A statement from the Vatican has failed to quell criticism of Pope Benedict XVI from Muslim leaders, after a speech touching on the concept of holy war. Speaking in Germany, the Pope quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor who said the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things...
Stressing that they were not his own words, he quoted Emperor Manuel II Paleologos of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Christian empire which had its capital in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul.
The emperor's words were, he said: "Show me just what Muhammad 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."
Benedict said "I quote" twice to stress the words were not his and added that violence was "incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".
"The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application," he added in the concluding part of his speech.
"Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today."
In my view, if a religious teacher critiques another religious philosophy or leader, the religious teacher must make it as certain as possible that the comments are accurate. However, once the comments are made the religious teacher must not back down and apologize for them because of pressure from the group that is being criticized.
If Pope Benedict XVI agreed with what Emperor Manuel II Paleologos said about Muhammed, he could have remained silent on the issue, but once he made the comments, for the sake of credibility as a Christian leader he cannot appear to back down and apologize because of pressure from people within Islam, whose founder he was criticizing. If the Pope did not agree with the comments of Paleologos, then he should have realized that in quoting the Emperor he would cause confusion in regard to his personal view. I am not by any means an apologist for the Roman Catholic Church, but if the Pope is going to criticize Islam, he must stick to what he says for the sake of integrity. If the Pope actually made an incorrect comment he should apologize, but should not apologize because of political pressure.
Pope Benedict XVI has not apologised enough for making comments offensive to Muslims, Islamic leaders in the UK say.
In a statement, the Vatican said the Pope was "very sorry" for using a quote saying the Prophet Muhammad brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things.
The apology he has made seems to amount to him giving in to political pressure, and we need Christian leadership stronger than this example.
If the pope wanted to be a smart-ass, he could have told his accusers that they missed the whole point of his speech, which was a defense of rationality, and demonstrating that while the Christian God is by nature rational ("logos" means both "word" and "reason"), the Muslim god is "absolutely transcendent" meaning he is not bound by rationality or reason. So such a god could will irrational acts, such as spreading the faith by the sword.
ReplyDeleteI agree his apology was kind of lame, basically just showing regret that using that quote stirred up such resentment.
Read the speech, it's actually quite good:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/15_09_06_pope.pdf
Some interesting statements:
"[The irrational] 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."
"...if science as a whole is [merely empiricism], 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 compeletely 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."
"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."
From the Pope's speech:
ReplyDelete"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."
Despite my disagreement with how the Pope handled the situation, his speech has merit. I agree with him that it would be good to overcome empirical limitations on reason. Reason concerning the rationality of faith is not primarily an empirical endeavor.
The existence of the Christian God can be rationally argued, but not through the use of empiricism primarily. God who is a spiritual being, cannot be scientifically proven to exist by material means. To insist on an empirical proof of his existence is to rule out God as a possibility, because his nature is spirit, as Jesus noted in John 4:24. Christianity claims that Christ's resurrection and other supernatural events were empirical and historically documented, but a meaningful comprehension of these events requires rational theological deductions. The First Cause argument can provide philosophical propositions for the existence of a Creator in line with Biblical teaching, but is not an argument for existence of the Biblical God.
I discussed the First Cause argument here on my theology blog:
http://thekingpin68.blogspot.com/2006/07/first-cause-argument.html
9/18/2006 12:58 AM
Islamic reaction to the harsh words of a hated figure from their past should have been expected by the pope, since it offended on many levels. Benedict should have stuck with his original concept and not invoked such stark language (from a troublesome source) to add spine to an otherwise academic speech, as if he were footnoting a term paper, but he needed the quote to distance himself from what he wanted to say and could not politically afford to say himself. It added punch to his argument and gave him deniability, which he eventually used. Great speech, bad politics. He learned a hard lesson, and we learned he's no John Paul. Unfortunately, while admission of fault goes far in the West, rhetorical cowardice does not play well in the Muslim world.
ReplyDeleteThanks James,
ReplyDeleteRuss