Excerpt from the Pope’s lecture Tom Smith

Here is an extended excerpt from the Pope’s address at the University of Regensburg, entitled”Three Stages in the Program of De-Hellenization”, that is supposed to be so offensive.

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

Itwas probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during thesiege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explainwhy his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of thelearned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures offaith contained in the Bible and in the Koran, and deals especiallywith the image of God and of man, while necessarily returningrepeatedly to the relationship of the “three Laws”: the Old Testament,the New Testament and the Koran.

In this lecture I would liketo discuss only one point — itself rather marginal to the dialogueitself — which, in the context of the issue of “faith and reason,” Ifound interesting and which can serve as the starting point for myreflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation(“diálesis” — controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperortouches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must haveknown that sura 2:256 reads: “There is no compulsion in religion.” Itis one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was stillpowerless and under [threat]. But naturally the emperor also knew theinstructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerningholy war.

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

The emperor goeson to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith throughviolence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with thenature 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 tofaith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, withoutviolence and threats…. To convince a reasonable soul, one does notneed a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means ofthreatening a person with death….”

The decisive statement inthis argument against violent conversion is this: Not to act inaccordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor,Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped byGreek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslimteaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up withany of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes awork of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that IbnHazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his ownword, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Wereit God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

As faras understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion isconcerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadayschallenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonablycontradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always andintrinsically true?

And that’s it.  That’s what all the kerfuffle is about.  The Pope can apologize if he wants to, but I certainly don’t think he has anything to apologize for.  I suppose he could explain that when he quotes a dialog between a 14th century Byzantine emperor and an educated Persian, he does not therefore endorse the views of either interlocuture.  He might even quote something in order ask, as he does, what are we to make of this?  Obviously, the Pope was just putting in context the question the emperor was posing, and that has been posed for a long time, since 1391 anyway — whether forced religious conversions are religiously justified.