(for some of us, "Ditchkins" is an unfriendly portmanteau name for the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, virulent enemies of religions they did not, and do not, understand or try to.)
~}}} * {{{~
When the then Pope Benedict XVI gave this lecture at Regensburg (Ratisbon) University in September 2006, a brief clip from it was (deliberately) misunderstood and used as propaganda by Al Qaeda sympathisers. In fact, it is a magistral analysis of the role of reason in faith, and as such still of the greatest importance in an age when cultures can no longer ignore each other. It's long for a blog post, but well worth reading and pondering -- either onscreen or copied, pasted and printed out. The translation from the German is mine.
Faith, Reason[1], and the University
It is a moving moment for me to stand at the
University’s lectern once more and once more to be permitted to give a lecture.
In doing so, my thoughts go back to the years when, after a wonderful period in
the Freising Academy, I began my activity as an academic in the University of
Bonn. It was still, in 1959, a professors’ university. For the individual
chairs there were neither assistants nor secretaries; on the other hand, there
were very direct relations with the students and especially among the
professors mutually. We met in the common rooms before and after lectures. The
contacts with the historians, the philosophers, the philologists, and of course
also between the two theological faculties were very lively. Each term there
was a so-called Dies academicus [a
‘university day’] at which professors of all the faculties introduced
themselves to the students of the whole university. There, in that way, a real
experience of the ‘universitas’ was made possible. That within all the
specializations which often rendered us speechless to one another, we form a
whole; that we work inside that whole of united reason with all its dimensions, and that we thus
share in a collective responsibility for the right use of reason -- that came alive there.
The University was also
absolutely proud of its two Faculties of Theology. It was evident that they
also, in so far as they inquire into the reason of faith, perform a work which
necessarily belongs to the whole of the universitas
scientiarum; even if not everyone could share the faith of which the
relation to reason as a whole was the theologians’ concern. Nor was this inner
coherence in the cosmos of reason disturbed when one colleague was heard to say
how odd it was that in our university there were two faculties which concerned
themselves with something that did not exist, i.e. God. That even faced with radical scepticism it remains necessary
and reasonable to inquire about God with reason, and to do so in the context of
the tradition of the Christian faith, was uncontested in the University as a
whole.
All this came to mind
again when I recently read the volume, edited by Professor Thomas Khoury from
Münster, of the discussion the learned Byzantine Emperor Manuel II. Paleologos
held in 1391, in winter quarters in Ankara, with an educated Persian about
Christianity and Islam and their respective truth. The Emperor himself noted down the discussion
during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; so it is
understandable that his own remarks are represented in much greater detail than
the replies of the Persian scholar. The dialogue takes in the entire structure
of faith as contained in the Bible and the Koran, and focuses especially on the
image of God and man, but also again and again, necessarily, on the relation
between the ‘three Laws’: Old Testament – New Testament – Koran. Now in this
lecture I should like to discuss just one point – and in the structure of that
dialogue a marginal one --, which fascinated me in the context of the theme of
faith and reason, and which functions as the point of departure for my
reflections on that theme.
In the seventh round of
discussion, edited by Professor Khoury, the Emperor takes up the subject of the
jihad (holy war). The Emperor certainly knew that in Sura 2.256 it is written,
‘No compulsion in matters of faith’: this is one of the early Suras from the
time when Mohammed himself was still powerless and threatened. But the Emperor
of course also knew the determinations[2]
contained in the Koran – of later origin – about holy war. Without going into
details like the different treatment of ‘those who possess the scriptures’ and
‘infidels’, he turns to his interlocutor simply with the central question of
the relation between religion and violence, in an astonishingly brusque way. He
says, ‘So show me what Mohammed has brought that was new, and all you will find
is what is bad and inhuman: like his decree that the faith he preached must be
propagated by the sword.’ The Emperor
then goes on to explain in detail why propagation of faith by violence is
absurd. It is in contradiction to the nature of God and to the nature of the
soul. ‘God takes no pleasure in blood, and not to act reasonably is against the
nature of God. Faith is the fruit of the soul, not of the body. So he who wants
to lead someone to faith, needs skill in good speaking and clear thinking, but
not violence and threats…to convince a reasonable soul it is not one’s arm one
needs, not blunt instruments, nor any other of the means by which one can
threaten someone with death.’
The decisive sentence in
this argument against conversion by force is this: ‘Not to act reasonably is
against the nature of God.’ The editor, Thomas Khoury, adds this note: ‘For the
Emperor, as a Byzantine educated in Greek philosophy, this sentence is evident.
For Muslim doctrine, on the other hand, God is absolutely transcendent. His
Will is tied to none of our categories, even that of reasonableness.’ In this
context, Khoury cites a text by the well-known French Islam scholar R.
Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn goes so far as to declare that God is
not even bound by His own word, and that nothing forces Him to reveal the truth
to us. If He wanted it so, Man could be forced to commit idolatry.
Here there appears a
division in the understanding of God and thus in the concrete realization of
religion, which today presents a direct challenge to us. Is it only Greek to
believe that acting against reason is against the nature of God, or is this
valid always and in itself? I think that
this is where the profound harmony becomes visible between what is ‘Greek’ in
the best sense of the word on the one hand and a Biblically-based faith in God
on the other. Inflecting the first verse of Genesis, John opened the prologue
to his Gospel with the words, ‘In the beginning was the Logos’. ‘Logos’ is both
Reason and Word – a reason that is creative and can communicate itself, but
precisely as reason. In this, John has given us the definitive word of the
Biblical understanding of God, in which all the often laborious and tortuous
ways of Biblical faith find their goal and their synthesis. In the beginning
was the Logos, and the Logos is God, the evangelist tells us. The concordance
of the Biblical message and Greek thought was not an accident. The vision of St
Paul, to whom the roads in Asia Minor were closed and who at night in a vision
saw a Macedonian and heard him cry ‘Come over and help us’ (Acts 16: 6-10) –
this vision may be interpreted as a condensation of the inherently necessary
coming-together between Biblical faith and Greek questioning.
Moreover, this
coming-together had been going on for a long time. The mysterious divine Name
of the burning bush, which distinguished this God from the gods with many names
and declares of him simply the Being, is already a challenge to myth,
inherently analogical to the Socratic attempt to overcome and go beyond myth.
The process that began in the burning bush comes to maturity, within the Old
Testament, during the Exile, where the God of Israel, now without land or cult,
proclaims Himself as the God of heaven and earth, and introduces Himself with a
simple formula that continues the word of the burning bush: ‘It is I’. Hand in
hand with this new recognition of God goes a kind of enlightenment, which
expresses itself drastically in mockery about the gods, who are only the work
of men’s hands (cf. Psalm 115). Thus in the Hellenistic era the Biblical faith
inwardly reaches out (in spite of all its virulence toward the Hellenistic
rulers who wanted to force conformity to the Greek way of life and the worship
of its gods) to the best of Greek thought, to meet in a mutual contact that is
fulfilled especially in the late Wisdom literature. Today we know, that the
Alexandrian Greek translation of the Old Testament, the ‘Septuagint’, is more
than a mere (and perhaps not very estimable) translation of the Hebrew text: it
is an independent textual witness and in its own right an important step in the
history of revelation, in which this encounter [between Biblical faith and
Greek thought] is realized in a manner that became decisively significant for
the origin of Christianity and its spread. At its most profound, this concerns
the encounter between faith and reason, between true enlightenment and
religion. It was truly out of the inner nature of the Christian faith, and at
the same time out of the nature of the Hellenism which had fused itself with
that faith, that Manuel II could say, ‘Not to act “with the Logos” is against
the nature of God.’
In all honesty it should
here be noted that in the Late Middle Ages tendencies developed in theology
which wrench open this synthesis of the Greek and the Christian. Over against
the so-called Augustinian and Thomist intellectualism, with Duns Scotus there
appears a position of voluntarism, which eventually led to saying that all we
knew of God was his ‘voluntas ordinata’ [His ordered Will]. Beyond that lay
God’s freedom, in virtue of which He might have created and done the contrary
of everything He had done. Here we see a sketch of positions definitely
approaching those of Ibn Hazn, and which could lead to the image of a God of
Arbitrariness, Who is not bound even to truth and good. God’s transcendence and
otherness are pushed so far that our reason, our sense of the true and the
good, are no longer a true reflection of God, Whose abyssal possibilities
behind His actual decisions for ever remain inaccessible to and hidden from us.
Contrary to this, the faith of the Church has always maintained that there
exists between God and us, between His eternal creating Spirit and our created
Reason, a real analogy: even if in it the dissimilarities are infinitely
greater than the similarities, the analogy and its language are not therefore
cancelled (cf Lat IV). God does not become more divine by our interpreting Him
in a pure and impenetrable voluntarism: the true God is the God, Who has
revealed Himself as Logos and as Logos has acted, and acts, for us out of love.
True, love ‘passes’ understanding and as such perceives more than simple
thinking (cf Ephes. 3:19), but it remains the love of the Divine Logos, which
is why Christian Divine Service is…Divine Service, which is in harmony with the
Eternal Word and with our Reason (cf. Rom. 12:1).
This inward encounter
which has happened between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical questioning
is a decisive event, not only in terms of the history of religion but in terms
of the history of the world; and today also it lays a duty upon us. When one
sees this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, in spite of its
origin and important developments in the East, has eventually taken its
historically decisive stamp in Europe. We can also say, conversely: this
encounter, to which is added also the heritage of Rome, has created Europe and
remains the foundation of that which one can rightly call Europe.
The thesis that the
critically-purified Greek heritage is an essential part of the Christian faith
is opposed by the demand for de-Hellenization of Christianity which since the
Early Modern period has increasingly dominated theological conflicts. On closer
observation one can distinguish three waves of the de-Hellenization program
which, while they are related, nevertheless differ clearly from one another in
their foundations and goals.
De-Hellenization first
appears in conjunction with the 16th-century Reformation’s chief
concerns. Vis-à-vis the scholastic theological tradition, the Reformers saw
themselves as confronting a systematization of faith that was completely
determined by philosophy: as it were a hijacking[3]
of faith by an alien [system of] thought. As a consequence, faith no longer
appeared as a living historical Word, but embedded in a philosophical system.
Contrary to this, the [Reformers’] ‘sola scriptura’ [‘by Scripture alone’]
seeks the pure original form of the faith, as it exists from the beginning in
the Biblical Word. Metaphysics appears as an alien parameter, from which faith
needs to be liberated so that it can once more be entirely itself. In a radical move which the Reformers could
not foresee, Kant realized this agenda in his statement that he had had to put
thought aside to make room for faith. In so doing, he anchored faith
exclusively in practical Reason and denied it access to Reality as a whole.
The liberal theology of
the 19th and 29th centuries brought with it a second wave
in the de-Hellenization program, of which Adolf von Harnack is the outstanding
representative. In the days when I was a student, and even in the early days of
my academic activity, this program was strongly at work even in Catholic
theology. Pascal’s distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was its point of departure. In my 1959 Bonn
inaugural lecture I attempted to engage with this. I do not want to go into all
this again here. But I should like at least very briefly to attempt to
characterize what is distinctly new in this second wave of de-Hellenization
compared to the first. In Harnack’s work, the central concept is the return to
Jesus the simple human and to his simple message, which precedes all
theologizations and all Hellenizations: this simple message, supposedly,
represents the true pinnacle of mankind’s religious development. Jesus (he
claims) has turned his back on worship in favour of morality. He is finally
represented as the father of a philanthropic moral message. In reality this
attempts to re-harmonize Christianity with modern Reason, precisely by
liberating it from apparently philosophical and theological elements like
belief in Christ’s divinity and in the Trinity. So far, the historical-critical
interpretation of the New Testament brings theology anew back into the cosmos
of the University: theology, for Harnack, is essentially historical and as such
strictly scientific.[4]
What it determines by the critical method about Jesus, is so to speak an
expression of practical Reason, and as such justifiable also within the whole
that is the University. In the background is the modern self-contraction of
Reason, as it had been classically represented in Kant’s Critiques but was now
being further radicalized by the thinking of natural science. This modern
concept of Reason is based on a synthesis, confirmed by the success of
technology, between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, to put it
succinctly. On the one hand is advanced
the mathematical structure of matter, its inner rationality, so to speak, which
makes it possible to understand and to use it in its outward form: this basic
premise is what one might call the Platonic element in the modern understanding
of nature. On the other hand the concern
is for nature’s functionality-potential for our purposes, in which only the
possibility of verification or falsification in an experimental context
furnishes the decisive certainty. The emphasis between these two poles can lie
on one side or on the other. A thinker as strictly positivist as J. Monod has
referred to himself as a convinced Platonist or Cartesian.
This brings with it two
fundamental orientations which are decisive for our question. Only that form of
certainty that proceeds from the conjunction of mathematics and empiricism is permitted to be called scientific. That
which claims to be Wissenschaft
[science and/or scholarship] must adopt this criterion. And so the
human-directed disciplines also – history, psychology, sociology, and
philosophy – attempt to approach this canon of scientificity. For our present
reflections it is important, moreover, that the method as such excludes the
question of God and presents it as an unscientific or pre-scientific question.
This, though, places us before a contraction of the range of Wissenschaft and Reason, which must be questioned.
We will return to this.
For now, we must remark that in any attempt, determined by this outlook, to
derive theology ‘scientifically’, there will be left of Christianity only a
miserable remnant. But we need to say more: man himself is diminished by it.
For the genuinely human questions, those of the Whence and the Whither of us,
the questions of religion and ethics can then find no place in the space of the
collective, scientifically circumscribed “Reason”, and must be relegated to the
subjective. The subject decides, with his own experience, what seems to him
religiously tolerable, and the subjective ‘conscience’ is finally made the only
ethical authority. But in this way ethics and religion lose their power of
creating community and fall into arbitrariness. This condition is dangerous to
humanity, as we see by the pathologies of religion and reason that threaten us,
and which necessarily erupt where Reason is so narrowed that questions of
religion and ethics are no longer its concern. The ethical remnants of the
rules of evolution or of psychology and sociology are simply not adequate.
Before arriving at some
conclusions from all this, I need briefly to point to the third wave of
de-Hellenization, which is currently active. Vis-à-vis the encounter with the
multiplicity of cultures it is fashionable to say that the synthesis with Hellenism
that occurred in the ancient Church was a first embedding of Christianity in a
culture[5],
to which one may not bind the other cultures. They should have the right to
reach back beyond this embedding to the simple message of the New Testament,
then in their turn to embed it in their own cultural spaces. This proposition
is not purely and simply false, but nevertheless crude and inexact. For the New
Testament is written in Greek and carries in within it that contact with the
Greek spirit which had matured in the preliminary development of the Old
Testament. Of course, there are layers in the development of the early church
which do not have to enter into all cultures. But the fundamental decisions
that concern precisely the coherence of faith with the seeking of human reason,
these belong to this faith itself and represent its proper development.
And so I come to my
conclusion. The self-criticism of modern reason I have rather crudely sketched
in no way comprises the idea that we should now go back beyond the
Enlightenment and reject the insights of modernity. The greatness of the modern
spiritual development I entirely acknowledge: we are all thankful for the great
possibilities it has unlocked for man, and for the advances in humanity that
have been given us. For the rest, the scientific ethos is a will to obedience vis-à-vis truth,
and as such the expression of a fundamental attitude that belongs to the basic
determinations of Christianity. What is meant is not a return, not a negative
criticism, but what is at stake is a widening of our understanding and our use
of Reason. For in all the joy at the new possibilities of man we also see
threats, which arise from these possibilities , and we must ask ourselves, how
we can master them. We can only do so, when reason and faith meet in new ways;
when we conquer the self-authorized contraction of reason to that which can be
experimentally falsified, and when we once again open to reason its full scope.
In this sense, theology belongs to the University and to its far-reaching
dialogue of Wissenschaften. not only
as a historical and humanities discipline, but as actual theology, as the
inquiry into the Reason of Faith.
Only thus will we be
prepared for the genuine dialogue of cultures and religions that we so urgently
need. In the Western world the opinion often dominates that only positivist
Reason and the forms of philosophy belonging to it are universal. But the
world’s deeply religious cultures see precisely this exclusion of the divine
from universality of Reason as a
rejection of their inmost convictions. A Reason that is deaf to the divine and
relegates religion to the territory of subcultures is unprepared for the
dialogue of cultures. Moreover, as I have tried to show, modern scientific
Reason with its inherent Platonic element implies a question which transcends
it and its methodical possibilities. It [this Reason] must simply accept the
rational structure of matter, like the correspondence between our mind and the
rational structures that reign in nature, as givens upon which its methodology
is based. But the question why this should be so, nevertheless exists, and
science must pass it on to other levels and manners of thought – to philosophy
and theology. For philosophy, and in a different way for theology, attending to
the great experiences and insights of humanity’s religious traditions, but
especially to the Christian faith, is a source of knowledge and insight, the
refusal of which would entail an impermissible narrowing of our listening and
of our response. I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In the
earlier dialogues many false philosophical opinions had been touched on; and
now Socrates says, ‘It would be entirely understandable if someone was so
infuriated by so much falsehood that for the rest of his life he would hate and
spurn all talk about Being.’ But in this
way he would neglect the truth of that which is and incur great harm. The West
has for a long time now been threatened by this aversion from the fundamental
questions of its Reason, and can only incur great harm from this. The courage
to explore the scope of reason, not a denial of its greatness: that is the
program with which a theology committed to Biblical faith enters into today’s
debate. ‘Not to act according to reason (with the Logos) is against the nature
of God’, Manuel II, out of his Christian concept of divinity, said to his
Persian interlocutor. Into this great Logos, into this breadth of Reason, we
invite our interlocutor in the dialogue of cultures. To find it, again and again, is the great
task of the University.
[1] The German ‘Vernunft’ is
classically translated as ‘reason’ but is used in common speech to mean
‘intelligence’. I will translate it with both, according to the context; but
it’s important to remember that in either case, the other is also present.
[2] ‘Bestimmung’ is a complex
word, which can mean anything from ‘diagnosis’ to ‘decree’. I have chosen
‘determinations’ as a workable mean.
[3] Benedict’s German term is
‘Fremdbestimmung’, which dictionaries translate as ‘heteronomy’: it means
having one’s destiny determined by outside influences. While ‘hijacking’ is
unacceptably colloquial, it seems an economical and understandable rendering.
[4] From here on,
English-speaking readers are bedevilled by the notorious German word Wissenschaft and its adjective wissenschaftlich. ‘Wissenschaft’ directly translates Latin
‘scientia’; but in English ‘science’ has come to mean natural science, in a
development that forms much of the topic of Benedict’s lecture. On the
humanities side of the divide, we speak of ‘scholarship’, but this is not an
ideal translation. I here wield the various renderings according to my sense of
the meaning, but will occasionally retain the German word. Caveat lector.
[5] Benedict uses
‘Inkulturation’, lit. ‘inculturation’, which I have tried to unpack.
