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Tina Beattie, an eminent British Theologian, is
Reader in Christian Studies and Senior Fellow in
the Centre for Education in Human Rights, Social
Justice and Citizenship, Roehampton University,
London. Among her books are
God's Mother, Eve's Advocate
(Allen & Unwin, 2002) and
New Catholic Feminism: Theology and Theory
(Routledge, 2005).
Let me begin with a speculative proposition.
When Pope Benedict XVI was invited to give a
lecture at the place he had once studied, the
University of Regensburg in Bavaria, it was a
welcome opportunity to slip out of the rigours
of the papacy and to enjoy a brief respite in
the persona
of the academic theologian - a role with which
he is perhaps more comfortable than with his
more recent one in the
Vatican.
I suspect too that his lecture –
delivered
on 12 September 2006, and entitled “Faith,
Reason and the University: Memories and
Reflections" – was written without consultation
or advice, and perhaps with a mental image of a
largely private forum in which he could
reminisce and cogitate among his intellectual
peers, away from the public gaze.
Certainly, the lecture's opening paragraph
supports this line of thought. It consists of
the nostalgic reminiscences of a professor who
fondly remembers the atmosphere of rational
debate and rigorous theological enquiry which he
used to be part of, when theology shared common
ground with philosophy in its privileging of
universal reason.
If this hypothesis is correct, then it suggests
that
Benedict XVI
is at the very least guilty of a certain naivety
with regard to the realities of public life in a
media-driven age. But unfortunately, I think the
criticism might need to go further than this.
In the second paragraph the pope switches to an
account, written by Professor Theodore Khoury of
Münster University, of a 14th-century dialogue
between the Byzantine Emperor
Manuel II Palaeologus
and "an educated Persian" during the siege of
Constantinople (although it has been suggested
that Manuel's dialogue dates back to an earlier
time when he was a hostage at the court of the
Turkish sultan).
It is here that Pope Benedict strays into an
area that he should have known would be
incendiary in our contemporary political and
religious climate. True, there is no reason why
a religious leader should not court controversy
by raising challenging questions, but it is
important that this is done in a way that
upholds the values the pope refers to in his
lecture - those of informed debate and rational
enquiry in the service of faith. In his
representation of Islam, the pope failed to do
this.
Faith and reason
The lecture is well worth reading for its
carefully argued defence of the centrality of
reason for faith and for intercultural dialogue.
In a postmodern era of violently competing
rationalities, the pope criticises the
separation of faith and reason brought about by
the Reformation with its rejection of reason and
the Enlightenment with its rejection of faith.
The important part of the material cited is
Emperor Manuel's insistence that faith must be
spread by reason and not by violence, and the
lecture can be read as a sustained protest
against the use of violence in the service of
religion - another contribution, perhaps, to the
growing trend by modern popes to reject all
forms of violence and war as a means of solving
disputes.
But, by positioning his argument in the context
of this medieval dialogue, the pope cannot avoid
the implicit suggestion that Catholic
Christianity has traditionally been reasoned,
philosophical and peace-loving, while Islam has
been irrational, fideistic and violent.
For example, Benedict refers to the Muslim
theologian
Ibn Hazm
who defended the absolute transcendence of God;
he contrasts this view with the Christian,
Hellenistic understanding of God, which brings
about a harmony between faith and reason through
the self-revelation of a rational God. The
implication (not explicitly spelled out), is
that Islam (like Protestant Christianity),
worships a transcendent God who is not
accessible even to reason, and thus has a
fundamental irrationalism inscribed at its
heart, while Catholic Christianity has never
sought to contradict the demands of reason in
its understanding of faith.
Yet Benedict acknowledges that the 13th-century
Scots theologian
Duns Scotus
would be an example of a "voluntarism" which
negated the "so-called intellectualism of
Augustine and Thomas". In other words,
Catholicism, like Islam, has thinkers whose
mystical theology has sought to negate any
possible knowledge of God, including the claims
which reason puts upon us. A greater respect for
the heterogeneity of the Muslim as well as the
Catholic theological inheritance might have
resulted in a more nuanced and sensitive
analysis.
All this can be argued even before we come to
the defamatory quotation which Benedict saw fit
to include: the emperor is alleged to have said:
"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." This part of
the quotation is superfluous to the pope's
argument, so why did he include it?
There have been numerous ingenious attempts to
argue that, as he was
quoting
from another source, he was not expressing his
own opinion. But he does not sufficiently
distance himself from the sentiments expressed
in the quotation, although it has been pointed
out that the German version of the speech
describes this comment as "astoundingly harsh –
to us surprisingly harsh", which in the English
translation is rendered more mildly as
"startling brusqueness". Nevertheless, some
readers could justifiably be left with the sense
that perhaps our contemporary Pope does not find
this an entirely inaccurate
description of Muhammad
and his followers, so that this lecture may give
us a revealing glimpse of Benedict's own
prejudices.
Islam and change
Islam is going through a period of enormous
upheaval. Many Muslims have been patiently
pursuing the cause of dialogue and peace while
popular opinion often ignores their endeavours
in favour of the bigots who command the
attention of the media. But Islam has no
monopoly on violence and bigotry, and we should
bear in mind that a modern Muslim is more likely
to be killed by a baptised Christian or Jew (or
indeed another Muslim), than a non-Muslim is to
be killed by a Muslim.
Many Muslims are on the defensive in our modern
world with its dominance of western secular
perspectives, backed up by brutal
military force
which is often indistinguishable from the
terrorism it claims to be fighting. There is
also the constant drip-drip-drip of those subtle
forms of persecution that confront western
Muslims in their daily encounters with a hostile
society and an even more hostile media, in which
the diversity and plurality of contemporary
forms of Islam are subsumed beneath the
perception of a blanket of violence which
demands that every Muslim must prove himself or
herself to be "moderate", in order to escape the
accusation of terrorism. (In light of the
antics
of George W Bush in the name of God, one wonders
why Christians are not equally under pressure to
declare themselves "moderate").
At a time like this, Catholics should
stand alongside
those Muslims struggling to reform their own
religion from within, while struggling to defend
it from unjust attacks from without. We have
been there, done that - still are there and
doing that much of the time.
None of this is to deny that Islamist extremism
is implicated in potent and terrifying forms of
violence in our modern world, and every thinker
has a right to debate the reasons for this, as
the pope seeks to do. But, in an era dominated
by the media and by violent political
hostilities, those in the public eye must be
aware of the need for sensitivity, even as they
must also have the courage to speak out
truthfully against violence and injustice.
Perhaps there was some excuse for Emperor
Manuel's comments about Muhammad, given the
context he was writing in. But given the context
that Pope Benedict XVI is writing in, I'm not
sure there is any excuse. The pope has offered a
guarded apology and it is good to see that his
apology has been
accepted by many
in the Muslim world, but one hopes that he will
also reflect on his own understanding of Islam
and the contribution that it has made to the
development of western thought and culture.
If, as some suggest, this lecture has to be
understood as part of the pope's attempt to
affirm the Christian
identity of Europe
over and against its Muslim influences, then it
is deeply misguided. Muslims are part of
European history and they are certainly very
much a part of Europe's present and future life.
The Latin west owes its rediscovery of Greek
philosophy, including the writings of Aristotle,
partly to the work of medieval
Muslim scholars,
so the pope is setting up a false dichotomy.
Medieval Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers
such as Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, Avicenna and
Averroes shared a common commitment to the
philosophical wisdom of the Greeks, particularly
Aristotle, and these three traditions remain
shaped by that wisdom.
To ignore this and focus only on the irrational
and violent aspects of Islam in contrast to
Catholic Christianity (thus denying
Catholicism's own capacity to produce violent
and irrational behaviour) constitutes a lack of
irenicism in a pope whose main purpose is to
affirm the importance of philosophical reasoning
for intercultural dialogue.
Rather than reopening medieval animosities, one
might hope that the pope will in future offer us
a more hopeful vision of the possibilities for
dialogue, understanding and mutual respect,
based on the common influence of Greek
philosophy on all three of Europe's great
theological traditions.
openDemocracy
18/09/06
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