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FAITH, REASON AND THE UNIVERSITY
Memories and Reflections
Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg
Tuesday, 12 September 2006 |
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Benedicto XVI
"Not to act reasonably (with logos) is contrary
to the nature of God," said Manuel II,
according to his Christian understanding
of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor.
It is to this great logos, to this breadth
of reason, that we invite our partners in
the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it
constantly is the great task of the university."
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MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
 t is a moving experience for me to stand
and give a lecture at this university podium
once again. I think back to those years when,
after a pleasant period at the Freisinger
Hochschule, I began teaching at the University
of Bonn. This was in 1959, in the days of
the old university made up of ordinary professors.
The various chairs had neither assistants
nor secretaries, but in recompense there
was much direct contact with students and
in particular among the professors themselves.
We would meet before and after lessons in
the rooms of the teaching staff. There was
a lively exchange with historians, philosophers,
philologists and, naturally, between the
two theological faculties.
Once a semester there was a "dies academicus,"
when professors from every faculty appeared
before the students of the entire university,
making possible a genuine experience of "universitas":
The reality 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 -- this reality
became a lived experience.
The university was also very proud of its
two theological faculties. It was clear that,
by inquiring about the reasonableness of
faith, they too carried out a work which
is necessarily part of the "whole"
of the "universitas scientiarum,"
even if not everyone could share the faith
which theologians seek to correlate with
reason as a whole. This profound sense of
coherence within the universe of reason was
not troubled, even when it was once reported
that 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
skepticism 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.
I was reminded of all this recently, when
I read the edition by professor Theodore
Khoury (Muenster) of 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.
It was probably the emperor himself who set
down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople
between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain
why his arguments are given in greater detail
than the responses of the learned Persian.
The dialogue ranges widely over the structures
of faith contained in the Bible and in the
Koran, and deals especially with the image
of God and of man, while necessarily returning
repeatedly to the relationship of the "three
Laws": the Old Testament, the New Testament
and the Koran.
In this lecture I would like to discuss only
one point -- itself rather marginal to the
dialogue itself -- 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. |
|
Many Religions,
One Covenant: Israel,
the Church, and
the World)
J. Ratzinger |
In the seventh conversation ("diálesis"
-- controversy) edited by professor Khoury,
the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad
(holy war). The emperor must have known that
sura 2:256 reads: "There is no compulsion
in religion." It is one of the suras
of the early period, when Mohammed was still
powerless and under [threat]. But naturally
the emperor also knew the instructions, developed
later and recorded in the Koran, concerning
holy war.
Without descending to details, such as the
difference in treatment accorded to those
who have the "Book" and the "infidels,"
he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely
with the central question on the relationship
between religion and violence in general,
in these words: "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."
The emperor 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 is not
pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably
("syn logo") 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...."
The decisive statement in this argument against
violent conversion is this: Not to act in
accordance with reason is contrary to God's
nature. 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.
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. Were it God's will, we would even
have to practice idolatry.
As far as understanding of God and thus the
concrete practice of religion is concerned,
we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which
nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction
that acting unreasonably contradicts God's
nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always
and intrinsically true?
I believe that here we can see the profound
harmony between what is Greek in the best
sense of the word and the biblical understanding
of faith in God. Modifying the first verse
of the Book of Genesis, John began the prologue
of his Gospel with the words: "In the
beginning was the 'logos.'" |
|
Called to Communion:
Understanding the
Church Today
Joseph Ratzinger
|
This is the very word used by the emperor:
God acts with logos. Logos means both reason
and word -- a reason which is creative and
capable of self-communication, precisely
as reason. John thus spoke the final word
on the biblical concept of God, and in this
word all the often toilsome and tortuous
threads of biblical faith find their culmination
and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos,
and the logos is God, says the Evangelist.
The encounter between the biblical message
and Greek thought did not happen by chance.
The vision of St. Paul, who saw the roads
to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian
man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia
and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) --
this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation"
of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement
between biblical faith and Greek inquiry.
In point of fact, this rapprochement had
been going on for some time. The mysterious
name of God, revealed from the burning bush,
a name which separates this God from all
other divinities with their many names and
declares simply that he is, already presents
a challenge to the notion of myth, to which
Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend
myth stands in close analogy. Within the
Old Testament, the process which started
at the burning bush came to new maturity
at the time of the Exile, when the God of
Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land
and worship, was proclaimed as the God of
heaven and earth and described in a simple
formula which echoes the words uttered at
the burning bush: "I am."
This new understanding of God is accompanied
by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark
expression in the mockery of gods who are
merely the work of human hands (cf. Psalm
115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with
those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate
it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous
cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the
Hellenistic period, encountered the best
of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting
in a mutual enrichment evident especially
in the later wisdom literature.
| Today we know that the Greek translation
of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria
-- the Septuagint -- is more than a simple
(and in that sense perhaps less than satisfactory)
translation of the Hebrew text: It is an
independent textual witness and a distinct
and important step in the history of Revelation,
one which brought about this encounter in
a way that was decisive for the birth and
spread of Christianity. 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. |
|
Let God's Light Shine
Forth: The Spiritual
Vision of Pope
Benedict XVI |
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.
In contrast with the so-called intellectualism
of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with
Duns Scotus a voluntarism which ultimately
led to the claim that we can only know God's
"voluntas ordinata." Beyond this
is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue
of which he could have done the opposite
of everything he has actually done.
This gives rise to positions which clearly
approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even
lead to the image of a capricious God, who
is not even bound to truth and goodness.
God's transcendence and otherness are so
exalted that our reason, our sense of the
true and good, are no longer an authentic
mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities
remain eternally unattainable and hidden
behind his actual decisions.
As opposed to this, the faith of the Church
has always insisted that between God and
us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and
our created reason there exists a real analogy,
in which unlikeness remains infinitely greater
than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing
analogy and its language (cf. Lateran IV).
God does not become more divine when we push
him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable
voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God
is the God who has revealed himself as logos
and, as logos, has acted and continues to
act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love
"transcends" knowledge and is thereby
capable of perceiving more than thought alone
(cf. Ephesians 3:19); nonetheless it continues
to be love of the God who is logos. Consequently,
Christian worship is "logic latreía"
-- worship in harmony with the eternal Word
and with our reason (cf. Romans 12:1).
| This inner rapprochement between biblical
faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was
an event of decisive importance not only
from the standpoint of the history of religions,
but also from that of world history -- it
is an event which concerns us even today.
Given this convergence, it is not surprising
that Christianity, despite its origins and
some significant developments in the East,
finally took on its historically decisive
character in Europe. We can also express
this the other way around: This convergence,
with the subsequent addition of the Roman
heritage, created Europe and remains the
foundation of what can rightly be called
Europe. |
|
 The Yes of Jesus Christ
Papa Benedicto XVI |
The thesis that the critically purified Greek
heritage forms an integral part of Christian
faith has been countered by the call for
a de-Hellenization of Christianity -- a call
which has more and more dominated theological
discussions since the beginning of the modern
age. Viewed more closely, three stages can
be observed in the program of de-Hellenization:
Although interconnected, they are clearly
distinct from one another in their motivations
and objectives.
De-Hellenization first emerges in connection
with the fundamental postulates of the Reformation
in the 16th century. Looking at the tradition
of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought
they were confronted with a faith system
totally conditioned by philosophy, that is
to say an articulation of the faith based
on an alien system of thought. As a result,
faith no longer appeared as a living historical
Word but as one element of an overarching
philosophical system.
The principle of "sola scriptura,"
on the other hand, sought faith in its pure,
primordial form, as originally found in the
biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a
premise derived from another source, from
which faith had to be liberated in order
to become once more fully itself. When Kant
stated that he needed to set thinking aside
in order to make room for faith, he carried
this program forward with a radicalism that
the Reformers could never have foreseen.
He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical
reason, denying it access to reality as a
whole.
The liberal theology of the 19th and 20th
centuries ushered in a second stage in the
process of de-Hellenization, with Adolf von
Harnack as its outstanding representative.
When I was a student, and in the early years
of my teaching, this program was highly influential
in Catholic theology too. It took as its
point of departure Pascal's distinction between
the God of the philosophers and the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959,
I tried to address the issue. I will not
repeat here what I said on that occasion,
but I would like to describe at least briefly
what was new about this second stage of de-Hellenization.
Harnack's central idea was to return simply
to the man Jesus and to his simple message,
underneath the accretions of theology and
indeed of Hellenization: This simple message
was seen as the culmination of the religious
development of humanity. Jesus was said to
have put an end to worship in favor of morality.
In the end he was presented as the father
of a humanitarian moral message.
The fundamental goal was to bring Christianity
back into harmony with modern reason, liberating
it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical
and theological elements, such as faith in
Christ's divinity and the triune God. In
this sense, historical-critical exegesis
of the New Testament restored to theology
its place within the university: Theology,
for Harnack, is something essentially historical
and therefore strictly scientific. What it
is able to say critically about Jesus is,
so to speak, an expression of practical reason
and consequently it can take its rightful
place within the university.
Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation
of reason, classically expressed in Kant's
"Critiques," but in the meantime
further radicalized by the impact of the
natural sciences. This modern concept of
reason is based, to put it briefly, on a
synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism)
and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by
the success of technology.
| On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical
structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality,
which makes it possible to understand how
matter works and use it efficiently: This
basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic
element in the modern understanding of nature.
On the other hand, there is nature's capacity
to be exploited for our purposes, and here
only the possibility of verification or falsification
through experimentation can yield ultimate
certainty. The weight between the two poles
can, depending on the circumstances, shift
from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic
a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself
a convinced Platonist/Cartesian. |
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Milestones:
Memoirs 1927-1977
Joseph Ratzinger |
This gives rise to two principles which are
crucial for the issue we have raised. First,
only the kind of certainty resulting from
the interplay of mathematical and empirical
elements can be considered scientific. Anything
that would claim to be science must be measured
against this criterion. Hence the human sciences,
such as history, psychology, sociology and
philosophy, attempt to conform themselves
to this canon of scientificity.
A second point, which is important for our
reflections, is that by its very nature this
method excludes the question of God, making
it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific
question. Consequently, we are faced with
a reduction of the radius of science and
reason, one which needs to be questioned.
We shall return to this problem later. In
the meantime, it must be observed that from
this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's
claim to be "scientific" would
end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment
of its former self. But we must say more:
It is man himself who ends up being reduced,
for the specifically human questions about
our origin and destiny, the questions raised
by religion and ethics, then have no place
within the purview of collective reason as
defined by "science" and must thus
be relegated to the realm of the subjective.
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.
Before I draw the conclusions to which all
this has been leading, I must briefly refer
to the third stage of de-Hellenization, which
is now in progress. In the light of our experience
with cultural pluralism, it is often said
nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism
achieved in the early Church was a preliminary
inculturation which ought not to be binding
on other cultures.
The latter are said to have the right to
return to the simple message of the New Testament
prior to that inculturation, in order to
inculturate it anew in their own particular
milieux. This thesis is not only false; it
is coarse and lacking in precision. The New
Testament was written in Greek and bears
the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had
already come to maturity as the Old Testament
developed.
True, there are elements in the evolution
of the early Church which do not have to
be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless,
the fundamental decisions made about the
relationship between faith and the use of
human reason are part of the faith itself;
they are developments consonant with the
nature of faith itself.
| And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt,
painted with broad strokes, at a critique
of modern reason from within has nothing
to do with putting the clock back to the
time before the Enlightenment and rejecting
the insights of the modern age. The positive
aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged
unreservedly: We are all grateful for the
marvelous possibilities that it has opened
up for mankind and for the progress in humanity
that has been granted to us. The scientific
ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient
to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an
attitude which reflects one of the basic
tenets of Christianity. |
|
The End of Time?:
The Provocation of
Talking about God
Cardenal Ratzinger |
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 verifiable, 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 reason
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. Modern scientific reason
quite simply has to accept the rational structure
of matter and the correspondence between
our spirit and the prevailing rational structures
of nature as a given, on which its methodology
has to be based.
Yet the question why this has to be so is
a real question, and one which has to be
remanded by the natural sciences to other
modes and planes of thought -- to philosophy
and theology. For philosophy and, albeit
in a different way, for theology, listening
to the great experiences and insights of
the religious traditions of humanity, and
those of the Christian faith in particular,
is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it
would be an unacceptable restriction of our
listening and responding.
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 -- but in this
way he would be deprived of the truth of
existence and would suffer a great loss."
The West has long been endangered by this
aversion to the questions which underlie
its rationality, and can only suffer great
harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole
breadth of reason, and not the denial of
its grandeur -- this is the program with
which a theology grounded in biblical faith
enters into the debates of our time.
"Not to act reasonably (with logos)
is contrary to the nature of God," said
Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding
of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor.
It is to this great logos, to this breadth
of reason, that we invite our partners in
the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it
constantly is the great task of the university.
[Translation of German original issued by
the Holy See; adapted]
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