Can we discuss the Pope's lecture here, without flames?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,,1873277,00.html

A great professor of mine often said "anything you write is useless, unless you consult the primary source." So, here's the link to Pope Benedict's lecture.

Discuss. :hi:

I've been wanting to see the text.

I do find some sad irony in people rioting and killing nuns in anger over the accusation that their faith is violent. But the original statements were pretty inflammatory.

What a long-winded dismal thing. I'm surprised the people who listened to it firsthand weren't the ones rioting!

So, what are your thoughts about it, Rev?

It's the kind of lecture I'd expect from a scholar - verbose and unnecessarily heady. But if you're the #1 spiritual leader, I'd think that clarity would be far more important.

Maybe he misses the academy? :shrug:

for the Doctrine of the Faith--what used to be called "The Inquisition". It's job was to clarify RC theology and doctrine, often taking to task theologians who were wandering away from RC orthodoxy. It was a fairly academic position. And before that, of course, he was a professor. It's been a long time since he was a pastor. In general, I think he was a bad choice for a pastoral office. But they didn't let me vote, so this is what they get!

When I was at BC, he was hated by most students in the Theology Dept, and by all faculty with the courage to say so. They called him "Joe the Rat". He'll always be "Joe the Rat" to me, I fear. :evilgrin:

It's long, and I'm only half way through it. Won't likely have time to finish until tonight. There's some very interesting stuff there. I'm at the point where I don't know how the intellectual exploration is going to come out, but I'm developing some new respect for his intellect. There are a lot of theological Latin terms, some of which I can make a good guess at the meaning from the context, and some of which I can't. This is not a light, quick read.

It's quite academic, but here are a few of my thoughts about it:

1) The main point of the lecture was his thoughts on the role of reason and rational thought on faith. Therefore, delving into that discussion of Islam wasn't really necessary for his primary thesis. He could have made his point adequately without it. I can't speculate on his reasons for inserting it, but I don't see that it added to his main purpose. In fact, I was rather wondering why he even included it in the lecture.

2) I really think that the protest and outrage against that section of the speech was unwarranted, given that he seemed merely to be trying to make the point that, according to the quotes he gave (and that's all I have to go on, without the context of those quotes or much background knowledge of Islam's theology), the Muslim view of God is a God that is not bound by anything--whether reason, His own word, or anything else. Whereas the Judeo/Christian God binds Himself to His word and exhibits a respect for and an ownership of reason and rationality. Again, I don't see why he felt it necessary to try to make this point, but I really don't think it calls for death threats against him.

3) Aside from the main flurry of interest about this speech, I am troubled by his praise and admiration of Greek thought and philosophy. He seems to gloss over the fact that Hebrew philosophy and worldview is vastly different (closer to an Eastern mindset, rather than Western) and that the reason Paul and John and other New Testament writers utilized Greek arguments and thinking is because they were trying to communicate and reach a GREEK audience. I don't think this cultural/historical fact should be taken as some sort of Biblical endorsement of Greek thinking. But on the other hand, he DOES emphasize the "best" elements of Greek philosophy, implying that not all elements are so praiseworthy.

Overall, I found it to be a rather rambling, verbose lecture. I would have been terribly bored, I'm afraid, well before the half-way point. But it's certainly not worth all this fuss, in my opinion.

I can't help but wonder if his admiration of Greek thought is somehow a longing to return to the roots of the early church. The reason the church was successful was that it embraced its missional role, and adapted to the cultures surrounding it. It allowed the Spirit to move, to go where she will, and adapt to the various cultures.

However, at the same time the Church became institutionalized, it began moving women out of leadership roles. And being a staunch traditionalist, Benedict isn't about to embrace the spiritual (in the free, rather than controlling sense of the word) or the feminine.

I will freely admit my prejudices - the Catholic Church CANNOT be whole until women represent the Body of Christ. There's something about our intuitive thought and spirituality that is desperately needed. A religion that is a dry, "heady" faith, rather than a faith of the heart, cannot represent the entirety of being human. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? God and humanity, becoming one.

YES! Triple YES!!! In fact, that's part of my gripe about the "hellenization" of church doctrine--the Greeks actually had a worse view of women than even the first-century Jews. The Jewish men had their "I thank you God that I am not a slave, Gentile, or woman" prayer, but the Greeks didn't even believe women were made from the same substance as men! Greek women (ethnically Greek, as opposed to Roman in this case) were usually not even allowed out of their house complex. They were treated horribly. About the only educated Greek women were the...hmm, can't remember their name, heteraeti maybe??? but they were high educated, brilliant prostitutes. So they got to be educated and have more freedom, in exchange for their bodies. Some trade-off. This is why I am so willing to defend Paul and his statements on women and cross-gender relationships. People don't realize what sort of situation he was actually dealing with and how careful he had to be in trying to correct it. When you realize what he actually was saying and the context in which he said it, he's absolutely revolutionary. We just tend to not get it. :)

Anyway, I'm with you on the gender equality thing. I've been kicked out of leadership at my former church over that very issue, and it turned out for the best because now I have a terrific church that is supportive of ALL people ministering in whatever way God has gifted them. It took me awhile to really internalize that they MEANT it and weren't waiting to stomp on me. But I will never, ever take for granted gender equality in the church. I'll fight for it. We need female voices--now more than ever.

Whew! You hit a passion area of mine. I'm preaching to the choir...er, the Preacher, so I'll stop now. :) And not much of this has to do with the pope's speech...sorry.

I love what you're saying, and believe me, I've experienced the same kind of pain in ministry. Even in the most liberal of situations, there are the subtle digs that keep reminding me that I don't have a penis... like I'd really want one!

I completely love your comment on Paul. And you're absolutely right - people don't understand the context in which he writes, AND they don't have the other side of the conversation (what the churches actually said or did). We are so arrogant, we keep reading scripture through 20th-century lenses. And no, I didn't forget the 21st century. I feel that saying 20th century is being rather gracious, since many church's theology, Christology, and ecclesiology are still in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Did you catch Benedict's slam at the Reformation? If I were Lutheran, I'd be pissed at him because of that comment.

In another thread, I wrote that I think Ratzy is a closet Methodist and doesn't realize it. He's searching for Wesley's quadrillateral (Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience), and doesn't know it yet. O8)

LOL at Wesley's quadrillateral--I hadn't picked up on that, but I thought something about it sounded familiar. You're right! The poor guy--if someone told him that, he'd probably keel over and then the folks who would like to see that happen would have to face the fact that they are in our debt. :D

Right on re: the church dragging its feet into the 19th century.

And yes, I caught the slam on the Reformers. I guess it didn't really surprise me. There's enough sniping at the other side by both Catholic and Protestant that I would have been really shocked if he'd hadn't created an opening to get a dig in. Gee, has it really been five hundred years since the Reformation? My, how time flies--it seems like it was only yesterday... :sarcasm:

Okay, I gotta go pack for a writer's conference. I probably won't be back online until Sunday evening or Monday. Have a great weekend everyone!

:grouphug:

My home church is a Huguenot congregation. It was founded by the descendants of French Protestant refugees who had fled to Germany after the St. Bartholomew's massacre. Having grown up hearing about the massacre of my (spiritual, if not blood) ancestors, I'm a little cynical about the Pope complaining about any faith being spread by the sword.

Then there are those Quakers on Boston Common. See, this is why it's a good idea not to be too critical of other faiths. Everybody has a history!

The stuff about Greek philosophy vs Hebrew thought is especially important in the actual context of the speech. I found this while studying under the Jesuits. They love the Greek stuff, and seemed too removed from the Church's Hebrew roots, imo. It bothered me then, and it bothers me now.

I don't mean to be impuning any faith, but I do think there's a strange over-reaction to the speech on the part of the Muslim world. It was a single reference in a speech about faith and reason, and not a very good speech at that. Yes, it was a foolish text to use in illustrating his points--which it did badly. He could have chosen his words more carefully. But riots? Killing a nun? Over this?!

This strikes me as one of those situations where everyone just looks silly. The Pope for making these statements in the first place (and the "I was just quoting some old emperor" defense is weak at best). The Muslims who are rioting. Even the media or whomever gave this not-very-interesting speech such attention. No one comes off looking good here.

Nor does the apology help. I never understand these "I'm sorry IF I've offended anyone" apologies. How about "I'm sorry that I said something offensive"? Or "I'm sorry THAT I offended anyone"? Surely my mother wasn't the only one who taught us to say "I'm sorry" with no qualifiers!

Boy, I ramble so well I could be Pope!

When I visited Turkey, what astonished me the most was the difference in their view of history vs. ours. The crusades are not a bygone era but instead something that influences todays view of the west and their interactions with Christians. I asked many about this while I was there and the crusades still resonate for them. What I'm astonished is that a man of learning would make such insensitve statements and not know how inflamatory they were. Even with my very limited knowledge of Islam, I could have guessed the reaction.

and what you said in a toss off statement in a thread 3 months ago that I'm going to take even more out of context and in which you mistyped a word and let out a "not" thus totally changing what you meant to say to begin with and which you later corrected but which correction I have decided not to recognize as valid, to prove you're a freeper?

:P

When I say without flames, I mean "can we have this discussion without people jumping all over us, challenging our faith, referring to the invisible pixie in the sky, and all-out Catholic bashing, dragging in pedophilia (a nasty practice, but still outside the scope of our discussion; and it most certainly is NOT sanctioned by the church), and nasty personal attacks?"

For some reason, that kind of behavior seems to be OK in the forums.

So please - rant away. :)

because of her low post count. And she expects us to believe there are progressives in Sensenbrenner's state. Puhleeze! :)

(Just in case: Mods, this post quotes pieces of more than four different paragraphs of the pope's speech. I would think a public papal speech would be in the public domain, but even if not, this usage seems to fit the "fair use" exception based on being literary critique and analysis, non-commercial, not likely to have any negative impact on the speech's commercial value to the pope, appropriate to an educational purpose, uses a small amount of the original and only as necessary to make the points, and several other factors. My statement is based on the actual meaning of "fair use" and not on the common internet misinterpretation that "I think it's fair, so I'll use it.")

I finally read the whole thing. First, a couple preliminary observations:

1. It's a highly intellectual speech given to a highly intellectual group of theologians, and he clearly revels in being back among academics in academia. So, no wonder some find it dismal and boring. I found it fascinating in places, difficult almost throughout because of my lack of knowledge of the theological terms and history.

2. Although the opening and the closing seem to suggest that one major point of the speech is to discuss how have a Christian-Muslim dialogue, it's pretty much a failure on that point. I suspect that he didn't use an outline in writing it, because if he had used an outline, he would have realized that it didn't accomplish its purpose and that much of it was digression from digression.


So here's how I read his speech.

After the obligatory initial comments, greetings, and reminiscences about his old days in the academy, he names the subject of his talk, to raise the question of God through the use of reason. As we will see, the question itself presumes its own answer and prejudices the discussion and the conclusion.

So then he immediately launches into the part that caused all the ruckus, telling the story of the Byzantine Christian emperor and the Persian Muslim scholar. He says, "(the emperor) addresses his interlocutor (the Persian scholar) with a startling brusqueness on the central question about 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"."

In my opinion, his observation of the emperor's "startling brusqueness" clearly shows his own awareness of the inflammatory nature of the quotation.

The emperor continues, "Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. 'God', he says, 'is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably ... is contrary to God's nature.'" And the pope concludes, "The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature."

The pope goes on, "But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." Note that this use of the word "transcendent" is not the same as the New England Transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau.

He then goes into a discussion of logos, the Greek word which is translated as "word" in the beginning of the gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word." The Greek word means much more than the English word "word," and includes reason. And he concludes that, in the Christian tradition, God acts reasonably and in accord with his own nature. This is in contrast to the "transcendent" Muslim view in which God can act any way at all, and more specifically, holy war can be okay even though God is a God of peace. (gross paraphrasing here)

About this time, I'm thinking, "Hey, wait a minute. I hear Christians all the time using this transcendent argument. Whenever I ask one how they can reconcile that God, who is love and loves all his children, could command the Israelites to murder every man, woman, boy, and cow of the neighboring tribe and take their virgin girls as slaves, they always answer something along the lines of 'God can do anything he wants and, by definition, it's still good because he's God. God doesn't have to act in accordance with the nature of God, and he doesn't have to obey his own rules."

But the pope starts, apparently, to address my issue. He talks about some historical thought in Christendom that approaches the transcendent view, "{theological gobbledegook, to me}. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn (the Persian scholar) and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness."

However, intead of addressing my issue about Christians embracing a transcendent God instead of a God of logos and reason, instead of addressing why he believes the Christian (as he sees it) view of logos and reason is more appropriate (I almost said more reasonable, which would have betrayed my bias on the subject), and instead of addressing how we can engage in a dialogue with those of a different view, he goes off on a very long tangent on the history of "dehellenization," of decoupling or trying to decouple Christian theology from the Greek world of logos and reason.

Along the way, he veers off on another tangent, explaining why a non-empirical study such as theology belongs in the modern university.

Finally, apparently having refuted to his own satisfaction all heresies of non-hellenism, he tells an anecdote of Socrates that basically says, "having taken all this time to discuss all these 'false philophical opinions,' don't despair and mock inquiry and thus be 'deprived of the truth of existence.'" In other words, don't let all these heretics make you think it isn't worth finding out the real truth that I have.

And he concludes the talk with this: "'Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God,' said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor.

"It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures."

So, having not really addressed the Muslim transcendent view nor discussed how we can have a dialogue with those of such a different view, he invites them to join him at the logos table and have a talk. It sounds like he went to the George W. Bush School of Diplomacy, where they teach the prime dictum of diplomacy: If you accept my view in advance and agree to all my premises in advance, then we can have a discussion about our differences.

And here are my conclusions about it.

1. Although he appears to be trying to address how the Christian West can have a dialogue with the Muslim East, he never does address that, except to say, "We're right and they're wrong." His solution is for Muslims to accept the Catholic Christian view and join us in talk at the logos table. How odd.

2. As his "startling brusqueness" comment shows, he had a pretty good idea of how inflammatory that quote was. And the quote doesn't even contribute anything to his argument. He told enough of the story that he could have left out the whole paragraph and his argument would have been, if anything, clearer and more free-flowing. So did he put it in to be deliberately inflammatory? Or to get in a dig or a they're-evil comment or to be condescending? Or was it simply a case of an academic revelling in being back in academia and being unable to resist inserting a footnotable reference? Or some other reason? I can't say, but it seems just dumb to have used it.

3. Having been the head of the office of the Inquisition and now being in a position to make 'infallible' pronouncements have clearly gone to his head.

4. I learned that I'm apparently a Hellenist, since I think that God acts according to his own nature and follows his own rules.

So it really is a speech about the merits of rational thought, eh? That's a shame, because I would sure love to learn more about Islamic theology.

Gee, when I was in seminary (over 10 years ago, now), all the theology and ethics profs were talking about us living in a "Post-Enlightenment" era. I guess Benedict didn't get the message.

One thing I'll say for John Paul II - he knew how to communicate, and he knew how to love. I sincerely hope that Benedict will take to heart all the violence and outrage at his comments, and rather than defend himself, instead look deeply within to see how he could have better communicated his message. (That's something that pastors learn in their first several years in the parish.)

StoryTeller's point #1 in post #4 says it pretty well. The main point of the lecture was his thoughts on the role of reason and rational thought on faith. I would add "and theology" at the end of the statement.

He tries to tie in the discussion of Islam's different view on that point and makes a gesture toward dialogue, but he doesn't either explain it well or confront it clearly or make a genuine, respectful attempt at dialogue, so it fails. It's not completely clear to me if it's just a digression from the main point or if it's a failed main point itself.

I tend to take shortcuts, and just presume that that's understood. O8)

Is it possible that he didn't explain it well, because he doesn't know or understand it well? I thought the comment was sort of a throw-away one, which probably should have just been left unsaid.

I liked 'em personally, but was always amazed at the role of Greek philosophy in their thought. One prof finally explained to me that transubstantiation itself is based on a Greek worldview, so it's all pretty central to the Catholic faith. Trying to make faith reasonable is hugely important in such academic circles. Istm, if you try to focus reasonability in your own faith, there is at least some sense that other faiths are less reasonable. To then point out which faith you think is unreasonable, well, that simply wasn't necessary.

It is possible to say "My faith is good" without saying "Your faith is bad".

Muslim clerics are saying "no sitdown until a full apology is given."

I knew this wouldn't just blow over. :eyes:

I still say a central problem is that the definition of "apology" is too fluid.

I also still say this all much ado about nothing (and the way to prove yours is not a violent religion is NOT by rioting. Just my opinion.)

Oh yeah - either in heaven, or recycled. O8)

a Gush Shalom piece by Uri Avnery where he asks if the pope knew that the quote was spin by an emperor who was losing and seeking help from Europe, if the Pope knew about people of the Book...

Obviously, the Pope knows, since he said so right in his talk. I have no doubt the Pope also knows of the history of Arab and Turk rule and how far more tolerant they were of religion than Catholic Europe was.

But, it amazes me that there is such a furor over one little, largely irrelevant, comment in the talk. It was just yet another small recap of the eternal Faith and Reason question, with the mention of Islam as simply an example of Allah as an inscrutable God, not subject to the rules of human reason, as opposed to much of Christianity, where we often see a more anthropomorphic God.

Being from the mystical, and universalist, end of Christianity myself, I am far closer to the idea of an unknowable God than the Pope is, but I'm not about to argue the point.

What I might argue, though, is that it was highly impolitic to bring that quote up. I don't doubt the pope was surprised at the furor, but his job before this one had been to maintain Catholic orthodoxy, not to interact with other faiths and beliefs. After spending a large part of his career beating up on liberation theology and putting out all sorts of other little theological fires throughout the Church, he very likely had no idea what sort of storm would brew after this little turd was dropped.

I would hope he soon learns that his job is not just defender of the faith, but also the diplomatic face of a couple hundred million Christians around the world.