Justus For All

Lee Harris makes a deep examination of Pope Benedicts speech in the weekly standard.  The entire thing is a must read, but this bit particularly struck me:

If modern reason cannot concern itself with the question of God, then it cannot argue that a God who commands jihad is better or worse than a God who commands us not to use violence to impose our religious views on others. To the modern atheist, both Gods are equally figments of the imagination, in which case it would be ludicrous to discuss their relative merits. The proponent of modern reason, therefore, could not possibly think of participating in a dialogue on whether Christianity or Islam is the more reasonable religion, since, for him, the very notion of a “reasonable religion” is a contradiction in terms.

Ratzinger wishes to challenge this notion, not from the point of view of a committed Christian, but from the point of view of modern reason itself. He does this by calling his educated listeners’ attention to a “dialogue–carried on–perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara–by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.” In particular, Ratzinger focuses on a passage in the dialogue where the emperor “addresses his interlocutor 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.’”

Ratzinger’s daring use of this provocative quotation was not designed to inflame Muslims. He was using the emperor’s question in order to offer a profound challenge to modern reason from within. Can modern reason really stand on the sidelines of a clash between a religion that commands jihad and a religion that forbids violent conversion? Can a committed atheist avoid taking the side of Manuel II Paleologus when he says: “God is not pleased 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.”

Modern science cannot tell us that the emperor is right in his controversy with the learned Persian over what is or is not contrary to God’s nature. Modern reason proclaims such questions unanswerable by science–and it is right to do so. But can modern reason hope to survive as reason at all if it insists on reducing the domain of reasonable inquiry to the sphere of scientific inquiry? If modern reason cannot take the side of the emperor in this debate, if it cannot see that his religion is more reasonable than the religion of those who preach and practice jihad, if it cannot condemn as unreasonable a religion that forces atheists and unbelievers to make a choice between their intellectual integrity and death, then modern reason may be modern, but it has ceased to be reason.

I think it is a terrible mistake in thinking to limit what is ‘true’ to what is scientifically provable.  Yes, certainly science is a good thing, and it often offers a degree of certainty that other avenues of reason and thinking don’t, but that doesn’t mean at all that what cannot be answered by science cannot be answered at all.

Sometimes, perhaps often, our ability to determine truth that is outside of the realm of science will be limited.  I am not much of a ‘bible person,’ but their is one verse that illustrates this for me, and is one of my favorite lines in all of writing, 1 Corinthians 13:12:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

To me this searching for truth, even when the search may be destined to be incomplete and in someways futile is the most noble impulse of mankind.  It is the spirit that is behind scientific inquiry, but it is behind a whole lot more than that as well, all of it noble.

Benedict’s speech is I think a marvel of philosophy, worth of consideration with the greats that have built up our culture from the time of the Greeks that it harkens back too.  I have posted on it several times now, and one of the dissappoints I have had in writing this blog is that those posts have gotten so little comment.  Perhaps my readers simply agree with me and move on, if so well and good, but I am afraid that for whatever reason they don’t think the Pope could actually have anything useful to say and haven’t wrestled with what he is said, if so, that is a tragedy.