On September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI provided what could easily be described as the most important speech of the twenty-first century. To an audience gathered at Regensburg University in Germany, Benedict with startling precision stated not only that “violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul,” but also that “not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.”
The pope’s comments unleashed a firestorm of criticism—from Paris to Pakistan, from Cairo to Indonesia to Turkey. The response from Muslim communities was swift, universal, and harsh. It aroused controversy and threatened to create a diplomatic crisis. AsiaNews stated that “the ‘lectio magistralis’ delivered by Benedict XVI on 12 September in Regensburg was largely badly and selectively quoted, with reference made only to certain extracts. The reaction was such that it prompted the pope to speak about ‘misunderstanding’ of his words and to put notes and clarifications in the final text to allow for a correct understanding of it.”
The Muslim world and other critics focused very heavily upon the reference of the pope to the exchange between “erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.”
The entire lecture, entitled “Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections,” was very complex, blending philosophy, religion, and theology.
Some Muslim leaders who condemned the pope’s words, including Ali Bardakoglu, Grand Mufti of Turkey, admited they had not read the pope’s talk, only press reports of the talk. In fact, some of the news reports headlined the pope’s speech in inflammatory terms, even when the article more closely adhered to the truth of the pope’s text.
While attention was given to this section—in a correct or incorrect interpretation—much was lost in not being mindful of the rest of the lecture. In fact, had attention been paid at all to the rest of the text, one might have recognized that the pope, while making reference to Islam, was in fact speaking to Christians. As Father James V. Schall, SJ, of Georgetown University, has stated, “It is an error to think this lecture was principally about Islam, though Islam is also included in the main theoretical thrust of the lecture. The pope goes to the heart of a question that is of central concern to every non-Muslim who wants to understand recent events, beginning with 9/11, though now stretching back two or three decades, perhaps centuries, involving what we call ‘terrorists.’ Hopefully, at least some Muslims have the same concerns, namely, whether or not a theological understanding or argument exists that justifies violence in the name of this religion, with its ‘jihad’ and the suicide bombers. Is or is not such action justified in Muslim theology? If so, why so? If not, why not? This question is asked almost everywhere as a genuine perplexity in dealing with the Islamic world. Not a few who identify themselves as Muslim maintain that violence is indeed justified both in the Koran and in Islamic law and tradition. If no one held that it was so justified or acted on its validity, we would have no problem on this score.”
The pope carried two messages in his address at Regensburg: the first was to the Islamic world to engage in the same discussions on the role of reason in faith as was discussed between “erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian.” The second was to the Christian world to take up the same consideration.
Pope Benedict XVI posited in his lectio to the Islamic world that violence in propagating faith is unreasonable and therefore against God, and that, as Robert R. Reilly has clarified, “a conception of God without reason, or above reason, leads to that very violence.” Reilly demonstrates that “the revelation of Mohammed emphasizes most particularly, one attribute of God—His omnipotence. Although all monotheistic religions hold that, in order to be one, God must be omnipotent, this argument reduced God to His omnipotence by concentrating exclusively on His unlimited power, as against His reason. God’s ‘reasons’ are unknowable by man. God is not shackled by reason; there is no rational order invested in the universe upon which one can rely, only the second-to-second manifestation of God’s will.”
The consequences of such a view are earth-shattering. If all that God has created simply exists at the will of God, it cannot be understood in any way at all by the human mind. From this perspective, there are no natural causes to explain the world. “If unlimited will is the exclusive constituent of reality, there is really nothing left to reason about, and the uncreated Qur’an is not open to interpretation.”
Without the openness to interpret the Qur’an—through the lack of reason as understood through the theological framework discussed above—then acts of violence in the name of faith and evangelization by the sword are viable and attractive options.
While the pope’s approach to the Islamic world in this regard is of significant importance and worthy of much debate and discussion, it is his admonishment of the Christian world that is of far greater importance and worthy of reflection.
Inherent in Benedict XVI’s message on reason to the Islamic world was a similar message to the Christian world. The speech largely focused on the history of faith and reason in Christian thought—focusing attention primarily on the influence of Greek philosophy logos on Christianity at the latter’s beginning and then on three more recent movements within Christianity that undermined the connection between faith and reason.
Benedict was addressing in his comments a fundamental issue in the post-Christian, post-Enlightenment West: the rejection of the links between reason and faith and the rejection of reason in Western thought. As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict had once stated, “Truly, the relationship between reason and religion is of the first importance in this situation, and the struggle for the right relationship belongs at the heart of our concern for the cause of peace. There are pathologies of religion—we see this; and there are pathologies of reason—we see this, too, and both pathologies are life threatening for peace—indeed, in an age of global power structures, for humanity as a whole.”
In an age of global power, global policies, and global communications, it is not difficult to recognize this move away from reason and toward other indefinable parameters in faith, policy, and life. As we review the means by which political and religious decisions are often made in this day and age, we are motivated by “decision-making of the heart” rather than an appropriate connection between heart, mind, and soul.
Archbishop Hector Aguer of La Plata recently stated that Benedict XVI has expressed in his magisterium the presentation of Christianity today as the “bulwark of reason in the face of ‘weak thought’ and the unhealthy cultivation of uncertainty and relativism.” It is very clearly here where Benedict was looking when he made his comments during the lectio. Relativism in the West has become one of the most blatant tools in the attack on truth as understood by the West and upheld by the Christian faith. Too often policymakers in faith and politics choose to stand by polls and perspectives— swayed by a nonrational understanding of justice. Benedict recognizes the move away from the solidity of truth. And he seeks an engagement with Islam and other faith bodies, which are weakened by the strains of a civilization lacking substance, definition, truth, and faith.
Benedict XVI has watched with great concern for some time the movement of the West away from responsibility and toward individual supremacy. He has witnessed the division of Christianity and within Christian denominations caused by the desire for heartfelt but misguided “equality” and “justice” arguments. And he has experienced the push for a clash for civilizations when one does not and cannot exist.
Therefore he has called on the West to check its ways in order to stand the onslaught coming from a misinterpretation and highjacking of faith. But unlike the West, even those who misuse and misrepresent Islam for their own political purposes are capable—and very successfully so—of using their terminology and references in order to build a loyal and believing following.
The great project of the twenty-first century for the pope is to encourage and empower various religious communities. Especially is this true of those Muslims who have the view that adapting to non-Muslim religions within Islamic societies is not a compromise of Islam but a deepening and clarifying of it. The pope pointed out that Islam wields a sword, and asked both Islam and the West whether it shall be only the sword that thrusts outward to cut off the ears of its perceived enemies, or the sword that pierces inward to cut out that which tears at the truth of Islam and the truth of the West.
The great tragedy is that the torch of sacrifice and truth in Islam—and Benedict clearly dared to say all faiths—has been snatched from the hands of those who should bear it aloft, and is instead carried high by the enemies of truth and freedom. The so-to-say “fires of apostolic zeal” alive and well in all faiths have been stolen from the altars of God and now burn as an inferno in those who grind the altars into dust. We are in fact destined for another war, but not the clash of civilizations to which it is so often incorrectly referred. We are destined for a war against false freedoms—civil and religious—that endanger our true and divine freedom.
President Ronald Reagan once stated to the National Association of Evangelicals that “the real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith….The source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material but spiritual, and because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man.” Pope Benedict XVI has picked up on and carried this message, and calls on the West, and Christians in particular, to respond.
Joseph K.Grieboski, himiself a member of the Roman Catholic Church, is founder and president of the Institute on Religion and Public Policiy, based in Washington, D.C.
There is no doubt that the September 12 speech in Regensburg, Germany, was BIG. But it was big for reasons most commentators seem not to have fully grasped even these some months later and into a new year.
It sparked a sometimes violent reaction throughout the Islamic world. The violence was big, and largely self-defeating; since it seemed to confirm the 1391 anecdote the pope chose to use in setting the argument. The enraged Mullahs and street mobs should have read/listened to the full speech. They might then have realized that they/Islam were little more than a set piece for the opening premise in a much larger point.
The attitude of Rome toward Islam has long since revealed itself. Way back in the 1970s when the U.S. preemptively bombed Libya, the media noted but little commented on the quick evacuation of a delegation from Rome who were in Tripoli at the invitation of Muhamar Ghadafi to discuss some sort of alliance with Islam.
Complicating Rome’s overtures to Islam has been its other grand interest in acting as the religious patron of the European Union. After all, it was the present Pope’s comment that Turkey might not be compatible with the Union, which led to ratification problems with its latest constitution.
But both interests seem to have come back on a sort of course after the papal apology for giving offense, quickly followed by his trip to Turkey. There he met with Islamic leaders, prayed toward Mecca, and announced that Turkey might be acceptable to Europe after all. Very telling was the Vatican spokesman’s repeated statement that they have been building bridges for decades, and that now is the time to cross those bridges.
We might hope that the often-repeated Vatican appeals for reciprocity will elicit operational tolerance for Christian activity in areas of the Middle East where Christians are restricted, to put it mildly. After all, a basic tenet of true religious freedom is to allow individuals access to religious choice and freedom to worship as they please.
Which brings me to the real clanger in the speech.
After positing that Christianity has outgrown violent propensities because it adopted Greek and Roman models of rationality the pope then identified threats to that status. He chose to malign the protestant “reformers” and their insistence on “sola scriptura.”
In a moment he put us back in the counter-Reformation and the religious wars of old Europe. Only now Protestants are implicated as inherently inclined to violence. How does that serve the end of religious dialogue or of religious freedom?
Lincoln E. Steed
Editor Liberty Magazine
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