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APOSTOLIC
JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG
(SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING
WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE
OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula
Magna of the University of Regensburg
Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Faith,
Reason and the University
Memories and Reflections
Your Eminences,
Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience
for me to be back again in the university
and to be able once again to give a lecture
at this podium. I think back to those
years when, after a pleasant period at
the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching
at the University of Bonn. That was in
1959, in the days of the old university
made up of ordinary professors. The various
chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries,
but in recompense there was much direct
contact with students and in particular
among the professors themselves. We would
meet before and after lessons in the rooms
of the teaching staff. There was a lively
exchange with historians, philosophers,
philologists and, naturally, between the
two theological faculties. Once a semester
there was a dies academicus, when
professors from every faculty appeared
before the students of the entire university,
making possible a genuine experience of
universitas - something that you
too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned
- the experience, in other words, of the
fact that despite our specializations
which at times make it difficult to communicate
with each other, we made up a whole, working
in everything on the basis of a single
rationality with its various aspects and
sharing responsibility for the right use
of reason - this reality became a lived
experience. 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
scepticism 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 (Münster) 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 presumably 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 those of
his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges
widely over the structures of faith contained
in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals
especially with the image of God and of
man, while necessarily returning repeatedly
to the relationship between - as they were
called - three "Laws" or "rules of life":
the Old Testament, the New Testament and
the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss
this question in the present lecture; here
I would like to discuss only one point -
itself rather marginal to the dialogue as
a whole - 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 (διάλεξις
- controversy) edited by Professor Khoury,
the emperor touches on the theme of the
holy war. The emperor must have known
that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no
compulsion in religion". According to
the experts, this 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 Qur'an,
concerning holy war. Without descending
to details, such as the difference in
treatment accorded to those who have the
"Book" and the "infidels", he addresses
his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness,
a brusqueness which leaves us astounded,
on the central question about the relationship
between religion and violence in general,
saying: "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, after
having expressed himself so forcefully,
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", he says,
"is not pleased by blood - and not acting
reasonably (σὺν λόγω)
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 Hazm 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 practise idolatry.
At this point, as far as understanding
of God and thus the concrete practice
of religion is concerned, we are faced
with an unavoidable dilemma. 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, the first verse
of the whole Bible, John began the prologue
of his Gospel with the words: "In the
beginning was the λόγος".
This is the very word used by the emperor:
God acts, σὺν λόγω,
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 Saint
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.
In point of fact, this rapprochement had
been going on for some time. The mysterious
name of God, revealed from the burning bush,
a name which separates this God from all
other divinities with their many names and
simply declares "I am", already presents
a challenge to the notion of myth, to which
Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend
myth stands in close analogy. Within the
Old Testament, the process which started
at the burning bush came to new maturity
at the time of the Exile, when the God of
Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land
and worship, was proclaimed as the God of
heaven and earth and described in a simple
formula which echoes the words uttered at
the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding
of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment,
which finds stark expression in the mockery
of gods who are merely the work of human
hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite
the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic
rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly
to the customs and idolatrous cult of the
Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic
period, encountered the best of Greek thought
at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment
evident especially in the later wisdom literature.
Today we know that the Greek translation
of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria
- the Septuagint - is more than a simple
(and in that sense really less than satisfactory)
translation of the Hebrew text: it is an
independent textual witness and a distinct
and important step in the history of revelation,
one which brought about this encounter in
a way that was decisive for the birth and
spread of Christianity. A profound encounter
of faith and reason is taking place here,
an encounter between genuine enlightenment
and religion. From the very heart of Christian
faith and, at the same time, the heart of
Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel
II was able to say: Not to act "with logos"
is contrary to God's nature.
In all honesty, one must observe that
in the late Middle Ages we find trends
in theology which would sunder this synthesis
between the Greek spirit and the Christian
spirit. In contrast with the so-called
intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas,
there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism
which, in its later developments, led
to the claim that we can only know God's
voluntas ordinata. Beyond this
is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue
of which he could have done the opposite
of everything he has actually done. This
gives rise to positions which clearly
approach those of Ibn Hazm and might even
lead to the image of a capricious God,
who is not even bound to truth and goodness.
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.
As opposed to this, the faith of the Church
has always insisted that between God and
us, between his eternal Creator Spirit
and our created reason there exists a
real analogy, in which - as the Fourth
Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness
remains infinitely greater than likeness,
yet not to the point of abolishing analogy
and its language. God does not become
more divine when we push him away from
us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism;
rather, the truly divine God is the God
who has revealed himself as logos
and, as logos, has acted and continues
to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly,
love, as Saint Paul says, "transcends"
knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving
more than thought alone (cf. Eph
3:19); nonetheless it continues to be
love of the God who is Logos. Consequently,
Christian worship is, again to quote Paul
- "λογικη
λατρεία",
worship in harmony with the eternal Word
and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).
This inner rapprochement between Biblical
faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was
an event of decisive importance not only
from the standpoint of the history of religions,
but also from that of world history - it
is an event which concerns us even today.
Given this convergence, it is not surprising
that Christianity, despite its origins and
some significant developments in the East,
finally took on its historically decisive
character in Europe. We can also express
this the other way around: this convergence,
with the subsequent addition of the Roman
heritage, created Europe and remains the
foundation of what can rightly be called
Europe.
The thesis that the critically purified
Greek heritage forms an integral part
of Christian faith has been countered
by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity
- a call which has more and more dominated
theological discussions since the beginning
of the modern age. Viewed more closely,
three stages can be observed in the programme
of dehellenization: although interconnected,
they are clearly distinct from one another
in their motivations and objectives.
Dehellenization first emerges in connection
with the postulates of the Reformation
in the sixteenth century. Looking at the
tradition of scholastic theology, the
Reformers thought they were confronted
with a faith system totally conditioned
by philosophy, that is to say an articulation
of the faith based on an alien system
of thought. As a result, faith no longer
appeared as a living historical Word but
as one element of an overarching philosophical
system. The principle of sola scriptura,
on the other hand, sought faith in its
pure, primordial form, as originally found
in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared
as a premise derived from another source,
from which faith had to be liberated in
order to become once more fully itself.
When Kant stated that he needed to set
thinking aside in order to make room for
faith, he carried this programme forward
with a radicalism that the Reformers could
never have foreseen. He thus anchored
faith exclusively in practical reason,
denying it access to reality as a whole.
The liberal theology of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries ushered in a second
stage in the process of dehellenization,
with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding
representative. When I was a student, and
in the early years of my teaching, this
programme was highly influential in Catholic
theology too. It took as its point of departure
Pascal's distinction between the God of
the philosophers and the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. In my inaugural lecture
at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the
issue, and I do not intend to repeat here
what I said on that occasion, but I would
like to describe at least briefly what was
new about this second stage of dehellenization.
Harnack's central idea was to return simply
to the man Jesus and to his simple message,
underneath the accretions of theology and
indeed of hellenization: this simple message
was seen as the culmination of the religious
development of humanity. Jesus was said
to have put an end to worship in favour
of morality. In the end he was presented
as the father of a humanitarian moral message.
Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring
Christianity back into harmony with modern
reason, liberating it, that is to say, from
seemingly philosophical and theological
elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity
and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical
exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw
it, restored to theology its place within
the university: theology, for Harnack, is
something essentially historical and therefore
strictly scientific. What it is able to
say critically about Jesus is, so to speak,
an expression of practical reason and consequently
it can take its rightful place within the
university. Behind this thinking lies the
modern self-limitation of reason, classically
expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in
the meantime further radicalized by the
impact of the natural sciences. This modern
concept of reason is based, to put it briefly,
on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism)
and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by
the success of technology. On the one hand
it presupposes the mathematical structure
of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which
makes it possible to understand how matter
works and use it efficiently: this basic
premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element
in the modern understanding of nature. On
the other hand, there is nature's capacity
to be exploited for our purposes, and here
only the possibility of verification or
falsification through experimentation can
yield ultimate certainty. The weight between
the two poles can, depending on the circumstances,
shift from one side to the other. As strongly
positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared
himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.
This gives rise to two principles which
are crucial for the issue we have raised.
First, only the kind of certainty resulting
from the interplay of mathematical and
empirical elements can be considered scientific.
Anything that would claim to be science
must be measured against this criterion.
Hence the human sciences, such as history,
psychology, sociology and philosophy,
attempt to conform themselves to this
canon of scientificity. A second point,
which is important for our reflections,
is that by its very nature this method
excludes the question of God, making it
appear an unscientific or pre-scientific
question. Consequently, we are faced with
a reduction of the radius of science and
reason, one which needs to be questioned.
I will return to this problem later. In
the meantime, it must be observed that from
this standpoint any attempt to maintain
theology's claim to be "scientific" would
end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment
of its former self. But we must say more:
if science as a whole is this and this alone,
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 completely 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.
Before I draw the conclusions to which
all this has been leading, I must briefly
refer to the third stage of dehellenization,
which is now in progress. In the light
of our experience with cultural pluralism,
it is often said nowadays that the synthesis
with Hellenism achieved in the early Church
was a preliminary inculturation which
ought not to be binding on other cultures.
The latter are said to have the right
to return to the simple message of the
New Testament prior to that inculturation,
in order to inculturate it anew in their
own particular milieux. This thesis is
not only false; it is coarse and lacking
in precision. The New Testament was written
in Greek and bears the imprint of the
Greek spirit, which had already come to
maturity as the Old Testament developed.
True, there are elements in the evolution
of the early Church which do not have
to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless,
the fundamental decisions made about the
relationship between faith and the use
of human reason are part of the faith
itself; they are developments consonant
with the nature of faith itself.
And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt,
painted with broad strokes, at a critique
of modern reason from within has nothing
to do with putting the clock back to the
time before the Enlightenment and rejecting
the insights of the modern age. The positive
aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged
unreservedly: we are all grateful for the
marvellous possibilities that it has opened
up for mankind and for the progress in humanity
that has been granted to us. The scientific
ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned,
Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient
to the truth, and, as such, it embodies
an attitude which belongs to the essential
decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention
here is not one of retrenchment or negative
criticism, but of broadening our concept
of reason and its application. 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.
Only thus do we become capable of that
genuine dialogue of cultures and religions
so urgently needed today. In the Western
world it is widely held that only positivistic
reason and the forms of philosophy based
on it are universally valid. Yet the world's
profoundly religious cultures see this
exclusion of the divine from the universality
of reason as an attack on their most profound
convictions. 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.
At the same time, as I have attempted
to show, modern scientific reason with
its intrinsically Platonic element bears
within itself a question which points
beyond itself and beyond the possibilities
of its methodology. Modern scientific
reason quite simply has to accept the
rational structure of matter and the correspondence
between our spirit and the prevailing
rational structures of nature as a given,
on which its methodology has to be based.
Yet the question why this has to be so
is a real question, and one which has
to be remanded by the natural sciences
to other modes and planes of thought -
to philosophy and theology. For philosophy
and, albeit in a different way, for theology,
listening to the great experiences and
insights of the religious traditions of
humanity, and those of the Christian faith
in particular, is a source of knowledge,
and to ignore it would be an unacceptable
restriction of our listening and responding.
Here I am reminded of something Socrates
said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations,
many false philosophical opinions had
been raised, and so Socrates says: "It
would be easily understandable if someone
became so annoyed at all these false notions
that for the rest of his life he despised
and mocked all talk about being - but
in this way he would be deprived of the
truth of existence and would suffer a
great loss". The West has long been endangered
by this aversion to the questions which
underlie its rationality, and can only
suffer great harm thereby. The courage
to engage the whole breadth of reason,
and not the denial of its grandeur - this
is the programme with which a theology
grounded in Biblical faith enters into
the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably,
not to act with logos, is contrary
to the nature of God", said Manuel II,
according to his Christian understanding
of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor.
It is to this great logos, to this
breadth of reason, that we invite our
partners in the dialogue of cultures.
To rediscover it constantly is the great
task of the university.
***
NOTE:
The
Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent
version of this text, complete with footnotes.
The present text must therefore be considered
provisional.
©
Copyright 2006 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
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