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Pope Benedict XVI and The Regensburg Lecture: A Conflict Misunderstood By Br Pius Collins o.praem. For Prof Marco Ventura Capita Selecta (II) [B0B50a]
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1) Introduction 2) The Lecture: a) Introduction b) Main body: Faith and Reason i) Faith and Reason in Islam ii) Faith and Reason in Christianity iii) Hellenisation and Dehellinastion c) Conclusion 3) Aftermath and Reaction 4) A cacophany of conflict 5) Conclusion
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Introduction In this presentation I will be looking at the lecture given by Pope Benedict XVI on September 12th 2006 at the University of Regensburg entitled, Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections, commonly called ‘The Regensburg Lecture’. This lecture, ostensibly on the topic of faith and reason became very controversial and drew massive amounts of protest and condemnation from the parts of the Islamic world for a quotation Pope Benedict used in reference to Mohammed and Islam. In what follows I will seek to summarise the lecture given and then analyse specific aspects within the prism of ‘conflict’ before presenting my conclusion on the Regensburg Lecture and conflict.
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The Lecture
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I have split the lecutre into the following sections: 1) Introduction 2) Main body: Faith and Reason a) Faith and Reason in Islam b) Faith and Reason in Christianity c) Hellenisation and Dehellenisation 3) Conclusion I shall briefly summarise each section and what I believe Pope Benedict was saying.
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The Lecture - Introduction The first paragraph provides the background and purpose of the lecture. Pope Benedict taught at Regensburg University and his experience of the commonality yet distinction of the theology faculties and other faculties provides background to his belief in the centrality of reason to true faith and true academic endeavour. “It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too [the theology faculties] 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.”
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The Lecture: Faith and Reason in Islam The fourteenth century dialogue between Byzantine Emperor Michael II Palelogus and an unnamed Persian becomes the “starting point” of the Pope’s lecture on faith and reason. The Pope quotes the Emperor as saying, “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman…” Whilst not advancing the view of the Emperor himself the Pope uses this quotation to illustrate a form of modern Islam for which reason and philosophy are to be eschewed, and instead view God purely through the lens “transcendency” and otherness.
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The Lecture: Faith and Reason in Islam Pope Benedict seemed to be making the point that the Emperor’s abhorrence of Islamic religious violence was such because for the Christian seeking to spread the faith by the sword is unreasonable, and this unreasonableness devalues our actions as humans, and insults God as “not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature” Pope Benedict then goes on to discuss whether reason is really intrinsic to God or wether it is just a presupposition of Greek philosophy.
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The Lecture: Faith and Reason in Christianity Beginning biblically Pope Benedict roots our understanding God’s innate reasonableness in the classic prooftexts of the prologue to the Gospel of John and the revelation of the Divine Name to Moses (Ex. 3) Pope Benedict associates reason with Hellenic thought and adds that, “The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance”. Futhermore, he gives the emergence and special status of the Septuagint within Catholic theology as testament to this; it is, he says, “a distinct and important step in the history of revelation”.
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The Lecture: Faith and Reason in Christianity Relying on the scholastic analogia entis Pope Benedict epistemologically links us and God whilst still maintaining His otherness and transcendence. Rooting his biblically based doctrine of God’s reasonableness to our ability to understand the world and ourselves. Furthermore, he adds that whilst of non-European origin Chrisitanity, “finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe.”
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The Lecture: Hellenisation and Dehellenisation If the former process can be described as the hellenisation then Pope Benedict now looks at the role that dehellensing movements can have on the interplay of faith and reason. “The thesis that critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenisation of Christianity…three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenisation…”
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The Lecture: Hellenisation and Dehellenisation First stage: the Reformation. Whilst the reformers, he says, could not have foreseen the impact of their desire to reach a “pure” or “primordial” biblical Christianity Pope Benedict directly links the Reformation with what he goes on to say.
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The Lecture: Hellenisation and Dehellenisation Second stage: liberal theology. Adolf von Harnack becomes the typical example of this approach to theology in which a search for the “man Jesus” led to a stripping away of the supernatural, and the assertion of purely ethical or moral religion. Furthermore, Pope Benedict identifies that exclusion of anything which is not empirically verifiable from science and the subjection of every area to this scientific paradigm results in reducing Christianity to a “mere fragment”, it also reduces man whose questions about his origins and purpose can only be answered within the narrow confines of science. “The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion”
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The Lecture: Hellenisation and Dehellenisation Third stage: cultural pluralism. The final stage that Pope Benedict analyses is the assertion that inculturation should allow the jettisoning of “Hellenic” Christianity so that the “simple message” of the New Testament” may inculturate anew. He identifies this as untenable, for the reasons already identified that there is no form of Christianity which is free of Greek thought.
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The Lecture: Conclusion Modern man can only overcome the dangers arising from modernity if, “reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable”. Furthermore, “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.”
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Aftermath and Reaction
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The reaction to the Regensburg address was violent and vociferous, with many Islamic leaders condemning the lecture: “The language used by the Pope sounds like that of his 12th-Century counterpart who ordered the crusades” Vice-President of India Mohammad Hamid Ansari. “In the name of the Palestinian people, we condemn the pope's remarks on Islam”, Hamas leader and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. However, the Pope was praised in some quarters: Swiss Interior Minister Pascal Couchepin stated the Pope's speech was "intelligent and necessary.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Whoever criticises the Pope misunderstood the aim of his speech… It was an invitation to dialogue between religions and the Pope expressly spoke in favour of this dialogue, which is something I also support and consider urgent and necessary.”
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Aftermath and Reaction On 12th October 2006 38 respected and influential Islamic scholars and clerics, including several Grand Muftis, signed an, “Open Letter to the Pope” in which they accepted his apologies for any misundestanding and sought to address some specific concerns. A year later on 11th October 2007 a group of 138 Islamic scholars, clerics, and theologians sent an open letter entitled, “A Common Word Between Us and You” to the Pope and all major Christian leaders. In his book-length interview with Peter Seewald he stated that whilst he sorry for any offence, and for the violence, after the lecture there had been positive developments: “And so, that controversy led to a really intense dialogue. It became clear that in as far as public debate is concerned, Islam needs to be clear on two questions: its relationship with violence and with reason.” (Light of the World, Seewald)
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A cacophony of conflict
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From reading the text I believe it is clear that the lecture was not principally focused on Islam, which is why some of the criticisms on Pope Benedict’s treatment of historical Islam and reason may be correct, even if misplaced. It seems ironic that Pope Benedict does single out the Reformation as a stage in the dehellenising process that contributes to the modern intellectual malaise, but that this has not been widely picked up by analysts.
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A cacophony of conflict George Weigel in an LA Times article in 2006 correctly, I believe, identifies that Pope Benedict’s criticism of the West and of the moral and intellectual relativism, so much a theme of his pontificate, has been largely passed over. “A Western world stripped of convictions about the truths that make Western civilization possible cannot make a useful contribution to a genuine dialogue of civilizations”
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A cacophony of conflict I do not believe that Pope Benedict intended to cause offence to Muslims’ worldwide, nor that Islam was the primary focus of the lecture, but I do beleive it is evident from his lecture that he was intending to confront a conflict head-on. This conflict was the treatment of religious faith in European universities. Pope Benedict tried to demonstrate that only when the academy treats religion as something other than superstition or personal choice, that is only when univerisites engage, even critically, with religious belief per se can they provide any help in combatting some of the problems of modernity; one of these problems is militant Islam.
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Conclusion I believe that Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Lecture is one of the most important tracts of his pontificate, not because of its controverted nature but because it so neatly summarised so much of what Pope Benedict cared about. The lecture captures his tireless fight to defend the complementarity of faith and reason both within the Church and outside it, and that honest intellectual dialogue is only possible and frutiful when faith and reason are both properly understood. Theologically, I believe the depth of the statements about the significance of the Septuagint in revelation, and of the nature and end of ‘hellenisation’ have yet to be unpacked. If the Regensburg Lecture does have anything to say about Islam it is that the West will never be able to combat violence in the name of religion until it understands religion.
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Bibliography Pope Benedict XVI, Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections, September 12th 2006: http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict- xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university- regensburg.html [accessed 28th May 2015]http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict- xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university- regensburg.html Nichols, Aidan. The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI: An Introduction to the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007). Rowland, Tracey. Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI. 1st ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Schall, James V, The Regensburg Lecture: Thinking Rightly about God and Man (South Bend, IN: St Augustine’s Press, 2007). Weigel, George, ‘Calm down and listen: The pope is right’, LA Times, 20th September 2006 ‘Regensburg Lecture’, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regensburg_lecture [accessed 28th May 2015]
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