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 16- "Wisdom
knows all and understands all" (Wis 9:11)
“Wisdom knows all and understands all” (Wis
9:11)
16. Sacred Scripture indicates
with remarkably clear cues how deeply related are the
knowledge conferred by faith and the knowledge conferred
by reason; and it is in the Wisdom literature that this
relationship is addressed most explicitly. What is
striking about these biblical texts, if they are read
without prejudice, is that they embody not only the faith
of Israel, but also the treasury of cultures and
civilizations which have long vanished. As if by special
design, the voices of Egypt and Mesopotamia sound again
and certain features common to the cultures of the
ancient Near East come to life in these pages which are
so singularly rich in deep intuition.
It is no accident that, when the
sacred author comes to describe the wise man, he portrays
him as one who loves and seeks the truth: “Happy the
man who meditates on wisdom and reasons intelligently,
who reflects in his heart on her ways and ponders her
secrets. He pursues her like a hunter and lies in wait on
her paths. He peers through her windows and listens at
her doors. He camps near her house and fastens his
tent-peg to her walls; he pitches his tent near her and
so finds an excellent resting-place; he places his
children under her protection and lodges under her
boughs; by her he is sheltered from the heat and he
dwells in the shade of her glory” (Sir 14:20-27).
For the inspired writer, as we
see, the desire for knowledge is characteristic of all
people. Intelligence enables everyone, believer and
non-believer, to reach “the deep waters” of
knowledge (cf. Prov 20:5). It is true that ancient Israel
did not come to knowledge of the world and its phenomena
by way of abstraction, as did the Greek philosopher or
the Egyptian sage. Still less did the good Israelite
understand knowledge in the way of the modern world which
tends more to distinguish different kinds of knowing.
Nonetheless, the biblical world has made its own
distinctive contribution to the theory of knowledge.
What is distinctive in the
biblical text is the conviction that there is a profound
and indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason
and the knowledge of faith. The world and all that
happens within it, including history and the fate of
peoples, are realities to be observed, analysed and
assessed with all the resources of reason, but without
faith ever being foreign to the process. Faith intervenes
not to abolish reason's autonomy nor to reduce its scope
for action, but solely to bring the human being to
understand that in these events it is the God of Israel
who acts. Thus the world and the events of history cannot
be understood in depth without professing faith in the
God who is at work in them. Faith sharpens the inner eye,
opening the mind to discover in the flux of events the
workings of Providence. Here the words of the Book of
Proverbs are pertinent: “The human mind plans the
way, but the Lord directs the steps” (16:9). This is
to say that with the light of reason human beings can
know which path to take, but they can follow that path to
its end, quickly and unhindered, only if with a rightly
tuned spirit they search for it within the horizon of
faith. Therefore, reason and faith cannot be separated
without diminishing the capacity of men and women to know
themselves, the world and God in an appropriate way.
17. There is thus no reason for
competition of any kind between reason and faith: each
contains the other, and each has its own scope for
action. Again the Book of Proverbs points in this
direction when it exclaims: “It is the glory of God
to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search
things out” (Prov 25:2). In their respective worlds,
God and the human being are set within a unique
relationship. In God there lies the origin of all things,
in him is found the fullness of the mystery, and in this
his glory consists; to men and women there falls the task
of exploring truth with their reason, and in this their
nobility consists. The Psalmist adds one final piece to
this mosaic when he says in prayer: “How deep to me
are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If
I try to count them, they are more than the sand. If I
come to the end, I am still with you” (139:17-18).
The desire for knowledge is so great and it works in such
a way that the human heart, despite its experience of
insurmountable limitation, yearns for the infinite riches
which lie beyond, knowing that there is to be found the
satisfying answer to every question as yet unanswered.
18. We may say, then, that
Israel, with her reflection, was able to open to reason
the path that leads to the mystery. With the Revelation
of God Israel could plumb the depths of all that she
sought in vain to reach by way of reason. On the basis of
this deeper form of knowledge, the Chosen People
understood that, if reason were to be fully true to
itself, then it must respect certain basic rules. The
first of these is that reason must realize that human
knowledge is a journey which allows no rest; the second
stems from the awareness that such a path is not for the
proud who think that everything is the fruit of personal
conquest; a third rule is grounded in the “fear of
God” whose transcendent sovereignty and provident
love in the governance of the world reason must
recognize.
In abandoning these rules, the
human being runs the risk of failure and ends up in the
condition of “the fool”. For the Bible, in this
foolishness there lies a threat to life. The fool thinks
that he knows many things, but really he is incapable of
fixing his gaze on the things that truly matter.
Therefore he can neither order his mind (Prov 1:7) nor
assume a correct attitude to himself or to the world
around him. And so when he claims that “God does not
exist” (cf. Ps 14:1), he shows with absolute clarity
just how deficient his knowledge is and just how far he
is from the full truth of things, their origin and their
destiny.
19. The Book of Wisdom contains
several important texts which cast further light on this
theme. There the sacred author speaks of God who reveals
himself in nature. For the ancients, the study of the
natural sciences coincided in large part with
philosophical learning. Having affirmed that with their
intelligence human beings can “know the structure of
the world and the activity of the elements... the cycles
of the year and the constellations of the stars, the
natures of animals and the tempers of wild beasts”
(Wis 7:17, 19-20)—in a word, that he can
philosophize—the sacred text takes a significant
step forward. Making his own the thought of Greek
philosophy, to which he seems to refer in the context,
the author affirms that, in reasoning about nature, the
human being can rise to God: “From the greatness and
beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception
of their Creator” (Wis 13:5). This is to recognize
as a first stage of divine Revelation the marvellous
“book of nature”, which, when read with the
proper tools of human reason, can lead to knowledge of
the Creator. If human beings with their intelligence fail
to recognize God as Creator of all, it is not because
they lack the means to do so, but because their free will
and their sinfulness place an impediment in the way.
20. Seen in this light, reason
is valued without being overvalued. The results of
reasoning may in fact be true, but these results acquire
their true meaning only if they are set within the larger
horizon of faith: “All man's steps are ordered by
the Lord: how then can man understand his own ways?”
(Prov 20:24). For the Old Testament, then, faith
liberates reason in so far as it allows reason to attain
correctly what it seeks to know and to place it within
the ultimate order of things, in which everything
acquires true meaning. In brief, human beings attain
truth by way of reason because, enlightened by faith,
they discover the deeper
meaning of all things and most especially of their own
existence. Rightly, therefore, the sacred author
identifies the fear of God as the beginning of true
knowledge: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
knowledge” (Prov 1:7; cf. Sir 1:14).
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