That Pope John Paul's latest encyclical, Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), published on Thursday, is a challenge to "this filthy [post] modern tide" is hardly surprising. But that it is so in the manner it is will intrigue, indeed compel, the interest of many non-Catholics.
What is remarkable and refreshing is the generosity with which the Pope acknowledges and draws on the great wealth of non-Christian wisdom down the ages.
In what he describes as "a rapid survey of the history of philosophy" he nods in the direction of such disparate figures as Confucius, LaoTze, Buddha, the Veda, Euripides, Sophocles and Homer. Plato and Aristotle, too, of course, and less surprisingly considering their influence on St Augustine. He acknowledges the ancient (pagan) cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia, as manifest through the Bible's Book of Wisdom, which cultures he finds "singularly rich in deep intuition".
"Know Yourself," he says, quoting the words written on the temple portal at Delphi. He refers to the "lands of the East, so rich in religious and philosophical traditions of great antiquity", and in particular to "the great spiritual impulse [which] leads Indian thought to seek an experience which would liberate the spirit from the shackles of time and space and would therefore acquire absolute value".
Closer to home he also acknowledges the contribution of Kierkegaard, the Danish existentialist.
All of which amounts to a welcome acceptance that the deposit of human wisdom is not in the sole possession of any one institution. It is also part of a strategy being employed by this extraordinary man to marshal to his side all the battalions of thought down the ages in a concerted challenge to the forces of anti-philosophy which he sees as bringing down everywhere the walls of the citadel of truth.
He is disturbed by what he describes as "the deep-seated distrust of reason" and that "radical doubt" which has more or less rendered classical philosophy redundant in current times. He wants to see the rebirth of metaphysics, the death of nihilism, which since Nietzsche pronounced God dead in the last century has helped to render all questions about meaning meaningless.
"Bring back `why?' " might well be a summary of his plea to the contemporary world. The question, he suggests, is central to all spiritual traditions, the great philosophical systems, great art.
"The fundamental questions which pervade human life," he suggests, "are `Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life?' Those are the questions which have their common source in the quest for meaning which has always compelled the human heart."
But they are not being asked any more. Instead there is "a crisis of meaning", a "maelstrom of data and facts", with many believing "the time of certainties is irrevocably past and people must learn to live in a horizon of total absence of meaning, where everything is provisional and ephemeral".
And in the midst of all this, "philosophy is expected to rest content with more modest tasks such as the simple interpretation of facts or an inquiry into restricted fields of human knowing or its structures".
Universal and absolute statements are distrusted, "especially by those who think truth is born of consensus and not of a consonance between intellect and objective reality".
He is having none of this. "One may define the human being as the one who seeks the truth," he says, so basic and instinctive is questioning to everyone. "I ask everyone to look more deeply at man," he says. He pleads for philosophy, for "reason", and the restoration of the link between reason and faith. Or theology, which he defines as "the science of faith".
"Faith and reason are the two wings on which the human spirit rises to contemplation of the truth," he asserts. He has other reasons for wanting philosophy "back".
"Philosophical thought is often the only ground for understanding and dialogue with those who do not share our faith".
Inevitably he repeats the Catholic Church's claim to harbour "the ultimate truth about human life", as well as the fundamental importance of revelation, even to philosophy. "In refusing the truth offered by divine revelation, philosophy does itself damage, since this is to preclude access to a deeper knowledge of truth," he says.
But he insists at the same time on the necessity for the independence of philosophy.
What he does not do is go too deeply into the historical reasons why faith and reason sundered so radically, nor does he openly acknowledge the church's own hefty contribution to that cleavage.
Many would argue that the separation had an inevitability about it, but there can be little doubt that the church's denunciation of so much scientific truth in the Middle Ages greatly harmed theology and its own authority.
The most perfect example of this error of ways was the church's treatment of Galileo. His book Dialogue on the Great World Systems, Ptole- maic and Copernican, published in 1632, was banned by Rome and placed on the church's Index.
Galileo himself was charged with "vehement suspicion of heresy" and was forced to renounce "with sincere heart and unfeigned faith" his belief that the sun, not the Earth, was the centre of the universe and that the Earth moved around the sun and not vice versa, as the church taught at the time.
Despite recanting he spent the remainder of his life under house arrest. When he died, aged 77, in 1642 Pope Urban VIII would not allow a public funeral for Galileo and his remains were hidden in the basement of a bell tower in Florence, where they remained for nearly a century. Later they were interred under a large monument at the Church of Santa Croce.
It was Pope John Paul who in 1980 ordered that the evidence at Galileo's trial be looked at again. In 1992, 350 years after his death, Galileo was acquitted. But it is in this encyclical that the great scientist's rehabilitation is made complete.
Pope John Paul quotes what Galileo said in a letter of December 21st, 1613, to bolster his argument supporting the unity of faith and reason. In Reference 29 he writes: "Galileo declared explicitly that the two truths, of faith and science, cannot contradict each other. Sacred Scripture and the natural world proceeding equally from the divine Word, the first as dictated by the Holy Spirit, the second as a very faithful executor of the commands of God." The quotation is from a letter Galileo wrote to a Father Benedetto Catelli. How high the fallen have risen?
The symmetry is perfect, and nothing in this encyclical quite illustrates its inclusive aspiration as the use by Pope John Paul of the words of a heretic he had rehabilitated to sustain his argument.
As to whether contemporary secularism, to which this encyclical is primarily addressed, responds positively remains to be seen. For it to do so would be to bring both philosophy and religion in from its margins. It would also mean negating its own negation, casting itself off.
And secularism has become quite attached to its two-dimensional, horizontal and generally knowable world. It is quite comfortable living within the limits of its understanding.
