I find this extremely interesting for several different reasons.
Mohler on Gay Babies
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Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Monday, March 19, 2007
The Homosexual Fetus
Karpas - The Homosexual Fetus
I find this extremely interesting for several different reasons.
Mohler on Gay Babies
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I find this extremely interesting for several different reasons.
Mohler on Gay Babies
Save This Page
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Wednesday Religious Assessment 2/28/07
Wednesday Religious Assessment
China in Chains - Just in time for the Olympics.
The Apathetic Christian - I can't imagine not be enthusiastic. It would be a revolution of advancement. We won't get there by murder of course, and that seems a very bizarre idea - that one can encourage salvation through murder - but the return of Christ would mean the end of murder and the championing of all kinds of progress.
Vocations Up - Even in an Exodus vocations are rising. That's fascinating and reminds me much more of the early Church than the present church in the West. Good for them.
Diet in the Desert
The Church in Venezuela - It's always a tough call for the church in my opinion. Help the oppressed in a tyranny and therefore appear to be reconciled to the evils of dictatorial control, or oppose the regime and face persecution and the real danger that the innocent will likely suffer. It's not for me to say which does the most harm, or most good, and I guess every situation is unique. Godspeed to them though.
Dry Bones - To me stuff like this is just entertainment. It doesn't ring true at all. It's hard for me to get upset about it. He's just a director and I've never understood how, or why, our society gives so much importance to entertainers.
China in Chains - Just in time for the Olympics.
The Apathetic Christian - I can't imagine not be enthusiastic. It would be a revolution of advancement. We won't get there by murder of course, and that seems a very bizarre idea - that one can encourage salvation through murder - but the return of Christ would mean the end of murder and the championing of all kinds of progress.
Vocations Up - Even in an Exodus vocations are rising. That's fascinating and reminds me much more of the early Church than the present church in the West. Good for them.
Diet in the Desert
The Church in Venezuela - It's always a tough call for the church in my opinion. Help the oppressed in a tyranny and therefore appear to be reconciled to the evils of dictatorial control, or oppose the regime and face persecution and the real danger that the innocent will likely suffer. It's not for me to say which does the most harm, or most good, and I guess every situation is unique. Godspeed to them though.Dry Bones - To me stuff like this is just entertainment. It doesn't ring true at all. It's hard for me to get upset about it. He's just a director and I've never understood how, or why, our society gives so much importance to entertainers.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Wednesday Religious Assessment 1/3/07
Wednesday Religious Assessment
A Different Mission? - An interesting article on the possible shift in emphasis on mission projects involving so-called "Millennials."
The Emergent Church - An interesting debate on the so called emergent church and what it might or might not mean in the context of Greater Christianity.
Iranians Meet with Pope - It would be quite fascinating to know the actual contents of this representation and communication.
Ford and Faith - President Ford and his faith.
Islamist Defeats in Somalia and Reactions
From Good to Great - Personally, few things bother me more in life than less.
Hearts and Minds - An extremely astute observation about politics, the popular culture, and media influence upon the population at large. Just as with the War in Iraq, Hearts and Minds, and Psychological Warfare (in the true Greek sense of the word) is something that should be practiced "within American culture."
Marriage and Gender and Geography and Mating - Fascinating Danish study on the effects of geography and marriage upon gender and mating.
Christian Business Consultant
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A Different Mission? - An interesting article on the possible shift in emphasis on mission projects involving so-called "Millennials."
The Emergent Church - An interesting debate on the so called emergent church and what it might or might not mean in the context of Greater Christianity.
Iranians Meet with Pope - It would be quite fascinating to know the actual contents of this representation and communication.
Ford and Faith - President Ford and his faith.
Islamist Defeats in Somalia and Reactions
From Good to Great - Personally, few things bother me more in life than less.
Hearts and Minds - An extremely astute observation about politics, the popular culture, and media influence upon the population at large. Just as with the War in Iraq, Hearts and Minds, and Psychological Warfare (in the true Greek sense of the word) is something that should be practiced "within American culture."
Marriage and Gender and Geography and Mating - Fascinating Danish study on the effects of geography and marriage upon gender and mating.
Christian Business Consultant
Save This Page
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Friday, December 08, 2006
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Wednesday Religious Assessment 11/22/06
Wednesday Religious Assessment
Prayer in the Air
Muslims questioned for prayer activities in-flight.
Pope Denounces Killing of Lebanese Christian Leader
Protests in Turkey
Mystery of Christ
Christ in Russia
The Fountain - Sounds like a very interesting film from the review. I'll be going to see it.
Beslan School Massacre And Russian Churches
The Desires of Married Women
Haggard's Harrow
Conservative Democrats and the Religious Right
Beginning of the End of the Schism?
Blood Brothers
Stephen Unbound
The Christian Exodus From Israel
Prayer in the Air
Muslims questioned for prayer activities in-flight.
Pope Denounces Killing of Lebanese Christian Leader
Protests in Turkey
Mystery of Christ
Christ in Russia
The Fountain - Sounds like a very interesting film from the review. I'll be going to see it.
Beslan School Massacre And Russian Churches
The Desires of Married Women
Haggard's Harrow
Conservative Democrats and the Religious Right
Beginning of the End of the Schism?
Blood Brothers
Stephen Unbound
The Christian Exodus From Israel
Friday, September 29, 2006
Allele - the Mark of Cain
Allele - The Mark of Cain
I just saw a tremendous little film which I'd like to recommend. It was quite excellent.
The film itself was called Beowulf and Grendel. It deviated significantly from the epic poem, but in a way which I felt was quite ingenious and quite well done. That is the plot of the film was not significantly weaker than that of the poem itself, though it was very different in execution and emphasis from the original poem.
When I first saw Grendel in the film the line that immediately ran back to my mind from the poem was the description of Grendel as (paraphrase) "being of the line and curse of Cain, of the mark of Cain." The film itself also explored, and I thought rather well in many respects, the tensions in northern Europe as Christianity was overlapping and overwhelming paganism. In the poem it was Beowulf himself who was the new Christian, or in many respects, as regards his warrior culture, the Christian-pagan hybrid. Beowulf, in the poem was the self-sacrificial hero and exemplar of both Christ and the pagan warrior ethos of the Geat.
In the film however Beowulf remains, until the very end, both skeptic and yet obvious exemplar of Christian virtues. He must kill Grendel to save the Danes and stop the slaughter, but he also empathizes with and understands Grendel's rage and attempts to correct past injustices. Beowulf also seemed to understand that Grendel hunted those he considered his tormentors but harmed no one he considered innocent. Beowulf tries on several occasions to convince Grendel to merely leave the area and never return. But Grendel would not.
One thing I noticed was that the Geats, upon arriving at the hall and trading insults with the Danes, were thirteen in number. An obvious reference to Christ and his twelve Apostles. I'll have to recheck my copy of the poem and see if that is indeed a direct reference from the poem. If it is then it is a very interesting analogy between the Warrior Band and the future King of the Geats, and the Apostles and the King of the Jews. It's been a long time since I analyzed the poem Beowulf, although I recently re-read it, though not for analysis but just to enjoy the poetry, but the metaphors are extremely interesting. I'll have to look up those references and see what they imply.
In some way the film was far too much a modern interpretation. The writers and filmmakers could not resist splattering the film with modern curses and language which gutteralized (in the widest sense) the otherwise well-spoken language of the film and the poem. Another criticism I have is that the film paid far too little attention to the poetry of the epic in both descriptive terms and in terms of the dialogue between characters. Had it retained the far higher literary language of the poem then the film would have been tremendously good. As it was it was merely good, but extremely well done compared to most modern works on such subject matter.
The cinematography was astoundingly superb, as were the sets and locales, and the acting was very solid and well executed. I could imagine the characters as real people in a real setting. A very harsh and brutally cold and tough environment. The actual appearance of the film was beautiful. All in all I highly recommend this film. Even with the obvious deficits, it was still a very enjoyable and beautiful work.
I just saw a tremendous little film which I'd like to recommend. It was quite excellent.
The film itself was called Beowulf and Grendel. It deviated significantly from the epic poem, but in a way which I felt was quite ingenious and quite well done. That is the plot of the film was not significantly weaker than that of the poem itself, though it was very different in execution and emphasis from the original poem.
When I first saw Grendel in the film the line that immediately ran back to my mind from the poem was the description of Grendel as (paraphrase) "being of the line and curse of Cain, of the mark of Cain." The film itself also explored, and I thought rather well in many respects, the tensions in northern Europe as Christianity was overlapping and overwhelming paganism. In the poem it was Beowulf himself who was the new Christian, or in many respects, as regards his warrior culture, the Christian-pagan hybrid. Beowulf, in the poem was the self-sacrificial hero and exemplar of both Christ and the pagan warrior ethos of the Geat.
In the film however Beowulf remains, until the very end, both skeptic and yet obvious exemplar of Christian virtues. He must kill Grendel to save the Danes and stop the slaughter, but he also empathizes with and understands Grendel's rage and attempts to correct past injustices. Beowulf also seemed to understand that Grendel hunted those he considered his tormentors but harmed no one he considered innocent. Beowulf tries on several occasions to convince Grendel to merely leave the area and never return. But Grendel would not.
One thing I noticed was that the Geats, upon arriving at the hall and trading insults with the Danes, were thirteen in number. An obvious reference to Christ and his twelve Apostles. I'll have to recheck my copy of the poem and see if that is indeed a direct reference from the poem. If it is then it is a very interesting analogy between the Warrior Band and the future King of the Geats, and the Apostles and the King of the Jews. It's been a long time since I analyzed the poem Beowulf, although I recently re-read it, though not for analysis but just to enjoy the poetry, but the metaphors are extremely interesting. I'll have to look up those references and see what they imply.
In some way the film was far too much a modern interpretation. The writers and filmmakers could not resist splattering the film with modern curses and language which gutteralized (in the widest sense) the otherwise well-spoken language of the film and the poem. Another criticism I have is that the film paid far too little attention to the poetry of the epic in both descriptive terms and in terms of the dialogue between characters. Had it retained the far higher literary language of the poem then the film would have been tremendously good. As it was it was merely good, but extremely well done compared to most modern works on such subject matter.
The cinematography was astoundingly superb, as were the sets and locales, and the acting was very solid and well executed. I could imagine the characters as real people in a real setting. A very harsh and brutally cold and tough environment. The actual appearance of the film was beautiful. All in all I highly recommend this film. Even with the obvious deficits, it was still a very enjoyable and beautiful work.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
The Exchange - The Last, Best Hope
The Exchange - The Last, Best Hope
A friend of mine sent me these article links along with his personal observations regarding religious matters in Germany and Europe.
We have often had related discussions on these very matters. I'm not going to post his remarks because they were for a few select friends but below you will find my response to his observations and the articles he sent me.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0915/p01s01-woeu.html?s=u
http://www.csmonitor.com/1999/1025/p1s4.html?s=widep
My Response:
My personal opinion on this matter is this.
Germany and Italy were the prior religious centers of Continental Europe. (One could easily count Spain at one time but Franco held that under the thumb for a very long time).
When religion began to decline in both nations they were ripe for Hitler and Mussolini and with Fascism changing Christianity into a sort of bastardization of official ceremonial state function, or wiping it out altogether and replacing it with neo-pagan Nazi state religious totems, Christianity began her modern death march in Europe.
Then Germany and Italy lost the Second World War but Germany never recovered her religious identity, (and I'm not sure she ever may entirely), I suspect because many people there associated with the idea that religion had done nothing to stop Nazism, and they were right. But Christianity was already impotent and on the decline in the continent by that time anyway. Italy recovered because of the Vatican and Catholicism but really hasn't been a major political, social, religious, or national power up until very recently, and then only weakly compared to the past.
When religion is weak in Germany and Italy it is weak throughout all of Western Europe. (When religion is weak in Russia it is primarily weak throughout Eastern Europe as well, Poland possibly excluded.) Britain is too much the non-continental and semi-isolated island outsider to really drive the continent in any way and France is a religious joke as well as a political and economic one. Italy may always be relatively religiously strong due to the Vatican, but Germany really determines the course of Western Europe, economically, politically, and religiously. Europe does not have a unified culture and never will and only religious sentiment and association can stand as a surrogate "Super-culture." Secularism cannot act as a Super-culture at all because by very definition secular prosperity is competitive and economically adversarial. Germany and France cannot secularly and economically prosper equally. Only religion acts as a superculture and always has in Europe, even amid internecine conflict. Though such conflicts also on the one hand served to remind Europe of the superculture (Christendom) while at the same time tearing apart that superculture with various regional, national, and ethnic versions of Christianity in violent competition. (Not that I'm against denominational competition, it's good for religion, but not to the extent that it helps breed religious and sectarian warfare. That's all been worked out in modern times, Christian religious groups and denominations do not war on each other, but then again they do not act cooperatively in Europe either. They are apathetic and languid to a high degree.)
Nevertheless if Germany corrects itself religiously then most of Western Europe will become that much more stable and much can be done to isolate and marginalize the danger, degeneration, and duplicity that is France. If not then Western Europe will follow France into another period of stagnation followed eventually by open warfare in Europe.
I found it interesting you mentioned the Third World Nigerian street preachers. About two years or so ago I read a very good book which had statistics on various types of Christianity apparent in different parts of the world. Surveys were taken in various regions of the world and the one major power/industrialized nation that scored the most in common with Third World Christians (as far as similarities of religious views) was the United States. The US also scored high in similarity of religious viewpoint with home churches in Asia and with Catholics in South and Central America. The nations we scored least as having anything in common with religiously were most Western European nations. Which only makes sense because America has never had much faith in secularism as a solitary pursuit, or a safe national or cultural pursuit, rather we mix secular and sacred pursuits freely, like the Byzantines did. (I have a personal theory that the US is Byzantium reborn and improved upon.) Also America has never really lost her affiliated affections and sentiments towards primitive or early Christianity and has even to this day maintained a "rural and primitive feel" in most things, culture and religion included, when compared to the over-civilized and over-intellectualized and passive and primarily effeminate cultures of Western Europe. I do not say effeminate as a mere insult, but as a true and correct observation. Europe is urbanized, passive, slow to change, retiring, narcissistic, pessimistic, effeminate, and timid. The US is primitive, frontier-like in outlook, dynamic, aggressive, optimistic, masculine, and unafraid. We have far more in common in psychological outlook and general worldview with many parts of the Third World than we do with Europe, with which we share basically only a common cultural background heritage. Europe is our ancestor, but in truth we are nothing like our parents. Thank God for that.
Anyway, if Germany and Italy return to the more primitive roots of their Christian heritage then the axis will shift again and Europe may tilt in our direction once more. If not then in my opinion we can look to fight a war there once again, maybe by the time of our grandchildren. I would like to be optimistic, and I am considering Pope John Paul and Benedict, and the Third World primitive Christian missionaries now invading Europe and even the US (and our major urban centers could use a few good missionaries, they have to far too large an extent become "Europeanized") but it may already be too late. Only a complete collapse of the Secular Only model may bring Europe to her senses again, and that will only follow a real catastrophe. But then again if the early Christians could bring Rome to her knees and remake the Roman world into Christendom, then maybe the modern primitives can also remake modern Europe into a kind of New Christendom. But only time will tell in my opinion. I think we're too far out to tell as of yet.
A friend of mine sent me these article links along with his personal observations regarding religious matters in Germany and Europe.
We have often had related discussions on these very matters. I'm not going to post his remarks because they were for a few select friends but below you will find my response to his observations and the articles he sent me.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0915/p01s01-woeu.html?s=u
http://www.csmonitor.com/1999/1025/p1s4.html?s=widep
My Response:
My personal opinion on this matter is this.
Germany and Italy were the prior religious centers of Continental Europe. (One could easily count Spain at one time but Franco held that under the thumb for a very long time).
When religion began to decline in both nations they were ripe for Hitler and Mussolini and with Fascism changing Christianity into a sort of bastardization of official ceremonial state function, or wiping it out altogether and replacing it with neo-pagan Nazi state religious totems, Christianity began her modern death march in Europe.
Then Germany and Italy lost the Second World War but Germany never recovered her religious identity, (and I'm not sure she ever may entirely), I suspect because many people there associated with the idea that religion had done nothing to stop Nazism, and they were right. But Christianity was already impotent and on the decline in the continent by that time anyway. Italy recovered because of the Vatican and Catholicism but really hasn't been a major political, social, religious, or national power up until very recently, and then only weakly compared to the past.
When religion is weak in Germany and Italy it is weak throughout all of Western Europe. (When religion is weak in Russia it is primarily weak throughout Eastern Europe as well, Poland possibly excluded.) Britain is too much the non-continental and semi-isolated island outsider to really drive the continent in any way and France is a religious joke as well as a political and economic one. Italy may always be relatively religiously strong due to the Vatican, but Germany really determines the course of Western Europe, economically, politically, and religiously. Europe does not have a unified culture and never will and only religious sentiment and association can stand as a surrogate "Super-culture." Secularism cannot act as a Super-culture at all because by very definition secular prosperity is competitive and economically adversarial. Germany and France cannot secularly and economically prosper equally. Only religion acts as a superculture and always has in Europe, even amid internecine conflict. Though such conflicts also on the one hand served to remind Europe of the superculture (Christendom) while at the same time tearing apart that superculture with various regional, national, and ethnic versions of Christianity in violent competition. (Not that I'm against denominational competition, it's good for religion, but not to the extent that it helps breed religious and sectarian warfare. That's all been worked out in modern times, Christian religious groups and denominations do not war on each other, but then again they do not act cooperatively in Europe either. They are apathetic and languid to a high degree.)
Nevertheless if Germany corrects itself religiously then most of Western Europe will become that much more stable and much can be done to isolate and marginalize the danger, degeneration, and duplicity that is France. If not then Western Europe will follow France into another period of stagnation followed eventually by open warfare in Europe.
I found it interesting you mentioned the Third World Nigerian street preachers. About two years or so ago I read a very good book which had statistics on various types of Christianity apparent in different parts of the world. Surveys were taken in various regions of the world and the one major power/industrialized nation that scored the most in common with Third World Christians (as far as similarities of religious views) was the United States. The US also scored high in similarity of religious viewpoint with home churches in Asia and with Catholics in South and Central America. The nations we scored least as having anything in common with religiously were most Western European nations. Which only makes sense because America has never had much faith in secularism as a solitary pursuit, or a safe national or cultural pursuit, rather we mix secular and sacred pursuits freely, like the Byzantines did. (I have a personal theory that the US is Byzantium reborn and improved upon.) Also America has never really lost her affiliated affections and sentiments towards primitive or early Christianity and has even to this day maintained a "rural and primitive feel" in most things, culture and religion included, when compared to the over-civilized and over-intellectualized and passive and primarily effeminate cultures of Western Europe. I do not say effeminate as a mere insult, but as a true and correct observation. Europe is urbanized, passive, slow to change, retiring, narcissistic, pessimistic, effeminate, and timid. The US is primitive, frontier-like in outlook, dynamic, aggressive, optimistic, masculine, and unafraid. We have far more in common in psychological outlook and general worldview with many parts of the Third World than we do with Europe, with which we share basically only a common cultural background heritage. Europe is our ancestor, but in truth we are nothing like our parents. Thank God for that.
Anyway, if Germany and Italy return to the more primitive roots of their Christian heritage then the axis will shift again and Europe may tilt in our direction once more. If not then in my opinion we can look to fight a war there once again, maybe by the time of our grandchildren. I would like to be optimistic, and I am considering Pope John Paul and Benedict, and the Third World primitive Christian missionaries now invading Europe and even the US (and our major urban centers could use a few good missionaries, they have to far too large an extent become "Europeanized") but it may already be too late. Only a complete collapse of the Secular Only model may bring Europe to her senses again, and that will only follow a real catastrophe. But then again if the early Christians could bring Rome to her knees and remake the Roman world into Christendom, then maybe the modern primitives can also remake modern Europe into a kind of New Christendom. But only time will tell in my opinion. I think we're too far out to tell as of yet.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
The Exchange - Stick to Your Crosses
The Exchange - Stick to Your Crosses
In my opinion Benedict should in no way apologize for his actual remarks, nor for the remarks of Emperor Manuel II Paleologus. They were both right to criticize the Islamic ideal and propensity of attempting to spread faith by the sword, and the pope was right about his critique of Western Society, especially European Western Society. His criticisms of the Western Educational system are also interesting, good, true, and very beneficial. Stick to your crosses Father, and don't waver.
I also find it extremely fascinating that the pope is attempting to harmonize Greek and Christian thought and by implication Greek Orthodoxy and more general Western Christian traditions. In this respect I agree with him completely as well.
After a prior century of Germans like Himmler and Hitler (even though he wasn't really German) it is extremely refreshing and nice to hear a German speaking like a Christian, and even a Greek Christian again.
Benedict may turn out to be a very interesting and useful pope indeed.
Address by the pope:
APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of RegensburgTuesday, 12 September 2006
Faith, Reason and the University Memories and Reflections
Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies,Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That 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 - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - 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 - 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 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.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) 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 presumably 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 those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; 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 (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this 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 Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness 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". 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 (F×< 8`(T) 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 practise idolatry.
At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. 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, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the Logos." This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, F×< 8`(T, 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 Saint 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 simply declares "I am", 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. Ps 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 really 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.
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, in its later developments, 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 - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. 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, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul - "8@(46¬ 8"JD,\"", worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 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 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. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.
Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth 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 programme 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 nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme 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, and I do not intend to 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 dehellenization. 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 favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack's 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, as he saw it, 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.
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.I will 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: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then 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", so understood, 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 dehellenization, 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 marvellous 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 - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. 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 programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act 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.
***
NOTE:
The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional.
© Copyright 2006 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
In my opinion Benedict should in no way apologize for his actual remarks, nor for the remarks of Emperor Manuel II Paleologus. They were both right to criticize the Islamic ideal and propensity of attempting to spread faith by the sword, and the pope was right about his critique of Western Society, especially European Western Society. His criticisms of the Western Educational system are also interesting, good, true, and very beneficial. Stick to your crosses Father, and don't waver.
I also find it extremely fascinating that the pope is attempting to harmonize Greek and Christian thought and by implication Greek Orthodoxy and more general Western Christian traditions. In this respect I agree with him completely as well.
After a prior century of Germans like Himmler and Hitler (even though he wasn't really German) it is extremely refreshing and nice to hear a German speaking like a Christian, and even a Greek Christian again.
Benedict may turn out to be a very interesting and useful pope indeed.
Address by the pope:
APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of RegensburgTuesday, 12 September 2006
Faith, Reason and the University Memories and Reflections
Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies,Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That 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 - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - 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 - 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 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.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) 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 presumably 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 those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; 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 (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this 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 Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness 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". 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 (F×< 8`(T) 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 practise idolatry.
At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. 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, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the Logos." This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, F×< 8`(T, 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 Saint 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 simply declares "I am", 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. Ps 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 really 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.
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, in its later developments, 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 - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. 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, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul - "8@(46¬ 8"JD,\"", worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 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 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. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.
Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth 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 programme 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 nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme 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, and I do not intend to 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 dehellenization. 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 favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack's 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, as he saw it, 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.
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.I will 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: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then 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", so understood, 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 dehellenization, 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 marvellous 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 - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. 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 programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act 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.
***
NOTE:
The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional.
© Copyright 2006 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
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