La cultura como lugar de encuentro entre fe y razón. Una lectura de J. Ratzinger

Abstract

The roll of culture in the interaction of faith and reason is not usually considered. This article aims to examine how the entailment of Christian faith with both reason and culture is essential to it, and therefore one can say that faith creates culture, is culture. I will successively address two ideas of J. Ratzinger’s book Faith, truth and tolerance that shed light on this issue. In the first place, I will analyze the thesis of the entailment of reason (metaphysics) and history in Christian faith (1). Secondly, I will consider some notes on culture as the place of the encounter between faith and reason (2). As a conclusion, I want to call the attention on an epistemological possibility implicit in Ratzinger’s thought in order to surpass the fragmentation of these concepts, which consists in considering rationality analogical (3). In these approaches, not only a better understanding of Christian faith is at stake, but also the credibility of the expositions of that faith in the scope of contemporary thought and culture.