Pope Benedict�s Remarks

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For the (accurate) information of all here are the remarks he made which have caused such violence from certain quarters:

"...The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It
was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they
too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the
"universitas scientiarum," even if not everyone could share the faith
which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This
profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not
troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said
there was something odd about our university: It had two faculties
devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of
such radical skepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise
the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the
context of the tradition of the Christian faith: This, within the
university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was
reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by professor
Theodore Khoury (Muenster) of part of the dialogue carried on --
perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara -- by the erudite
Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the
subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.

It was
probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the
siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain
why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the
learned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of
faith contained in the Bible and in the Koran, and deals especially
with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning
repeatedly to the relationship of the "three Laws": the Old Testament,
the New Testament and the Koran.

In this lecture I would like to
discuss only one point -- itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself
-- which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason," I found
interesting and which can serve as the starting point for my
reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation
("di�lesis" -- controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperor
touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have
known that sura 2:256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." It
is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still
powerless and under [threat]. But naturally the emperor also knew the
instructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerning
holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference
in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels,"
he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central
question on the relationship between religion and violence in general,
in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and
there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command
to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The emperor goes
on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through
violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the
nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood,
and not acting reasonably ("syn logo") is contrary to God's nature.
Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to
faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without
violence and threats.... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not
need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of
threatening a person with death...."

The decisive statement in
this argument against violent conversion is this: Not to act in
accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor,
Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by
Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim
teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with
any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a
work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn
Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own
word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were
it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

As far
as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is
concerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays
challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably
contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and
intrinsically true?

I believe that here we can see the profound
harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the
biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of
the Book of Genesis, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the
words: "In the beginning was the 'logos.'"

This is the very word
used by the emperor: God acts with logos. Logos means both reason and
word -- a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication,
precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical
concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous
threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the
beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The
encounter between the biblical message and Greek thought did not happen
by chance.

The vision of St. Paul, who saw the roads to Asia
barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over
to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) -- this vision can be
interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a
rapprochement between biblical faith and Greek inquiry..."

The full text is here:  http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=948 07 .

How anyone interprets this as a slur on Muslims is beyond my capability to understand; and I can only conclude that almost anything can be a spur to violence if someoneone wants an excuse.

You can agree or disagree with the point he is trying to make about the relationship between reason, faith, and rationality, but interpreting these remarks as somehow a slur on Islam is certainly willfully spreading falsehood.

Edited by runner