MEETING
WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula
Magna of the
Faith,
Reason and the University - Memories and Reflections - HIGHLIGHTS
(Speaking
about different faculties at the University) The experience, in other words, of
the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to
communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the
basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason.
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.
Part of the
dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by
the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus
and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth
of both. . . here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather
marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith
and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point
for my reflections on this issue . . .
In the
seventh conversation . . . he addresses his interlocutor with a startling
brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find
unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between
religion and violence in general, saying:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find
things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the
faith he preached.”[3] The emperor, after having expressed himself so
forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.
Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.
"God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting
reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is
contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever
would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason
properly, without violence and threats . . . To convince a reasonable soul, one
does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of
threatening a person with death...".[4]
The decisive
statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is
contrary to God's nature.[5] The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by
Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will
is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.[6] Here Khoury quotes a work of
the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out
that Ibn Hazm 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. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.[7]
An
unavoidable dilemma - Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts
God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?
God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and
capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. Idea which can be
interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a
rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.
A profound encounter of faith and
reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and
religion.
From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of
Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act
"with logos" is contrary
to God's nature.
The thesis
that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian
faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization
of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological
discussions since the beginning of the modern age.
The subject then decides, on the basis of his
experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the
subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical.
In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community
and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs
for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason
which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion
and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an
ethic from the
rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply
inadequate.
And so I
come to my conclusion . . . The
intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of
broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the
new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these
possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will
succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome
the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically falsifiable, and if we
once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in
the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as
a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as
theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
Only
thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so
urgently needed today. In the Western
world it is widely held that only positivistic
reason¹
and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's
profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the
universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A
reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm
of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the
same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its
intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points
beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology.
Here
I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo.
In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been
raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if
someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his
life he despised and mocked all talk about being (or Philosphy)
- but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would
suffer a great loss".[13] The West has long been endangered by this
aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer
great harm thereby.
¹ pos·i·tiv·ism n.
1.
Philosophy
a.
A
doctrine contending that sense perceptions are the only admissible basis of
human knowledge and precise thought.
b.
The
application of this doctrine in logic, epistemology, and ethics.
c.
The
system of Auguste Comte designed to supersede
theology and metaphysics and depending on a hierarchy of the sciences,
beginning with mathematics and culminating in sociology.