I wonder sometimes what draws folks to the Bible? If it had been a medical text, would we pick it up? If it would be a children’s “Highlight” magazine would we give it a second thought? Yet, this Book called the Bible about a God that doesn’t exist, that contains stories that are not true, about a future we laugh at, causes us so much concern that articles are written, debates waste valuable time, and many moments spent in private thought of “What If!” The fact that much time, energy, and thought is spend on this subject for some unknown reason makes me wonder about the “What If.”

“For the atheist no proof is sufficient, for the believer no proof is necessary.” Sorry I can’t remember the author of this snappy little quote. However, I do believe we should bear in mind the beautiful symmetry of faith and reason, an argument that was so elegantly developed and explicated in Pope John Paul II’s magisterial encyclical “Fides et Ratio”. Indeed, modern thought appears to have abandoned the quest for transcendent truth while concentrating on the limits of human cognitive ability. We should make use of the human capacity to know the truth rather than accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned. “Credo ut intellegam” – the profound relationship between the knowledge of faith and the knowledge of reason. Reason and faith cannot be separated without “diminishing” the human capacity to know oneself, the world, and God. Nor, according to JP II, is there any reason for “competition” between reason and faith. On the contrary, “each contains the other, and each has its own scope for action”. In sum, we are on a journey of discovery, a search for truth that cannot be halted. The two modes of knowledge lead to truth in all its fullness.