The Pope’s Speech

Much brouhaha, especially in the Islamic world, over a recent speech by Pope Benedict XVI in which (to gauge by most media reports), the Pope spoke favorably over a Byzantine emperor’s comment, “Show me just what Muhammad 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 remarkable thing here is that not only is this a rather boring and academic speech, but that the quote in question is a trivial lead-in to what Benedict is really speaking about — the need to recognize the alignment between reason and faith, the futility of forced conversion (of any sort), and the essential aspects of Greek philosophy in modern Christianity. Had this particular bit not actually been in the speech, the whole thing would have gone unnoticed by all but Catholic scholars and theology wonks at the University of Regensberg.

I suspected that the Pope hadn’t actually given a speech about how Islam was a violent and evil and inhuman faith, but hadn’t had a chance to read the whole thing in context. Well, here it is, and let me quote the context of the passage at greater length …

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 (*4V8,>4H – 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 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 (F×< 8`(T) 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.

And from there he carries on the thesis of faith and reason and all that jazz. (The odd clusters of letters and numbers appear to be Greek text that didn’t copy over well into the Vatican web page I quote.)

Now one can easily — far too easily — find areas where conversion by violence has been practiced by Christians. It would, perhaps, have been more politic (and effective) for the Pope to have found a quotation about that — save that his point throughout the rest of the speech (meandering and academic as it is) is primarily about the latter part of the emperor’s quotation, about reason as an avenue to understanding God, the influence of Greek thought, and the pressures to “dehellenize” Christianity in the modern (meaning post-Reformation) era. The specific mention of Islam is, in fact, tangential his thesis, but contextual for his quotation.

Should the Pope apologize? Honestly, I doubt it would do much good. The folks who have chosen to be so vociferously offended by this — either in ignorance of the history of Islam, or getting into a tit-for-tat over the Crusades, or just by focusing on the whole thing based on a single quote, out of context — are unlikely to be actually mollified by an apology. Instead, the matter has become something to whip up the faithful into a frenzy over. It’s the Danish cartoon thing all over again, only in fancy dress.

Were I the Pope (God forbid), it would seem, though, a great opportunity for teaching, rather than apology. To wit, making the very point I did above, that this is not (and was not presented as) an indictment of Islam or the Prophet Mohammed, and that, indeed, far too many Christians (inside and outside of the Catholic Church) have also pursued “conversion by the sword,” to the detriment of the Faith and the people themselves. It’s always better to acknowledge the mote in one’s own eye, to be parablistic, and to take the high road of acknowledging one’s own faults rather than arguing over those of others — especially when that wasn’t what you were talking about in the first place.

Again, that wouldn’t sooth the anger of those who either want to be angry or who want others to be angry, but it would be the right thing to do. I’ll be interested to see how the Pope handles it.