2. What faith? A theological biography

It is against the background of the time-described above - that the intellectual and spiritual biography of Karol Wojtyla is found. His life resounds naturally within the historical context in which it has developed and on which it has had considerable influence. His profound identity as thinker and as pastor finds its essence in the strong sign of faith: every aspect of his existence and of his work is characterised by a living and fecund relationship with the Christian God. If Wojtyla, as an alternative to the rationalistic pretexts of ideology, develops a strong sense of the Transcendent, which is characterised by a true and pure mystical experience, in response to the renunciation of the very foundation by the "weak reason", he does not hesitate to propose a thoughtful faith, one which does not flee the challenges of the inquiring or searching intelligence. In both of these attitudes the faith of John Paul II is highly responsible. It never calls on one to step outside of history but is rather very much a part of history, with a precise ethical consciousness. In this way the connotations of the faith, to which his magisterium is testimony, are clearly outlined: a mystical faith, a thoughtful faith and a responsible faith.

2.1 A mystical faith

A constant and characteristic motif of the magisterium of the word and life of John Paul II is the sense of the absolute primacy of God. We are not dealing here with merely one element among others, but with a dominant note. We are talking about the horizon and dwelling place within which and from which everything else is born. The motif of the living God is the motive behind the life and work of Karol Wojtyla. A valuable indication of this is given by the very structure of the magisterium expressed in his encyclicals. This structure is radically theological and in particular Trinitarian. The fundamental cycle is represented by the three encyclicals: Redemptor Hominis (1979) on the Son, Dives in misericordia (1980) on God the Father, and Dominum et vivificantem (1986), on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. The Trinitarian structure resounds significantly in Tertio Millennio Adveniente (1994), the itinerary for the preparation of the great jubilee of the year 2000. Everything else finds accordance in the underlying theological note, as seen in his series of reflections: the reflection on anthropology, presented in the three Encyclicals aforementioned, and again in Laborem exercens of 1981 on the dignity of human work; the reflection on women in the apostolic Letter of 1988, Mulieris dignitatem; the reflection on ethics, proposed in Veritatis splendour (1993), Evangelium vitae (1995), and in the Encyclicals on the social question, Sollicitudo rei socialis (1988) and Centesimus annus (1991); and finally the reflection on ecclesiology, outlined in light of the singularity of the Redeemer and of the Trinitarian communion in Redemptoris Missio (1991), Slavorum Apostoli (1985) on the Eastern Christians, and Ut unum sint (1995) on ecumenism. In the reflection on Mary offered in Redemptoris Mater (1987) the various aspects of the Christian mystery are gathered together in the dense icon of the Mother of the Redeemer, in which everything returns to the work of the Trinity and to the glory of God.

From the very beginnings of his research, Karol Wojtyla has borne witness to the strong coincidence of the mystical experience with the truth. Proof of this is evident in his degree thesis on the Doctrine of the Faith according to St. John of the Cross (1948), defended within an academic context-the Dominican one of the Angelicum-marked at that time by the absolute predominance of the neo-scholastic, and therefore towards an elaborate theology which finds its basis in the mystical. It will remain the profound conviction of Wojtyla, man and thinker, that the light necessary to a clear intelligence which desires to discern the divine design for life and history, is drawn from an experience of God, as the following expressions from a great mystic poet, one much loved by Wojtyla, say with the greatest of intensity: "!Oh lamparas de fuego, / en cuyos respandores / las profundas cavernas del sentido, / que estaba oscuro y ciego, / con extra╴s primores / calor y luz dan junto a su Querido!" 3 Truly, as a significant witness from the "Lumen Orientale" affirms, "it is not the conscience that illuminates the mystery, but the mystery that illuminates the conscience. We can only know, thanks to that which we can never know" 4.

2.2 A thoughtful faith

The strong emphasis on the mystical dimension does not in any way take away the questioning and searching character of the faith: the faith of John Paul II is and will always remain thoughtful! "Fides nisi cogitetur nulla est" - "if faith does not think it is nothing": these words of Saint Augustine 5 - quoted in Faith and Reason 6 - express the profound conviction behind the entire existential and intellectual itinerary of Karol Wojtyla, for whom to think means to continually move from the phenomenon to the foundation, taking the two terms of this transcendent movement with the utmost seriousness. In the Encyclical Faith and Reason the Pope writes: "We face a great challenge at the end of this millennium to move from phenomenon to foundation, a step as necessary as it is urgent. We cannot stop short at experience alone; even if experience does reveal the human being's interiority and spirituality, speculative thinking must penetrate to the spiritual core and the ground from which it rises." 7 This concept of thought - which faith can never renounce, if it desires to be as it should be, a faith of historical beings open to the Mystery and entrusted to it-matures in Wojtyla as a result of an encounter with two great authors, to whom he owes his intellectual formation. On the one hand we have Thomas Aquinas, whom he got to know in full during his years studying at the Angelicum, and on the other hand we have Edmund Husserl, the father of Phenomenology, to which the future Pope was to dedicate much research. From Saint Thomas Wojtyla draws on the strong metaphysical question, and therefore the need to base the phenomenon on the foundation in order to avoid falling into the inconsistency of much pragmatic and purely functional thought. From Husserl he learns to give full value and attention to the phenomenon, which is also the exclusive key to gaining access to the metaphysical profundities of all that exists. The sobriety of Husserl's phenomenology and the teaching that it gives on attention to others and to things as they appear to us - another peculiar characteristic of Karol Wojtyla - are expressed for example in the following statement from Husserl's Ideas: "Everything originally offered to us in 'intuition' is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there." 8 To stop at phenomenological observation would, however, reduce reality to the all too narrow horizon of that which can only be experienced. This is why true phenomenological intuition points to the essence, that is to say, to the transcendent ground of the phenomenon in the direction of that which profoundly constitutes it in its identity and relevance. It is at this point that St. Thomas' teaching integrates the study of Husserl: the world of beings is constituted in its intimacy by being immanent to each. Here we have the true and ultimate foundation of reality. In a formulation of great audacity Thomas affirms that: "Esse autem est illud quod est magis intimum cuilibet, et quod profundius omnibus inest" 9 . To summarise, then, the ontological level coincides with the profundity of reality. It is that which gives stability and dignity to what exists and which prevents everything being reduced to a transient moment that is inconsistent and empty. However, if the phenomenon is transcended in the direction of the foundation in order to draw on its profound source and hidden root, then the foundation is only attainable by means of the phenomenon, through history. No devaluation of the worldly reality is therefore admissible. Thoughtful faith will live, therefore, in a twofold and unique fidelity: faithful to the eternal, but equally faithful to the earth, uniting heaven and earth in one unique movement, transcending toward the ultimate mystery and returning to things and their consistency.

2.3 A responsible faith

The third characteristic that qualifies faith in the "theological biography" of Karol Wojtyla is his being responsible: by this adjective we desire to indicate the ethical relevance of the experience of believing. The polemic of the Reformation against "works" as means of merit and salvation, has favoured a certain separation between a life of faith and an active life. We have arrived at this point on the one hand by way of spiritualism, which is characterised by an evasion of history, and on the other hand by pragmatism, which has, above all, exiled God from the sphere of worldly responsibilities. The presence of Wojtyla, the believer, in history has always been acute, involved, from the years of resistance to Nazism to the years when he faced the daily struggle against militant ideological atheism and communist totalitarianism, to the battle against the ethical emptying of consumerist capitalism. Even in this area there was a thinker at whose school the future Pope was to be formed, namely Max Scheler. In response to the "formalism" of Kantian ethics, which ran the risk of reducing moral behaviour to good intentions, Scheler emphasised the value of a "material ethics", which is attentive to the actual contents of actions, and is far from being limited merely to the intentional, formal aspect. The ethics of values moves in this direction because it recognizes a real criterion in them and not just some abstract and theoretical reference, a criterion that takes on a visible form in the actual living of historical choices and responsibilities. John Paul II has always demonstrated a great interest in the ethical dimension of every option, even those that are apparently more speculative. His fundamental theoretical work, Person and Acting, is a rigorous speculative foundation for the indissoluble relationship of the personal being to its moral acting in the concreteness of decisions. From faith, ethics draws on the ultimate horizon, within which the actual value of penultimate choices is situated and qualified. From ethics, faith draws on the real space from within which it can translate itself into history, as well as the living questions that stimulate the search for fundamental orientations in light of the Absolute, in whose horizon the weight and the value of every act is actually qualified.

3. St. John of the Cross, Llama de amor vivo, translated: The Living Flame of Love', 3rd Stanza; "O Lamps of fire! / In whose splendors / The deep caverns of feeling, / Once obscured and blind, / Now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely, Both warmth and light to their Beloved." Trans., Kieran Kavanagh, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. London: Nelson, 1966. p. 579.

4. P. Evdokimov, La donna e la salvezza del mondo, Milano : Jaca Book , 1980, p.13.

5. St. Augustine, De praedestinatione sanctorum, 2, 5 : PL 44, 963.

6. Faith and Reason, p. 116, 79.

7. Faith and Reason, p. 123, 83.

8. E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen philosophie, trans. F. Kersten, Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy. The Hague: Nijhaff, 1982. I, 24. p.44.

9. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q. 8 a. 1 c.