On the Ownership of Reason, Faith - and of God?
During his recent journey to Bavaria, Pope Benedict XVI held a lecture at the University of Regensburg,the text of which is on display at the Vatican's website.
It's content can be summarized as follows:
a. (Christian) theology is a scientific discipline equal in it's quality to the natural sciences
b. (Christian) theological reasoning is anchored in Greek philosophy, and thus a European achievement, whereas modern scientific reasoning, starting with the Reformation, has been "dehellenized", and therefore has lost it's roots
c. (Christian) theology postulates that God acts always according to "logos" (reason, meaning, ger. Vernunft, fr. raison)
d. In contrast to Christian Faith, Islam considers God as being completely transcendental, above and free of the realm of reason
e. The (European) concept of reason as outlined above does not permit conversion to faith by force
These are fascinating thought, and they have been presented in elegant rhetorical
phrasing.
But there remain some burning questions:
The Pope explicitly criticized the right (or the obligation) to convert non-believers to faith by force according to the Q'ran, on the ground of reason.
Now, history teaches us that during the reconquista, the Muslim and Jewish population of Spain has been converted to (catholic) Christianism by crude force and the same occurred to the indigenous populations of South America, by troups of Christian faith, accompanied and tutored by catholic priests. Critical voices within the Church were (e.g. Bartolomeo de las Casas)existed, but it took several hundred years before
the critique of colonial mission was seriously addressed.
The central question remains how reasoning, anchored in an uninterrupted theological tradition for more than two thousand years, explain this attitude? The answer: it is the reason (and the arrogance) of power.
What is the role of the Catholic Church in the balance of power? According to Pope Benedict XVI, the Church is the only legitimate guardian of reason, has the capacity to appopriate itself the idea of God by subjecting it to reason (as defined above) and through this connection, the Church has acquired the exclusive "ownership" of the only possible reasonable concept of God...
To become a shareholder of the reasonable concept of God, you have to behave reasonably within the framework of the Church and to obey to it's teachings.
Pope Benedict XVI once more demonstrates the incredible perfection and the internal logic of his global enterprise called Catholic Church. In the logic of the CEO and Chairman of God's Enterprise, non-Catholic Christian believers, can at best trade derivatives of reason and of faith...
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1 comment:
The eruptive mass protests in islamic countries that have been sparked by the remarks of Pope Benedict XVI in his recent Regensburg lecture are a sign of a profound uncertainty within the Muslim community regarding it's identity, and at the same time proof of the degree of instrumentalization of this uncertainty by religious and political authorities.
Unfortunately, the Pope did not address the problem of violence in a context appropriate to the real world problems - i.e. everyday violence on every continent, in big cities, in remote rural areas, in the densely populated Middle East - his critique of Islam would have been understood everywhere, independent of the degree of alphabetization and/or higher education.Instead of critizing present-day violent islamic fundamentalism in an overt and well founded form, he veiled it with a citation from a 14th century conversation, seeking to impress a small audience of academics, former colleagues of the faculty, and apparently unaware that due to his mediatic omnipresence the audience would become the world.
If there had to be a proof that this Pope is a man of the past uncapable of understanding what is going on here and now and what the world needs to heal the open wounds between religions, the Regensburg lecture is this proof.
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