Faith, Reason, Islam and the WestBy Father J. Patrick Serna"He [Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus] turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: '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'"From Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg Address, September 12, 2006Taken out of context, these words of Pope Benedict XVI seem unnecessarily harsh, and maybe even imprudent. If read and listened to intelligently, however, there was nothing harsh, mean, or imprudent in our Holy Father's choice of words. The Vatican released a statement that said Pope Benedict XVI "sincerely regrets" that Muslims have been offended by his words about Islam and violence in a speech, but stopped short of the apology demanded by many Muslim leaders in the Middle East and Asia.
No apology? Good for el Pappa!If Pope John Paul the Great was preoccupied with and focused on the problem of Communism, then Pope Benedict XVI is definitely intent on addressing the threat of Islam to Western Civilization, if not the entire world. Back when Turkey was putting in its bid to be part of the European Union, Cardinal Ratzinger did not go out of his way to mince words. The following news excerpt from August 11, 2004 (Catholic World News) is a reminder of his controversial position then, and now: "Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said that Turkey should seek to join Islamic nations rather than attempt to join the European Union.
The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told France's Le Figaro magazine that Turkey had always been 'in permanent contrast to Europe,' and that it should look to its roots for closer associations." In a politically correct world, it sure is refreshing to see a good Christian leader with some backbone, especially when he is your very own Pope.The public reason for Pope Benedict XVI's display of the Moor of Freising's head on his coat of arms is that many bishops from Munich and Freising have historically done the same.
One should do a quick personal study of heraldry, banners, and coats of arms, and find out the symbolism behind those banners and flags which have Moor's heads on them. I won't state the obvious here, please do your own homework. Investigate the symbolism behind the heads of four Moors on the flag of Sardinia. I believe that there is more to the symbolism of a Moslem's head on the coat of arms of our current holy father. Is it a subtle hint that the Catholic Church will not give up her culture to the culture of Islam? I believe so. Is it a hint of an upcoming Crusade or violent uprising against Islam?
I daresay, certainly not. I do believe, however, that Pope Benedict XVI is forcing the world, painfully, to realize that there is a war of cultures going on which cannot go unnoticed or unanswered. The only way to counter this anti-Christian and anti-Western culture is through prayer and dialogue. But... is rational dialogue even possible between the (marginally) Christian West and Islam?In the Regensburg address, Pope Benedict made reference to one of the greatest Catholic Scholastics, a scholastic who best represents the Catholic Voluntarist School. Pope Benedict XVI made reference to the Subtle Doctor, Blessed John Duns Scotus, also referred to as "Mary's Champion" (since he laid down the philosophical and theological foundation for the dogma of the Immaculate Conception), when he stated: "...there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which ultimately led to the claim that we can only know God's 'voluntas ordinata.'"
Pope Benedict goes on to say that a radical voluntarism, within the Catholic tradition, may have come close to the capricious God of Ibn Hazn, "who is not even bound to truth and goodness." Lest anyone accidentally and unfortunately jump to the conclusion that Mother Catholic Church gave birth to a Voluntaristic Scholastic whose voluntarism goes so far as to make our God a capricious one, a schoolman who was beatified by Pope John Paul II, let us take a close look at a primary and bedrock text of Blessed John Duns:"Si autem intelligitur 'rationalis' [ut] 'cum ratione,' tunc voluntas est proprie rationalis.""If 'rational' is understood to mean 'with reason,' then the will is properly rational." Quaestiones in Metaphysicam IX, q. 15, a. De Differentia in Se: Natura et Voluntas; b. Quid de Intentione AristotelisIt was the rebel, William of Ockham, who twisted and perverted the voluntarism of Blessed Scotus which was "within bounds" and grounded on both LOGOS and Ratio.The radical voluntarism and nominalism of Ockham spurned the theological and philosophical understanding and usage of LOGOS, as it had been employed by patristic and scholastic fathers since time immemorial. This is the voluntarist and voluntarism which our Holy Father laments.
The voluntarism of Ockham, which in some ways is comparable to the "capricious God" voluntarism of Islam, is a perversion of Scotism, just as Luther's theology is a perversion of Augustinianism. Scotus is as much to blame for the imbalanced voluntarism and nominalism of Ockham as Augustine is to blame for Luther's heretical theology on Justification.This word "Logos" has been thrown around quite a bit for the last two thousand years, so rather than run the risk of misinterpretation, let us look at a good definition of the word:Logos — (a) the word by which the inward thought is expressed; (b) Lat. Ratio, thought, reason; (c) an account or reason for a thing; (d) comprising both senses of thought and word. Liddell and Scott's Greek — English Lexicon, Oxford, Clarendon Press.In Pope Benedict's first encyclical, he writes: "God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principal of creation — the LOGOS, primordial reason — is at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love" Pope Benedict XVI, December 25, 2005, Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), I #10.The first chapter of the book of St. John uses the word LOGOS profusely and with great theological profundity: "In the beginning was the Word [Logos]; the Word [Logos] was in God's presence, and the Word [Logos] was God....Through Him all things came into being (John 1:1-3). We see here in the New Testament that our Creator God is a God who creates from Logos (i.e., Reason) and WITH Logos (Reason), precisely because this Logos (Word/Reason) just happens to be the Word/Reason made flesh, the Incarnate Word, the Incarnate Reason, who is Jesus Christ! Our God of Reason, the Logos made flesh, created everything with reason, and there is not one aspect of creation which is not permeated with this fabric of Logos, that is, Reason !
Necessary constraints on this treatment of our God of Reason prevent us from looking at Revelation from the Old Testament, which tells us that our God is a personal God to be looked and marveled at not only by the average man, but also by the Philosophers of Being, that is, the Metaphysicians (cf. Exodus 3:14 "God replied, 'I am who am.'" St. Thomas Aquinas used the metaphysical title of God as Ipsum Esse, the Source of all Being and Existence, or, Existence in Itself, in order to prove that our God is preeminently a God of Reason. Everything which comes from God is congruent with reason, even if our feeble human minds are many times unable to grasp all of His reasons.Now that we are clear about the difference between a healthy voluntarism based on reason and Logos (best represented by Duns Scotus), and one which is not (Ockham and his radical voluntarism turned nominalism) we can continue to examine the capricious willy nilly God of Islam, which is the result of an unhealthy anti-intellectualism, a radical voluntarism which even goes beyond the harmful nominalism of Ockham.Pope Benedict XVI said in his address of September 12 that: "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." Further into address he goes on by quoting, again, from the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II : "Not to act reasonably (with LOGOS) is contrary to the nature of God."
Hilaire Belloc asserts in his book, The Crusades that serving a capricious God via Islam was a simpleton's dream religion come true: "The message of Mohammed promised easy thinking on the religious side, freedom on the political....the individual was relieved from his debts and from legal constraint; the social groups from their domination by a distant imperial government with its arbitrary rule" (II, The Issue and the Occasion).Belloc again reiterates the assertion (several decades before Pope Benedict XVI did) that Islam is fundamentally anti-intellectual, anti-Logos, where he writes:
The success of Mohammedanism had not been due to its offering something more satisfactory in the way of philosophy and morals, but, as I have said, to the opportunity it afforded of freedom to the slave and debtor, and an extreme simplicity which pleased the unintelligent masses who were perplexed by the mysteries inseparable from the profound intellectual life of Catholicism.The Great Heresies, Ch.4 The Heresy of MohammedIn my reading of Pope Benedict's Regensburg Address, it seems as though two requests are made obvious: 1) Catholics worldwide must slow down or reverse "in house" moral and spiritual decadence by going back to a strong philosophy and theology where LOGOS and the Natural Law reign supreme (in the spirit of Pope Leo XIII-Aeterni Patris, and Pope John Paul II-Veritatis Splendor and Fides et Ratio) ; and, 2) "It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures" (Pope Benedict's closure of the Regensburg Address).
How sweet it would be, if only we could speak natural law with certain fundamentalistic religions which do not permit theological speculation. Pope John Paul II said it best: "Faith and Reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth — in a word, to know himself — so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves" September 14, 1998, Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), first words of the encyclical.
But alas, such conversation with Islam seems impossible.Again and again we hear that the Islam which gave us contributions in the realm of mathematics is anti-intellectual. When we hear of Islam as anti-intellectual, we refer not to mathematics or architecture (which was really stolen from Christian Byzantine architecture), but more specifically to Islam's refusal to engage in real and rational interreligious dialogue, its refusal to do real scholarly work or in house exegesis with the Quran. One might say that Islam really IS peaceful, after all, the Quran says in 2:256 : "Let there be no compulsion in religion...." Case in point: this text does not matter anymore, due to the Islamic doctrine of "naskh" (abrogation). "
This is the idea that Allah can change or cancel what he tells Muslims: 'None of Our revelations do we abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?'" (Quran 2:106) The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades, Ch. 2, The Quran: Book of War .With the Natural Law employed by Christians, and even many non Christians, not to mention simple logic which is consistent with itself, certain conclusions are set in stone.
Not so with a religious system whose god is a capricious willy nilly god, a bloodthirsty god whose violent verses of the sura and Verse of the Sword (9:5) make obsolete other peaceful verses of the Quran. "The Verse of the Sword abrogates no fewer than 124 more peaceful and tolerant verses of the Quran" (ibid.). Islam is not a religion of peace, it is not a religion of tolerance, and it is not a religion of dialogue or reason. Islam is a religion of the scimitar. Nineteen Muslim hijackers killed more innocents in two hours on 9/11 than all the American criminals executed in the last sixty five years (cf. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/). More people are killed by Islamists each year than in all the 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition combined. On average, Islamic terrorists murder more people every day than the Ku Klux Klan has in the last fifty years (statistics provided by the Archives at Tuskegee Institute). More civilians were killed by Muslims in two hours on September 11 than in thirty six years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland (cf. Conflict Archive on the Internet Web Service-CAIN).Do I advocate a war, under the present circumstances, with an Islamic country? No.
I do advocate, however, Pope Benedict's desire for the Christian West to become more Christian, pious, faithful, and academic. I do advocate Pope Benedict's desire for some kind of dialogue with a religion which, sadly, seems closed to dialogue. The following words of Hilaire Belloc are 68 years old, but they are more important today than ever:
Cultures spring from religions; ultimately the vital force which maintains any culture is its philosophy, its attitude towards the universe; the decay of a religion involves the decay of the culture corresponding to it — we see that most clearly in the breakdown of Christendom today. The bad work begun at the Reformation is bearing its final fruit in the dissolution of our ancestral doctrines — the very structure of our society is dissolving....In Islam there has been no such dissolution of ancestral doctrine — or, at any rate, nothing corresponding to the universal break-up of religion in Europe.The Great Heresies, Ch.4 The Heresy of MohammedSo what do we do? Do we sit on the sidelines, which send more people to the hottest parts of hell, according to Dante? No. We must be the Catholic men and women who Jesus wants us to be. We must be filled with a passionate love for Jesus, His Church, and His Mother. If we are filled with that love, then we will pray more. If we pray more, preoccupy ourselves with living in a state of grace and preach more with our lives than our mouths, then the world will be transformed. God's Grace will transform this sad world of ours if and when we decide to cooperate with that Grace. Catholicism has always held to the belief of Faith AND Good Works. We must show God that we want to change ourselves and the world with more than just words... if we show Jesus in our actions that we wish to cooperate with His transforming Grace, then moral decadence in Christendom will be reversed, as will the Islamic threat to world civilization.
In the meantime, it sure is reassuring to know that we have a Pope whose coat of arms has a Moslem head on it... a Pope who goes to Turkey right after saying things which would normally guarantee martyrdom.
Fr. J. Patrick Serna is a priest for the Diocese of Corpus Christi. He can be reached at