Faith, Reason, and Cross-cultural Dialogue
Benedict XVI addressed a subject last week that has bothered me all my adult life. How far do I trust this brain God gave me and what do I simply accept because I have been taught that it is true? I’m not the first to ask of course and we aren’t counting angels on the heads of pins here. The answer has changed the course of history time and again. Benedict chose the topic because he thinks it is changing again. He began his lecture citing the musings of a man fighting to preserve a civilization, a man whose son would be the last Roman Emperor. It was a fitting choice. Manuel II Paleologus was recounting his discourse with a learned Persian on the differing views of God in Islam and Christianity. That such conversations could take place in the fourteenth century is remarkable. That we need them to take place in the twenty first is unquestionable.
I wish there were a better word for it. To reason with someone is to talk them out of something. To be reasonable is to compromise. Benedict points out that John the Evangelist opened his gospel using the Greek word logos to define God. In that context it is usually translated as “the Word” but it can also mean reason and is the root of the English word logic. Like Manuel, the Pope concludes that God is Reason and therefore to be unreasonable is to be ungodly. Maybe it made more sense in German. I think he means that to act on blind faith without thought is to act contrary to God’s will. God intended us to use our heads. The Pope being Catholic, he argues that we should use them with faith.
He is on defensible ground when he warns of the dangers of faith untempered by reason or conscience. History is filled with horrors committed by men who sincerely believed they were acting on God’s behalf. But Benedict is also making the opposite point. Human reason that ignores the divine and restricts truth solely to the scientifically verifiable is just as dangerous. It relegates ethics and morality to the realm of the subjective and personal. It limits us and cannot contribute to intercourse among cultures that are fundamentally religious. In fact those cultures see such unfettered reason as inimical to their faith and themselves as under attack.
Benedict acknowledges a number of deep thinkers who would disagree. For Manuel’s interlocutor God was not to be bound by any human constraint. He need not even be rational. Immanuel Kant had to set thinking aside to make room for faith. At the other extreme are those for whom nothing exists outside the realm of logic and empirical experiment. The Pope’s position is that neither view offers an adequate basis for the meaningful interchange we need. One has no room for faith, the other no room for reason. Any productive discussion that would cross cultural boundaries must provide for both.
Benedict’s faith is grounded in the New Testament, a work written in Greek by men who were conditioned in a system of thought begun by Aristotle and Plato. As a scholar he is a product of a University. In his remarks he challenged his fellow scholars to continually rediscover that great system and use it in addressing the great issues of our day. We live in a multicultural world and we have to speak with one another in terms we can all understand. The Pope thinks a place to begin is in the University. I hope somebody is listening.
I wish there were a better word for it. To reason with someone is to talk them out of something. To be reasonable is to compromise. Benedict points out that John the Evangelist opened his gospel using the Greek word logos to define God. In that context it is usually translated as “the Word” but it can also mean reason and is the root of the English word logic. Like Manuel, the Pope concludes that God is Reason and therefore to be unreasonable is to be ungodly. Maybe it made more sense in German. I think he means that to act on blind faith without thought is to act contrary to God’s will. God intended us to use our heads. The Pope being Catholic, he argues that we should use them with faith.
He is on defensible ground when he warns of the dangers of faith untempered by reason or conscience. History is filled with horrors committed by men who sincerely believed they were acting on God’s behalf. But Benedict is also making the opposite point. Human reason that ignores the divine and restricts truth solely to the scientifically verifiable is just as dangerous. It relegates ethics and morality to the realm of the subjective and personal. It limits us and cannot contribute to intercourse among cultures that are fundamentally religious. In fact those cultures see such unfettered reason as inimical to their faith and themselves as under attack.
Benedict acknowledges a number of deep thinkers who would disagree. For Manuel’s interlocutor God was not to be bound by any human constraint. He need not even be rational. Immanuel Kant had to set thinking aside to make room for faith. At the other extreme are those for whom nothing exists outside the realm of logic and empirical experiment. The Pope’s position is that neither view offers an adequate basis for the meaningful interchange we need. One has no room for faith, the other no room for reason. Any productive discussion that would cross cultural boundaries must provide for both.
Benedict’s faith is grounded in the New Testament, a work written in Greek by men who were conditioned in a system of thought begun by Aristotle and Plato. As a scholar he is a product of a University. In his remarks he challenged his fellow scholars to continually rediscover that great system and use it in addressing the great issues of our day. We live in a multicultural world and we have to speak with one another in terms we can all understand. The Pope thinks a place to begin is in the University. I hope somebody is listening.
posted by Onfoot at 11:38 AM
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