It may sound strange, but the pope’s main point is that the most pressing problem we face in the world is not the nature of faith, but the nature of reason. How could he say this? Isn’t the problem today simply religious fanaticism and the intolerance associated with it? The pope certainly thinks these things are problems; he’s not a stupid man.
Yet in the course of his very brief treatment of Islam, he points to another dimension of the issue: How do we understand the relationship of reason to the divine?
The quotation that caused all the furor involves a 14th-century dialogue between a Byzantine emperor and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam. The pope quotes the emperor, who says: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by sword the faith he preached.” Fighting words to be sure, but the pope does not quote them favorably. Rather, Benedict uses the quote to illustrate his deeper point. For Christians, it is always wrong to spread the faith through violence, precisely because of what the Christian faith claims about God. The pope says that “violence is incompatible with the nature of God” because acting against reason is contrary to God’s nature. God is reasonable, not willful or arbitrary.
This may seem like an abstract theological point, but much of our common life hangs on it. By analogy, what if the people who ruled our country were willful and arbitrary? What if they said they were above reason or even acted contrary to it? If they made no pretension to being reasonable, there would be no reason for them to shirk away from threats and violence.
By contrast, we demand reasons from our fellow citizens, and especially from people in charge, when they act in the public sphere. In turn, we (hopefully) respect our fellow citizens’ intelligence and good will enough to give them reasons when they ask us to justify our own actions.
When we do this, we are making a large statement about the way things are: Human beings share in reason, and we need to justify the decisions that govern our common life by appealing to reason so that we can persuade rather than manipulate. Manipulation and violence are wrong because they violate who we are most deeply as human beings.
The pope’s point is partly that religious people believe God is the fundamental ground of reality. If we think that what is most real is willful and arbitrary, we can justify all sorts of irrational domination and violence. He is urging us to rethink the essential connection between God and reason.
Thomas W. Smith Pope’s focus: Reason
