Pope on Islam, Greek Thought, Reason & God

In scholarly lecture, pope reflects on crisis of faith, reason
By John Thavis Catholic News Service REGENSBURG, Germany (CNS) --

In a lecture at the German university where he once taught theology, Pope Benedict XVI used a historical critique of Islamic violence to introduce a reflection on the crisis of faith and reason in the West. The pope began his address Sept. 12 by highlighting a 600-year-old discussion on Islamic "jihad" or holy war, quoting at length a Christian emperor who condemned Islam for spreading the faith "by the sword." But instead of critically assessing Islam, the pope focused his attention on what he said was the West's centuries-old tendency to "exclude the question of God" from the realm of reason. This tendency to devalue religious thought, he said, makes it more difficult for the West to engage in the urgently needed dialogue of cultures and religions."A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion to the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures," he said.The pope looked happy and relaxed as he returned to the University of Regensburg, where he taught dogmatic theology from 1969 to 1977. About 1,500 of Germany's leading academics greeted the pontiff with warm applause as he walked through the university's great hall and took his place on a gilded chair in the center of the stage.

To introduce the theme of his lecture, the pope quoted from an account of a dialogue between the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an unnamed Muslim scholar, sometime near the end of the 14th century. The pope said the account was marginal to his theme, but that he found it interesting -- particularly when the emperor touched upon the subject of Islamic holy war.The pope cited what the emperor told the Islamic scholar: "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. "Twice, the pope emphasized that he was quoting someone else's words. The pope said the emperor must have known of the early Islamic teaching that "there is no compulsion in religion," but was no doubt also aware of later instructions in the Koran about holy war. In the account, the emperor goes on to explain why spreading the faith through violence is unreasonable, because violence is incompatible with God and with the nature of the soul. The pope then pointed to a key question about Islam that is raised by the narrative: whether God is absolutely transcendent for Muslims, and therefore not bound up with "any of our categories, even that of rationality. "The pope did not offer an answer to that question. Instead, he went on to explore, in great detail, why Christian theology has come to affirm that faith is indeed based on reason and that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature..

Lecture in full at Chiesa