerge from consciousness state.
Philosophy and theology require, more than yesterday, precise concepts and a very big semantic rigour.
We adhere however to remark of Benedict XVI : the encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance.
Regrettably, the catholic theologians privileged biblical tradition to detriment of the Greek universalism, and shut themselves in a dogmatism from which, today, they do not know how they can manage to get out.
Let's specify besides, that this dehellenization process is anterior to singular spiritual orientations quoted by Pope :
"Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole. The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jaco.".
Fortunately, at this beginning of third millennium, the sciences, particularly neurobiology, enable a new and revolutionary understanding of the life's phenomenon.
This understanding that for the one who is in a research of primordial causes, necessitates another comprehensions of the reason, the consciousness and the thought,
incites notably to recognizing the world’s duality : cogito ergo mundus vivit (I think therefore world is living).
This understanding enables also, from postulating permanent implication in the reality, of a creative entity of transcendent order, but not omnipotent, what presupposes out of necessity :
an omnipotence, a supreme transcendence, God.
It is so, more that a commonplace synthesis between Neoplatonism (Plotinism) and Cartesianism.
When will these facts be recognized ?
Then and then only, a fruitful dialogue will be possible between the goodwill men.
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