Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Faith, Reason and the University.
Memories and Reflections.
Eminence, Magnificences, Excellencies, Distinguished
Ladies and Gentlemen!
is an exciting time for me to see me again University and once again give a lecture. My thoughts at the same time, back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. It was - in 1959 - the days of the old universities of 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. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teachers. The lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties were very close. Once in each 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 , say that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made a whole, working in everything on the right with its various size, being so well together and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university, no doubt, was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, perform work which is necessarily part of the "whole 'of the universitas scientiarum , even if not everyone could share the faith, whose correlation with reason undertake theologians. This cohesion 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 front of one such radical skepticism it is still necessary and reasonable question of God through reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of Christian faith: this, within the university, was accepted without question.
Everything I remembered when I read the part recently published by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of the dialogue that the learned Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, perhaps during the winter quarters of 1391 in Ankara, had a educated Persian on Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. was presumably the emperor himself who set down during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402, this dialogue, 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 the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "three" rules of life ": the Old Testament - New Testament - the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss in this lesson, I would like to touch only one argument - rather marginal in the structure of dialogue - that, in the context of the theme of "faith and reason", and that fascinated me I will serve as a starting point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by prof. Khoury, the emperor touches on the issue of jihad, holy war of . The emperor must have known that sura 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". It is probably one of the suras the initial period, say some experts, 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 details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he somewhat brusquely, abrupt as to be unacceptable to us, he addresses his interlocutor with the central question on 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. The Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood - he says - and not acting right," συν 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, you do not need nor arm, nor the means to strike or any other means of threatening a person death ... "
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine philosophy Greek, this statement is obvious. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound to 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 practice idolatry.
At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion, a dilemma which nowadays challenges us in a very direct way. The conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature, it is only a thought and greek or is it always true? I think here we can see the profound harmony between what is greek in the best sense and what is faith in God on the basis of the Bible. Modifying the first verse 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 συν λόγω "with logos . Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, the word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith reach their destination, they find their synthesis. In the beginning was the logos , and logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and greek thought it was a simple case. The vision of Saint Paul, before which they had closed the roads to Asia and that, 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 questioning greek.
In fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God from the burning bush, which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply asserts his "I am", his being, is, against the myth that a challenge with which it stands in close analogy Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth. The process started at the burning bush came in the Old Testament, a new maturity in exile, when the God of Israel, now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and of the earth, in a simple formula which echoes the words of the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which is expressed dramatically in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). So, despite all the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the greek lifestyle and their idolatrous worship, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of greek thought, until to a mutual enrichment evident especially in and then realized 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 in its own right a specific and important step in the history of Revelation, in which he is brought about this encounter in a way that the birth of Christianity and its disclosure had a decisive significance. Deep inside, there is the encounter of faith and reason, between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and at the same time, the nature 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 at this point 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 ultimately, in its later developments, led to the claim that we only know God's voluntas ordered. Beyond this there is the freedom of God, whereby he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. Here you 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. The transcendence of God and diversity are accentuated in so exalted that our reason, our sense of truth and well no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. In contrast 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 -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, but the truly divine God is the God who is shown as logos and how logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3.19), but it remains the love of God the Logos for where Christian worship is, as Paul says "λογικη λατρεία" - worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12.1).
The mutual approach mentioned here within, which is had between Biblical faith and the philosophical question of greek thought was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - 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, rightly be called Europe.
The thesis that the greek heritage, critically purified an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call of de-Hellenization of Christianity - a call that the beginning of the modern age and more dominated theological research. Viewed more closely, one can observe three waves in the program of de-Hellenization: Although interconnected, they nevertheless in their motives and their objectives are clearly distinct from one another.
Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Considering the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were faced with a systematization of faith totally conditioned by philosophy, that is, before a determination of the strength of a faith based way of thinking that was not derived from it. Thus, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of a philosophical system. The Sola Scriptura other hand, sought faith pure, primordial form, as it was originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which it is necessary to leave the faith to get her back to be fully itself. With his statement that it had to set thinking aside to make room for faith, Kant has acted under this program with a radically unpredictable for reformers. 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 wave of de-Hellenization in the program: its outstanding representative of Adolf von Harnack. During the time of my studies, as in the early years of my teaching, this program was highly influential in Catholic theology. As a 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 this topic and do not intend to repeat here all the speech. But I would like to highlight groped at least briefly what was new about this second wave of de-Hellenization than the first. As a central idea appears, in Harnack, the return simply to the man Jesus and 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 would put an end to worship in favor of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. The purpose of Harnack is basically to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, indeed, by other seemingly philosophical and theological, 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 investigates critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take place within the university. In the background is the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in the "critical" Kant, in the meantime further radicalized by the Academy of Sciences natural. This modern concept of reason is based, in short, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, which confirmed the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, for its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, it is the functional usability of nature for our purposes 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 the other side more. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist.
This involves two principles which are crucial for our discussion. Only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. What purports to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences that relate to things such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of science. Important for our reflections, however, is still the fact that nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific. With this, however, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, which needs to be questioned.
will return to this subject. For now just note that, in light of this an attempt to maintain theology's view of the nature of "scientific", Christianity would remain a mere fragment. But we must say more: if science as a whole is just that, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced. Since then, the specifically human questions, namely those in the "where" and "to where", questions of religion and ethics, have no place in the purview of collective reason as defined by "science" is understood in this way and must be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, based on his experiences, what is religiously sustainable, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of ethics. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, we see from the threatening disease of religion and reason - disease which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced point that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. What remains of 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 these reasons, I must mention again briefly in the third wave of de-Hellenization, which is spreading at present. In view 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 should not binding on other cultures. These should have the right to return to prior to that inculturation, in order to discover the simple message of the New Testament inculturate it anew in their own environments. This thesis is not only wrong but 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. Certainly there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. But the recent decisions of that, exactly, about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason, these decisions are part of the bottom of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with to his nature.
so I come to conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock should go back to before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity is valid is acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvelous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and the progress in humanity that have been given. The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to truth, and it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. Do not pick or negative criticism, then, is the intention here is instead of broadening our concept of reason and its application. Because with all the joy in front of possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome. We will succeed 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 it to its width. In this sense theology, not only as a historical discipline and human sciences, but as theology itself, as inquiry into the reason of faith, must have its place in the university and in the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions - a dialogue which we so urgently need. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. But 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 the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. And yet, precisely because of the modern natural sciences, with its inherent Platonic element bears within itself, as I tried to show, a question which transcends all the possibilities of its methodology. It simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a matter of fact, which is based on its methodology. But the question as to why this fact exists and must be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, 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 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 earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be understandable if one, because of irritation for many wrong things for the rest of his life to take all talk about being hated and disparaged . But this would render the truth of existence and would suffer great harm. " The West has a lot of time, 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, not the denial of its grandeur - this is the program 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 God's nature", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in Persian. It is to this great logos , to this breadth of reason, that we invite into the dialogue of cultures our stakeholders. To rediscover it again and again, is the great task of the university.
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