Some reflections on Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Address.

1. There were two principal points that the Pope made in his address. The major one, to which he devoted the greater part of his lecture, was that Faith and Reason were not incompatible; that there is something wrong with a Faith which claims that it has nothing to do with human reason, or with Reason which claims that Faith is irrational. It was the Greeks who taught us to reason, and in the marriage between Faith and Reason, Pope Benedict sees ‘the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God’. The second point, made much more briefly and which I will discuss in due course, is that conversion to Faith must rest on an appeal to reason and must not be imposed by force.

2. Pope Benedict explains that from its early days Christianity had taken on board ‘what is Greek in the best sense of the word’, illustrating this, for example, with the famous opening of St John’s Gospel that ‘in the beginning was the Logos’.

3. That Faith and Reason are not incompatible was of course the teaching of Thomas Aquinas (1225 to 1274), and his canonization in 1323 made that the official teaching of the Catholic Church. It turned out to be a very beneficent idea, for it enabled the Church to accept, at least in theory, the advances of what we today call science. (In practice, of course, there have been occasions when scientists like Galileo were persecuted for putting forward ideas which conflicted with the Church’s ideas at that time.)

4. The fact that an idea has been beneficent does not, however, mean that it is right. Certain Catholic doctrines, like the Resurrection, Transubstantiation, the Trinity and the intercession of saints are just some of those which I think are totally incompatible with Reason.

5. Thomas Aquinas’ teaching was challenged within the Catholic Church by Duns Scotus (1266 to 1308) and by William of Ockham (1290 to 1349). They thought it was presumptuous to maintain that God could be understood by Reason or that He was bound by what humans considered Reason. Their approach to an understanding of God was mystical rather than rational. The Church regarded the mystical approach as valuable and never excommunicated Duns Scotus and in fact beatified him in 1993. Even so, in his address, Pope Benedict deplored his theology ‘which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit’; and the victory of Thomism over Scotism in the official teaching of the Church was such that Duns Scotus’ name became the origin of the word ‘dunce’.

6. In the Islamic world, too, there was a struggle very similar to that between Thomism and Scotism. Pope Benedict might have pointed out, especially in view of his remarks about Islam, that Islam, too, had had great thinkers whose aim it was for the Islamic Faith to accommodate Greek rational thought. The movement was called Falsafah (Philosphy) and its early leading lights were al-Farabi (878 to 950) and Avicenna or Ibn Sina (980 to 1037). Just as Aquinas was challenged by Duns Scotus, so Avicenna was challenged, and along much the same lines, by ibn Hazn (974 to 1069) and above all by al-Ghazali (1058 to 1111). But whereas Thomism had held the field against Scotism, under the influence of Al-Ghazali, the works of Avicenna and of his colleagues were burnt, by order of the Caliph, in 1150. It was not the end of the struggle: it was resumed on behalf of the rationalists by Averroes or Ibn Rushd (1126 to 1198); but he, too, was accused of heresy in 1195, and this time the victory of al-Ghazali’s ideas was decisive. From that time onwards the Islamic clergy was able to hold rationalism at bay; and this is arguably the main reason why the magnificent Islamic Renaissance - its own fusion of ‘what is Greek in the best sense of the word’ and the Islamic religion - came to an end. Generally speaking, henceforth the Islamic world, whose culture, scientific, mathematical and medical knowledge had up till then been so far ahead of that of Europe, would show little interest in the ideas that were circulating in Europe, either during the 15th century Renaissance or during the Scientific Revolution. Pope Benedict was not wrong in suggesting that from that time onwards there is little sign in the Islamic world of any marriage between Reason and Faith.

7. He might, however, have pointed out that, though Averroism was defeated in the Islamic world, it had made tremendous strides in the universities of Italy and of France by the middle of the 13th century, and that the work of Thomas Aquinas was the direct result of this. Initially the Catholic Church, like the Islamic clergy, had tried to suppress the ‘Greek’ rationalism that had reached Europe with the arrival of Averroism there; but Aquinas was so convinced that the Church should not be resisting ‘Greek’ reason that he won authorization from the Pope to work on accommodating it within Christian teaching.

8. I come now to the second main point of Pope Benedict’s address: his insistence that conversion to any faith must be by persuasive reasoning and not by force. That was, as he rightly pointed out, the initial position of Muhammad also ‘when Muhammad was still powerless’; but once he had political power, he did urge his followers to spread Islamic rule by the sword. However, on the whole Islam allowed the peoples it conquered to retain their religions if they wished: it has a good record against conversion by force.

9. The Christian Church in theory followed the teaching of St Augustine (354 to 430) teaching that Jews, for example, should not be forcibly converted, though they should be kept ‘in an oppressed condition, as living witnesses to the truth of Christianity’. But even that theory was frequently violated in practice, with the threat of death hanging not only over Jews but over ‘heretical’ Christians as well. We need only think of the bloody record of the Holy Inquisition, (the Portuguese Inquisition Portugal had it last auto-da-fé as late as 1826), or the of the Crusades. True, the Church has long lost the power to behave like that and it genuinely believes now that forcible conversion is uncivilized. Even so, it would have not have come amiss for Pope Benedict to make some reference to its past record before he chided Islam for spreading its faith by force.
On the other hand, militant Islam has not renounced the use of force to impose its rule; it still divides the world into the dar al-Islam (the House of Islam), the dar al-Harb (the House of War), and the dar al-Sulh (the House of Truce - note: no more than that). It still aims to bring back under Muslim rule any territory that was once ruled by Islam but was then lost to it. Of course it does not recognize the right of other people to regain lands that were once seized by Islam: thus it was legitimate for Islam to conquer the Holy Land from the Christians, but illegitimate for the Crusaders to try to get it back.
This asymmetry can be seen elsewhere: the Muslims claim (and indeed quite properly have) the right to build mosques in western lands, to be allowed to convert people to Islam, to enjoy free speech and to hold demonstrations; but in Saudi Arabia no churches are tolerated, any attempt to convert any Muslim to Christianity is a criminal offence, and freedom of speech and of demonstrations is severely limited.

10. The two principal points of the Pope’s address - the synthesis of Faith and Reason and the rejection of forcible conversion - can easily stand on their own and could have been made perfectly well without any references to Islam at all. It is claimed that undue attention has been paid to the mere four paragraphs in a 45 paragraph long address. The Pope has said that he had not intended to attack Islam, and had never intended to identify himself with the statements he quoted from the 14th century Emperor Manuel II, from the 20th century editor Professor Theodore Khoury, or his contemporary, the French scholar of Islam Roger Arnaldez. Is the Pope really so unintelligent or so careless or so unworldly as not to be able to foresee what a storm he would unleash? The idea that these paragraphs were inserted without due reflection really beggars belief. Did he think he was being ‘diplomatic’ to shelter behind the names of Manuel, Khoury and Arnaldez rather than to express his views outright?

11. It will be seen from the above that I believe that in some respects the comments Benedict made in relation to Islam are not without at least some foundation. Then the question arises whether he does not have the right to express them, even if he could have anticipated the hysterical reaction of some Muslims. Do we always have to lean over backwards in order not to give offence to Muslims, even if what we say is temperately expressed? And yet, in his special position, does the Pope not have a responsibility to avoid exacerbating tensions and hatreds which are already dangerous enough?

12. In short, I do not think Pope Benedict’s address has covered him with glory. I think the introduction of the paragraphs on Islam was deliberate; that if he wanted to talk about Islam, he could have given a more balanced history of it; that in the context of chiding Islam for discreditable attitudes, he might have made some reference to discreditable Catholic practices in the past; that he should not have sheltered disingenuously behind the writings of others; and that he should have been more sensitive both to his own position and to the effect he was likely to produce. In addition, most secular-minded people will not agree that Reason can be compatible with Faith in many of the doctrines of the Catholic Church.