You’d think the difference between an insult and an invitation would be obvious. This past Tuesday, Pope Benedict XVI lectured at the University of Regensburg in Germany. When a passage of this address was deemed “offensive” to Muslims, fury and resentment engulfed the Islamic world like wildfire. Palestinian gunmen threatened Friday to “blow up all of Gaza’s churches.” Saturday saw the bombing and burning of several churches on the West Bank. Protesters in Iraq burned effigies of the Pope on Monday with German and American flags. In Iraq an Internet message from al-Qaida vowed to continue the terrorist group’s jihad, holy war, against the West. Unsurprisingly, the recent surge of hostility toward Rome has utterly distorted the Pope’s message. His lecture is most certainly provocative and challenging but not in the way you might think. First, one must recognize that the Pope’s lecture is just that: a lecture. It is not an encyclical, a homily or a doctrinal statement. Second, the lecture is not primarily concerned with the dilemma facing the West regarding Islamic jihad. The passage Muslims found offensive is a quote by the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus that must be considered in context. The lecture as a whole calls not for condemnation but for dialogue between Muslims and the secular West. Third, the Pope’s words are addressed not only to the faculty and students of the University of Regensburg but to faculty and students of all universities. He is addressing this campus as well, and we have every reason to listen. The Pope’s lecture titled “Faith, Reason and the University” urges the academic community to return to its roots by rediscovering the relationship between faith and reason. If we value our right to freedom of speech, the University must be, as it once was, a place in which reason can be spoken of in the context of faith. Too often modern thought holds faith and reason to be mutually exclusive, and this simply cannot continue. The Pope uses the example of jihad to illustrate the absolute necessity of re-forging the relationship between faith and reason. Increasingly volatile relations between Christians and Islamic fundamentalists illustrate the consequences of separating the two. The Pope references a conversation between the Byzantine emperor Paleologus and a “wise Persian gentleman” in which Paleologus criticizes violence done in the name of religion. “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new,” the emperor said, “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 condemns violence motivated by religion as “unreasonable,” and goes on to assert, as the Pope said, that acting irrationally “is contrary to God’s nature.” Thus the quote about Muhammad is simply a starting point for the discourse which follows. The Pope does not wish to insult the Muslim faithful. The statements he issued in response to those offended by his speech make this clear, as does a quote from his book “Truth and Tolerance,” “even Islam, with all the greatness it represents, is always in danger of losing balance, letting violence have a place and letting religion slide away.” It is the violence not the faith of Islam that the Pope wishes to criticize. The Regensburg lecture simply demonstrates the necessity of reuniting reason and faith. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberal philosophy has made countless attempts to sever ties between the two. Because the modern world rejects theology as “unscientific,” the Pope says faith has been pushed into “the realm of the subjective.” This struggle is relevant to the current political situation, said the Pope, because “a reason which is deaf to the divine… is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.” A world that champions the idea of reason without faith cannot realistically dialogue with religious groups like the Islamic jihadists who hold to the belief in faith without reason. Secular liberalism asks us to refrain from offending Islamic fundamentalists in the name of tolerance, but this is simply not feasible. If we desire peace, there must be dialogue between Christians, Muslims and those who adhere to secular ideologies. For this dialogue to occur, we must return to that essential question, “What is the relationship between faith and reason?” James Stoner, University political science professor, remarked that it may be “impossible” to form a political alliance to resolve the current conflicts “without any intellectual work being done” to foster the necessary dialogue. So what hope is there that this dialogue will ever occur? Muslim groups in India, Jordan and Indonesia have responded positively to the Pope’s statements expressing his regret for having offended them. These groups recognize that dialogue is desperately needed in time of war, and they are a sign of hope that others will follow suit. Let’s not forget another group, however. Adherents of secular liberalism are invited to enter the dialogue as well. They have no reason not to. After all, if the rational foundation of their reason-without-faith can stand on its own, what have they to fear?
—–Contact Emily Byers at [email protected]