In September of 2006, Pope Benedict spoke before a group of university scholars and students, speaking from the podium where he once lectured as a professor at Regensburg in Germany. The topic of this particular lecture was something he called the reasonableness of faith. Ultimately, this was furthering the discourse on the relationship between faith and reason, a relationship which the Church, not just this Pope, has described as a relationship that is without contradiction. There can be no contradiction between faith and reason. The Pope repeated this idea on Thursday in Washington DC as he spoke to the leadership of the nation's Catholic universities.
For all the critiques against the Catholic Church, one continually leveled against her is that she is opposed to reason. But ever since I started listening to Popes, I have heard two of them speak on the topic, and both have never ceased in speaking of this important relationship between faith and reason, which upholds both as necessary for a full understanding of the human being. And research confirms that John Paul II who became Pope shortly after I was conceived wasn't the first to uphold these ideas, but that the notion can be traced much further into history. Indeed, at Regensburg, Benedict XVI spoke more poignantly about the reasonableness of faith through just such an example in history. His point, in the end, was that having faith is reasonable. That is, a person can assent to religious belief using his or her reason, not just as a superstition, and certainly not as an abandonment of reason.
The world remembers this Regensburg lecture only as the media covered it and the Islamic world overreacted to it. Part of the Pope's lecture recalled a dialogue between an Eastern Roman Emperor and an educated Persian. The topic of this discussion was manifold, but the Pope was concentrating on one particular issue that came up in this dialogue during the year 1391. This particular topic concerned whether or not spreading faith through violence is reasonable. The Eastern Roman Emperor laid out several reasons why spreading faith through violence is unreasonable, that is, it is an act contrary to reason itself. The emperor 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 reason properly, without violence and threats..." Remember, this is coming from a Christian Emperor in the year 1391, shortly before the Islamic siege of Constantinople. The emperor also said that Mohammad commanded that the faith be spread by the sword. The emperor argued that this is unreasonable, using the Greek "λογω" (meaning "reason") and it is contrary to God's will. The Greek logos is identified with reason. This last statement by the emperor concerning Mohammad, recalled by the Pope, is what the media and the world got all hot and bothered about. But the Pope wanted to draw something else out of this dialogue, something that would aid in understanding Christianity and Islam, and some of the differences.
The argument the emperor makes against violent conversion, whether committed by Christians or Muslims, is that "to not act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature." God is reasonable; we know this in the Christian tradition beginning with God's word creating the world. Then the God of the Hebrews reveals himself as "I am", that is "being itself". Finally (among many other biblical and historical developments), St. John the Evangelist tells us that God is logos, the Word is God. These Greek terms and ideas, developed in the height of the Greek philosophical enterprise, were a part of the vocabulary and thought process of the Eastern Roman Emperor. On the one hand, we had biblical faith testifying to the nature of God, and on the other we had philosophy testifying to the nature of God. In Christianity, the two were fused, thus, the Christian understanding of God is explained in Greek philosophical concepts: God is being itself, God is logos, the logos is God, God's logos (reason) creates the world. All this leads us to the understanding that God is reasonable and he acts in accord with reason.
This is how the Christian emperor of 1391 was explaining and understanding things, but his Muslim interlocutor could not agree. The Muslim understanding is that God is not bound by any human categories, and Greek philosophical concepts cannot bind God. God, therefore, if he chose, could act unreasonably. But in the Christian understanding, God could not act unreasonably, because to do so would be against his very nature. It follows then, in the Christian understanding, that we, too, ought to act in accordance with reason. Since we are created in the image and likeness of the reasonable God, we, with our God-given reason, ought to act reasonably. The Muslim world had difficulty in accepting this idea of God, because the Christian understanding describes God using human concepts and categories. Muslims view this as binding God, who in their view is fully transcendent, fully other. The revelation of Jesus Christ is that the transcendent God makes himself reachable, tangible, and even reveals that his very nature is in accord with our understanding of the world: God is goodness, God is love, God is reason. These Christian concepts of the divine, which we gain from the fusion of biblical faith and Greek philosophy, frame our understanding of God's nature and thus our own very nature: we ought to be good, we ought to love, and we ought to act reasonably.
That is the first idea expressed by the Pope at Regensburg. But the world condemned the speech and much of the media labeled it as anti-Islamic.
