As I later reflected on the relationship between the two essays -- Pope Benedict's Regensburg Lecture and Andrew Sullivan's Time essay -- something profoundly disturbing began to dawn on me. Sullivan was reacting against the ascendant specter of 'fundamentalism', which he discusses both in its Islamicist and Christian apparitions, while Benedict was responding to the problem of the eclipse of reason in discourse about religious matters, both in the East (as illustrated in Islamicist terrorism) and in the West (where the critical self-limitation of reason to the domain of the empirically verifiable, effectively excludes religious questions from being meaningfully entertained as subjects of rational consideration). What was disturbing to me was that Sullivan, despite the fact that he was initially responding critically against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's UN visit and Islamic fanaticism generally, seemed to exhibit in his essay the very symptoms of the malady that Benedict had diagnosed in the West: a discourse in which a "self-imposed limitation of reason" since the Enlightenment has effectively absented reason from intelligent discussion of questions of faith and morals. But the issue begins, in both cases, with the question of Islam:
Pope Benedict brings up the question of an exchange between an "erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both," which took place during the eight-year siege of Constantinople (1394-1402) by the Turks (this was before the final fall of Constantinople in 1453). Benedict notes that the emperor touches on the theme of holy war (jihad). "The emperor must have known that sura 2:256 of the Qur'an reads 'There is no compulsion in religion,' he says. "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." Here Benedict is referring to later suras in the Qur'an that much more explicitly enjoin the faithful to take up arms against the infidel. For example, sura 9:5 reads: "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them." And even a later portion of the ealier sura, quoted above, reads "Fight against them [the infidel] until idolatry is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme ..." (sura 2:193). Benedict notes that the emperor addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence, 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." Benedict then notes that the emperor 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 please by blood -- and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. ... 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 against violent conversion, says Benedict, is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. He notes that Theodore Khoury, the editor of the work he is citing, draws a contrast at this point. On the one hand, is the Byznantine emperor, shaped by Greek philosophy, for thom this statement is self-evident. On the other hand, however, is Muslim teaching, for whom God is absolutely transcendent, transcending all categories of human rationality. Here Khoury quotes the 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 nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry."
Here it is important to know that there was a philosophical movement in Islamic tradition (the Mu'tazilite school of the seventh and eighth centuries) that did argue for the primacy of reason and intelligibility of divine law. According to the Mu'tazilites, God's laws are the laws of nature and intelligible to human reason. Unfortunately, the Mu'tazilites were suppressed during the reign of Caliph Ja'afar al-Mutawakkil (847-861), who made holding the Mu'tazilite doctrine a crime punishable by death, and the long process of dehellenization attack on reason began. Perhaps the single most influential Muslim thinker after Mohammed, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1054-1111) exemplified this development. In his work, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, he vehemently rejected Greek thought, attacking Plato and Aristotle, and insisting that God is not bound by any natural order and that even things in nature to not act according to their natures but only according to God's arbitrary will.
It will be immediately apparent to anyone familiar with the history of western philosophy that what we see here is a Muslim analogue of the developments in late medieval Nominalism that we find in the likes of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, a God who utterly transcends our ability to understand Him, an arbitrary voluntaristic absolutism analogous to Ockham's potentia Dei absoluta, a nature eviscerated of any humanly intelligible teleology, etc.
One thing I think Pope Benedict was hoping to do in his Regensberg University lecture was to precipitate a serious discussion among Muslims of the question whether acting according to reason is also acting according to the will of God. The alternative is all-too-apparent: radical Islamicist protesters responding to the Pope's call for reasoned discussion of religion by burning the Pope in effigy, fire bombing churches, killing nuns, calling for the assassination of the Pope, pointedly confirming the very problem to which Benedict has called our attention.
In other words, if the Muslim world is to have any hope of fruitfully engaging in dialogue with the Judeo-Christian West, it can only be through recovering a vision of God as rationally intelligible -- not only so that questions of faith and morals can be discussed in a reasonable, non-violent way, but that so these religious and ethical questions can be understood as themselves having a non-arbitrary, reasonable character.
But this is only one part of Benedict's address. The other, very substantial, part of his lecture was devoted to his concerns with calls for the "dehellenization" of Christianity -- of severing Christianity from its Greek heritage -- that have increasingly dominated modern theological discussion. He traces this process through three stages -- the Protestant Reformation, the Liberal Historical-Critical theology exemplified by Adolf von Harnack, and the "inculturation" movement, which assumes that the Hellenistic synthesis achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation that ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter, in effect, is a pretext for what Benedict has called the "dictatorship of relativism" in our time.
The problem with the West is the truncated conception of "reason" that developed since the time of the Enlightenment and the Kantian critical philosophy. The modern "self-limitation of reason" that confines itself to that which is 'scientifically' (mathematically and empirically) verifiable, ends up dismissing as irrelevant (as 'subjective') "the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics," says Benedict. The consequences are significant:
"The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate."What Benedict calls for, therefore, is a broadening of our concept of "reason" and its applications, a broadening that overcomes "the self-imposed limitation of reason" to that which is empirically verifiable, and a true restoration of theology to its place in the university, in genuine dialogue with the sciences -- "not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith." Only then, says Benedict, "do we become capable of that geuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today."
In other words, the West, unless it recovers a understanding of reason (and a rational discourse) that can extends to questions of divinely revealed faith and morals, cannot hope to engage in fruitful dialogue with the other great cultures of the world, of which one is Islam.
Enter Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan is a 'gay' dissident Catholic columnist who writes regularly for Time magazine. In his most recent column, "When Not Seeing Is Believing," he comments on the rise of fundamentalism (Islamic and Christian) and why embracing "spiritual doubt" is the key to defusing tension between East and West. He plays to the fears of a large western grandstand. Notice how he begins:
Notice how Sullivan places the entire focus here on the form of Ahmadinejad's faith (it's complete certainty, complete calm), rather than on its content. He does not concern himself with what Muslims believe. His focus is on how, on the form. This is important, as we will see. But, for the moment, it is noteworthy that Sullivan immediately goes on to compare this form of Muslim faith, this authoritarian fideism (blind believism) with that a "more authoritarian form of Catholicism," which he identifies with -- surprise, surprise -- Pope Benedict. "The new Pope," he writes, "despite his criticism of extremist religion and religious violence, represents a return to a more authoritarian form of Catholicism. In the Catholic triad of how we know truth--an eternal dialogue between papal authority, scriptural guidance and the experience of the faithful--Benedict XVI has tilted the balance decisively back toward his own unanswerable truth."Something about the visit to the U.N. by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refuses to leave my mind. It wasn't his obvious intention to pursue nuclear technology and weaponry. It wasn't his denial of the Holocaust or even his eager anticipation of Armageddon. It was something else entirely. It was his smile. In every interview, confronting every loaded question, his eyes seemed calm, his expression at ease, his face at peace. He seemed utterly serene.
What is the source of his extraordinary calm? ... ... Ahmadinejad is still unpopular at home, the Iranian economy is battered ...
So let me submit that he is smiling and serene not because he is crazy. He is smiling gently because for him, the most perplexing and troubling questions we all face every day have already been answered. He has placed his trust in the arms of God. Just because it isn't the God that many of us believe in does not detract from the sincerity or power of his faith. It is a faith that is real, all too real--gripping billions across the Muslim world in a new wave of fervor and fanaticism.
Why does Sullivan seem to be missing the whole point about "reason" and "Logos" in Benedict's Regensburg Lecture? Benedict's challenge to Islam was leveled against its traditions of blind fideism, which pit faith against reason, envisioning God's will as unintelligible to human reason, and revealed commands as absolute imperatives to which human will must uncomprehendingly submit. Did Sullivan miss this? The answer is not long in coming. It emerges when Sullivan tells us what he things was the critical issue in that papal address:
What was remarkable about his recent address on Islam is what most critics missed. The bulk of his message was directed at the West, at its disavowal of religious authority and its embrace of what Benedict called "the subjective 'conscience.'" For Benedict, if your conscience tells you something that differs from his teaching, it is a false conscience, a sign not of personal integrity but of sin. And so he has silenced conscientious dissent within the church and insisted on absolutism in matters like abortion, end-of-life decisions, priestly celibacy, the role of women, homosexuality and interfaith dialogue.
Notice the prestidigitation, or sleight of hand, by which Sullivan here attempts to turn the tables on Benedict by appearing to enlist sweet 'reason' in the service of dissent against big bad authoritarian Mr. Pope. Again, the focus is on form, not content, for if the content of the Faith were broached, there would no longer be any question but that even Benedict's authority is tied to the apostolic tradition of Faith that has been passed down to him. In that sense, as Peter Kreeft has often noted, those who reduce authority to power miss the point: authority is about "author's rights"; and the Author of our Faith is God in Christ, not Benedict or any other mere human being. Furthermore, we see laid bare here (in his last sentence) -- under various euphemisms of dissent -- the principle that is actually underlying and animating Sullivan's entire essay, which is the desire of dissenters to blur and transgress those boundaries that have traditionally been defined as sin without condemnation or loss of respectability.In the face of terrorism, Benedict calls for reasoned dialogue about faith. He calls in the West for a return to a reason opened to faith and the possibility of being animated by faith. Sullivan calls this merely a Christian form of fundamentalism. Does Sullivan see an alternative? Indeed he does. He writes:
There is, however, a way out. And it will come from the only place it can come from--the minds and souls of people of faith. It will come from the much derided moderate Muslims, tolerant Jews and humble Christians. The alternative to the secular-fundamentalist death spiral is something called spiritual humility and sincere religious doubt. Fundamentalism is not the only valid form of faith, and to say it is, is the great lie of our time.Now before you go swooning all over this paragraph as though it were the tag-end of the Book of Revelation that God forgot to reveal to St. John, take a second look beyond the obvious and pleasant truisms contained in it. The surface meanings are clear -- the need for moderate Muslims, tolerant Jews, and humble Christians -- all the hope of the future, certainly; and Sullivan plays to those meanings. But what's the subtext? Notice that he calls the alternative to the secular-fundamentalist death spiral "something called spiritual humility and sincere religious doubt." Line up and connect the dots he here calls (1) "spiritual humility" and (2) "sincere religious doubt" and (3) "humble Christians" and those he earlier referred to as (4) representatives of "conscientious dissent within the church ... in matters like abortion, end-of-life decisions, priestly celibacy, the role of women, homosexuality and interfaith dialogue." Do you see the picture emerging?
What Sullivan is calling for is not serious, reasoned discourse about religious questions and claims of Faith, but disobedience of Church teaching in the name of doubt. He is playing off the public's fear of the blind religious fideism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to leverage doubt as the pacifying panacea in the face of any kind of fundamentalism, Muslim or Christian. Thereby he hopes also to garner further toleration and respectability for the fashionable sins of the day of which he has become one of the leading partisans.
The deep irony in all this is that Sullivan should come out an enemy of reason, and Benedict reason's champion. Sullivan eschews reason by ignoring the content of faith as matter unworthy of rational deliberation. Instead, he focuses only on the form of faith and says: the danger lies in its certitude. Muslims are certain. Catholics such as the Pope are certain. Certainty is the enemy. Certainty is dangerous. Hence, our hope of toleration and reasonable dialogue lies in doubt. If we all doubt our religious beliefs, we'll get along better. There will be no fanatics. Is Sullivan sure about this? Is he utterly certain? You see where this is going, don't you? Sullivan himself represents merely another tired variety of irrational fideism. A faith in doubt , a certainty in doubt (G.K. Chesterton said something about this once in terms of humility in the wrong place, lodged in the organ of conviction rather than where it should be, in the organ of ambition). But why believe Sullivan? He's counseling doubt, after all, not reasoned discourse about the content of faith claims. The upshot of Sullivan's view is the privatization of faith -- private designer religion for the consumer -- a soleful solipsist spirituality for the solitary individual who wouldn't be caught dead buying his religion ready-made from Wal-Mart but cobbles his own together from specialty shops in the Village -- a religion, thus, with neither claims to be objectively true or to prescribe what is right or wrong, nor that can be criticized in any meaningful sense as being 'false.' In fact, the last thing Sullivan would want is the possibility of a reasoned discourse about the credibility of his own ideas that might reveal their untenability and -- horror or horrors -- cast them into actual doubt!
The problem with Sullivan is nothing unique. The problem with Sullivan is nothing less than the problem Benedict has identified as the problem that now lies at the heart of the West. With it's "self-limitation of reason," as Benedict declared, "The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective 'conscience' becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical." Thus ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely private, personal matter. As he notes, "This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions and religion and ethics no longer concern it." Benedict observes:
In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet 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 into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.... The West has long 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, and not the denial of its grandeur -- this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.10/9/06 PS
The Intellectual Suicide of Western Liberalism
"The argument of doubt put forward by Locke in favor of tolerance says that we should admit all religions since it is impossible to demonstrate which one is true. This implies that we must not impose beliefs that are not demonstrable. Let us apply this doctrine to ethical principles. It follows that, unless ethical principles can be demonstrated with certainty, we should refrain from imposing them and should tolerate their total denial. But, of course, ethical principles cannot, in a strict sense, be demonstrated: you cannot prove the obligation to tell the truth, to uphold justice and mercy. It would follow therefore that a system of mendacity, lawlessness, and cruelty is to be accepted as the alternative to ethical principles and on equal terms. But a society in which unscrupulous propaganda, violence, and terror prevail offers no scope for tolerance. Here the inconsistency of liberalism based on philosophical doubt becomes apparent: freedom of thought is destroyed by the extension of doubt to the field of traditional ideals, which includes the basis for freedom of thought." -- Michael Polanyi, "The Eclipse of Thought," in Meaning, by Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975], pp. 9-10).
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