ENCYCLICAL LETTER
FIDES ET RATIO
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
JOHN PAUL II
TO THE BISHOPS
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
ON THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN FAITH AND REASON

My Venerable Brother Bishops,
Health and the Apostolic Blessing!

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

Faith (from the New Catholic Encyclopedia, found at newadvent.org; public domain)

I. THE MEANING OF THE WORD
(Pistis, fides). In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word means essentially steadfastness, cf. Exod., xvii, 12, where it is used to describe the strengthening of Moses' hands; hence it comes to mean faithfulness, whether of God towards man (Deuteronomy 32:4) or of man towards God (Ps. cxviii, 30). As signifying man's attitude towards God it means trustfulness or fiducia. It would, however, be illogical to conclude that the word cannot, and does not, mean belief or faith in the Old Testament for it is clear that we cannot put trust in a person's promises without previously assenting to or believing in that person's claim to such confidence. Hence even if it could be proved that the Hebrew word does not in itself contain the notion of belief, it must necessarily presuppose it. But that the word does itself contain the notion of belief is clear from the use of the radical, which in the causative conjugation, or Hiph'il, means "to believe", e.g. Gen., xv, 6, and Deut., i, 32, in which latter passage the two meanings -- viz. of believing and of trusting -- are combined. That the noun itself often means faith or belief, is clear from Hab., ii, 4, where the context demands it. The witness of the Septuagint is decisive; they render the verb by pisteuo, and the noun by pistis; and here again the two factors, faith and trust, are connoted by the same term. But that even in classical Greek pisteuo was used to signify believe, is clear from Euripides (Helene, 710), logois d'emoisi pisteuson tade, and that pistis could mean "belief" is shown by the same dramatist's theon d'ouketi pistis arage (Medea, 414; cf. Hipp., 1007). In the New Testament the meanings "to believe" and "belief", for pisteon and pistis, come to the fore; in Christ's speech, pistis frequently means "trust", but also "belief" (cf. Matthew 8:10). In Acts it is used objectively of the tenets of the Christians, but is often to be rendered "belief" (cf. xvii, 31; xx, 21; xxvi, . In Romans, xiv, 23, it has the meaning of "conscience" -- "all that is not of faith is sin" -- but the Apostle repeatedly uses it in the sense of "belief" (cf. Romans 4 and Galatians 3). How necessary it is to point this out will be evident to all who are familiar with modern theological literature; thus, when a writer in the "Hibbert Journal", Oct., 1907, says, "From one end of the Scripture to the other, faith is trust and only trust", it is hard to see how he would explain 1 Cor. xiii, 13, and Heb., xi, 1. The truth is that many theological writers of the present day are given to very loose thinking, and in nothing is this so evident as in their treatment of faith. In the article just referred to we read: "Trust in God is faith, faith is belief, belief may mean creed, but creed is not equivalent to trust in God." A similar vagueness was especially noticeable in the "Do we believe?" controversy- one correspondent says- "We unbelievers, if we have lost faith, cling more closely to hope and -- the greatest of these -- charity" ("Do we believe?", p. 180, ed. W. L. Courtney, 1905). Non-Catholic writers have repudiated all idea of faith as an intellectual assent, and consequently they fail to realize that faith must necessarily result in a body of dogmatic beliefs. "How and by what influence", asks Harnack, "was the living faith transformed into the creed to be believed, the surrender to Christ into a philosophical Christology?" (quoted in Hibbert Journal, loc. cit.).

in a nonreligius household and have been an atheist all my life. I just discovered this web site after seeing it on Nightline, and I just have to say that I find it quite refreshing. I have in the past attended the Ethical Society, which is great, but they lack fire. Free thinkers are under attack in this society, and we need to fight for our place, just as hard as the religious fundamentalists. Hopefully we have a lot more appealing message. Keep up the good work.

This is The Instruction of God in which there can be no
doubt. If you accept a part of this Instruction and reject
the rest, then reject it all, that would be better for you. If
you accept all of this Instruction, surely that is a
supreme good.
Asana Bodhitharta
God is True, “gods” are false. No being can equal or
surpass the penultimate rank of The God. There are no
equivalents of magnitude in His entire creation. He
prays to no one and He worships no one. He is not any
of His creations, yet all His creations came forth from
out of His will to create.
The fear of disobedience to God is the beginning and

RRS personalized for Texans..

My name is Brandon Stephens, Erostratus, and I live in a small town in western Ky. Everyone around me are unconscious believers. I would like to see society cure their nueroses and accept fact.

I denounce the works of satan and any copyright infringements of productions or reproductions portending to the deification of a noun or otherwise which by intent would bring harm through the occultivation or rendering of severe and irrivocable damage to hetero-erectus or any or all of its lineage with the exclusion of the class of primates which has showed a failure within the past 100,000 years or so to evolve.

I denounce Satan, Santa Claus, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas or any of the other nominal personalities which people may emulate or follow including Stalin, Hitler, and especially Torquemada basically because they were not (pardon the expression) god.