Robin Wilton's esoterica

Amid all the apparent controversy over Pope Benedict XVI's speech at the University of Regensburg, I have to wonder how many of those expressing outrage have actually read the whole document.

It's only seven pages long, and the full text is here if you want it. I should point out that there is a codicil to the text which notes that this is in fact a provisional version, pending the addition of footnotes.

As an initial contextual remark, it's worth pointing out that in taking the theme of "Faith and Reason", Pope Benedict is following in the footsteps of his predecessors. Pope John Paul II, whose papal encyclical 'Fides et Ratio' was issued in 1998, said in that document:

"On her part, the Church cannot but set great value upon reason's drive to attain goals which render people's lives ever more worthy. She sees in philosophy the way to come to know fundamental truths about human life. At the same time, the Church considers philosophy an indispensable help for a deeper understanding of faith and for communicating the truth of the Gospel to those who do not yet know it.

Therefore, following upon similar initiatives by my Predecessors, I wish to reflect upon this special activity of human reason. I judge it necessary to do so because, at the present time in particular, the search for ultimate truth seems often to be neglected."

Second piece of context: Pope Benedict was speaking at a University in which he had previously held a teaching post. The University had two theological faculties at that time, about which he makes the following remarks:

"a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question."

Third piece of context: the remarks which have generated so much comment concern a quotation from a reported 14C dialogue between an "erudite Byzantine emperor and an educated Persian", on the subject - as the speech puts it - of "Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both". One can reasonably assume that the record of this conversation is more likely to be a re-constructed philosophical argument than a verbatim account, much in the style of a Socratic dialogue.

Fourth piece of context: the specific part of the dialogue referred to concerns the use of violence as a means of conversion... and this is where the argument links back to the over-all theme of 'faith and reason'.

Here's the logic this paragraph sets out, from the point of view of a Byzantine emperor educated in the Greek theological and philosophical tradition:

- God's nature is essentially rational; therefore to fail to act rationally is to fail to act in accordance with God's nature.

- To attempt to spread religious faith by violence is irrational, because faith is engendered through persuading the mind, not through assaulting the body.

- Therefore, it is against God's nature to try to spread faith through violence.

What's interesting, and what seems to have been largely overlooked, is that Pope Benedict goes on to contrast this with what the editor of the conversation (Prof. Theodore Khoury, formerly of the University of Muenster) says about the corresponding Muslim viewpoint. He says:

"... for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us."

In other words, the 'educated Persian' of the 14th century conversation would have found the 'erudite emperor's' philosophical position comparatively unsophisticated, and founded on an altogether more anthropomorphic and less abstract concept of 'God'.

Fifth and last piece of context: all of the above has happened by the bottom of page 2 of the speech. The remaining 5 pages are a more detailed dissection of the intellectual tension noted above: between the 'hellenistic' rational approach advanced by the emperor, and the Christian spirit to which the current Pope refers thus on page 3:

"In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit."

What is one to conclude from this? Is Pope Benedict really 'having a pop' at Islam, and characterising all Muslims as warmongers? I find that hard to believe, and I genuinely don't think it's supported by any of the text. He's certainly advancing the proposition that violence is no way to achieve religious conversion - but I think most people would agree that, whatever their brand of faith.

By far the strongest theme of the speech is exactly what it says in the title: the tension between faith and reason. In setting out the problem, he happens to describe, in the briefly-cited 14th century conversation, a Muslim with a philosophically sophisticated concept of the nature of God, and a Byzantine struggling to come to terms with the divergent intellectual demands of an analytic hellenistic philosophy and a faith-based religion. But to suggest that the speech equates the Islam of today with proselytising violence is a mis-reading which is not borne out by the text.