Sermon Archive
The Pope and the Prophet
Sermon preached by Kenneth Boyd at Matins on 17 September 2006
Jeremiah 31:1-14 ; Hebrews 2:5-18
What could be more harmless than an academic lecture by an elderly clergyman? So you might have thought until last Friday. And so, until recently, you still might have thought, even if the clergyman was the Pope. What he said in his lecture last Tuesday to 'representatives of science' in the great hall of the University of Regensburg might have been talked about afterwards by those who were present, German scholars and academics like Pope Benedict himself. It might even have been published in some form by the Church and read by Catholic intellectuals. And that probably would have been an end to it. Unfortunately for Pope Benedict however, we now live in an electronic age, when the Church, like almost every other organisation, publishes all sorts of information on the world-wide web. It takes only a few moments, sitting at your computer, to find the Pope's lecture on the Vatican website; and if you are someone in Pakistan, for example, wanting to learn what Catholics think about Islam, all you need to do is type in a few key words such as 'Pope' and 'Mohammed' and you will very quickly find the two or three sentences in Pope Benedict's long lecture which have caused such uproar.
Now if, like Pope Benedict, you were an old-fashioned European academic, you would probably feel that all this uproar was unjustified, based on a misunderstanding of what universities expect from a lecture of this kind. Academics can be quite sharp, even nasty, about one another's ideas, but this is not meant to be taken personally, or at least academics are not meant to show that they take it personally. The ideas are what matter, the quest for truth; and to seek this, you need to be calm, dispassionate, rational, or at least try to be. This ideal, moreover, is as much part of the Islamic as of the European intellectual tradition: indeed if it had not been, during the ages when Islamic and Arab Christian scholars kept the light of learning alive, there might not have been a European intellectual tradition.
From this academic point of view then, the references in Pope Benedict's lecture, to the Prophet and to the holy war were taken wholly out of context by those Muslims who were offended by them. The highly critical remarks about the Prophet in the lecture express the views not of Pope Benedict, but of an 'erudite' 14th century Byzantine emperor to an 'educated' Persian, in the course of an academic dialogue about the truth of Christianity and Islam; and Pope Benedict is careful to say that his reason for not discussing the Persian's response is that the source from which he is quoting does not record it. He then goes on to explain that he cannot discuss all the questions raised by the dialogue in his present lecture and is simply taking it as a 'starting point' for the main topic he proposes to talk about, which is 'the issue of "faith and reason"'. Pope Benedict, in other words, is just following normal academic conventions here: in order to focus on the main issue, you need to leave a lot of other questions unanswered, to be discussed on another occasion.
Once Pope Benedict gets on to his main issue moreover, his lecture says nothing more about Islam, except to remark in very general terms about the need for philosophy to listen 'to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity'. And the reason for this, is that what he has in his sights is not the wider world, but Europe. As he has often made clear, Pope Benedict is very concerned by what he sees as the secularisation of Europe where, in contrast to most other continents, Christianity appears to be declining rapidly. And since this reflects the way Europeans now think as well as the way they now live, Pope Benedict is directing his lecture to leading members of what he sees as the main factories of those ideas which have led to the secularisation of Europe, the universities, and particularly 'the representatives of science' gathered in the great hall of the University of Regensburg.
The main argument in Pope Benedict's lecture is that while the modern world has benefited greatly from scientific progress, science itself would not be possible if we could not make sense of the world; and that trust in the rationality of the universe, which makes science possible, came about only when Biblical faith and Greek thought came together. When St John, in the prologue to his gospel, wrote 'In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God', the Greek word he used for 'word' was logos, which also means 'reason'. Our created human reason, that is, however unlike that of its Creator, nevertheless is sufficiently similar for us to be able to trust that we can make sense of the world. In this way, a Greek idea, inspired by the Biblical faith necessary to sustain it, enabled the birth of science to take place in the cradle of Christianity, notably in Europe.
But in Europe also, Pope Benedict went on to say, there have been repeated and increasingly successful attempts to tear apart the unity of Greek thought and Biblical faith, notably during the Reformation and the Enlightenment. As a consequence of this, the modern scientific world-view, inheriting the Greek element, is now seen as the objective - or 'real' - truth about the world, while religion, inheriting the Biblical element, is seen as merely subjective, a matter of opinion for individuals to decide about for themselves. In this world-view, because the important human questions raised by religion and ethics are seen as 'non-scientific' and hence subjective, the individual's conscience 'becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical' and 'ethics and religion lose their power to create a community'.
Now while other Christian traditions might not agree that Roman Catholic teaching has all the remedies for the ills of modern secular society, Pope Benedict's diagnosis of these ills is very perceptive, and his emphasis on the need for faith and reason to be held together, is one with which not only many other Christians but also many Muslims would agree. The 'narrowing' of modern scientific rationalism is a trend to which Muslims often object as much as Pope Benedict does. So what is particularly unfortunate, going back to Pope Benedict's initial remarks on Islam, is not so much his offence-giving quotation from the Byzantine emperor, as the contrast he then goes on to draw between God in Christian teaching, who is the logos or rational Word, and God in Muslim teaching, who 'is absolutely transcendent' and whose 'will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality'.
This however is an enormous oversimplification for a scholar like Pope Benedict to have made, and he backs it up only with two or three highly selective references to Islamic sources. It is misleading moreover about both Islamic and Christian teaching. Although God is 'absolutely transcendent' for Islam, the Qur'an is his Word, and speaks of him as having attributes; and from these insights there developed and continues to develop the great intellectual and rational culture of Islam. And in Christian teaching, of course, St John's 'Word that was God' is also 'the Word' that was 'with God' in the unity of the Trinity - a relationship which involves the transcendence as well as the immanence of God, God unknown as well as God made known. Islam and Christianity therefore are not as radically different in this respect as Pope Benedict implies. In Islam the Word is the Book, in Christianity the person of Christ; and both Islam and Christianity, of course, are above all a way of life, characterised by prayer, practice and participation in the life of a faith community.
Pope Benedict has now apologised for offending Muslims, so perhaps it is time for the matter to rest. The real problem with what he said, after all, was not so much his fault as that of European culture. What offends many Muslims, I suspect, is not only criticism of the Prophet (which is like a loved member of your family being unfairly criticised), but the European assumption that Western culture, whether in its traditional religious or its modern secular form, is what other cultures eventually will inevitably imitate. But that prospect, current events suggest, is increasingly unlikely. Islam and Christianity have developed very differently in response to the different Word each has heard from God; and if Christians and Muslims are to live together in the peace and happiness God promised to members of the other great Abrahamic faith in our Old Testament lesson this morning, we all need to learn how to respect those who have a different way of life from ourselves.
To say this is not just to express a pious political hope. Differences of the kind I have mentioned - differences between the cultures, tribes or families of humanity – are only enlarged versions of the differences between each one of us. Each individual has his or her own unique genetic and environmental origins, and from these has developed in his or her own unique way. Each individual, or to put it differently, 'Each mortal thing.... does one thing and the same:/ Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;/ Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,/ Crying What I do is me: for that I came.' What Gerald Manley Hopkins, the English Jesuit poet, reminds us of here, is that where we essentially differ from one another is not essentially in our outward appearance, but in the unique 'I' that speaks out through us, the 'I' which in God's eye, Hopkins says, is Christ. What 'indoors each one dwells', in other words, is the Word made flesh and dwelling among us.
And that is why Christ tells us to love not only our neighbours but also our enemies. It is natural to care for people like ourselves, whom we think we understand. It is more difficult to love them, or other people, if we discover that they are not like us, when we do not understand them. But that is precisely when Christ's command is most relevant, because what we do not understand in the other person, is, ultimately, the infinite and eternal Word made flesh and dwelling in them. And the only way that gulf between us and the other person can be bridged is by loving what we do not understand. That too - loving what we do not understand - is the only bridge between us and God. Truly, our 'song is love unknown... love to the loveless shown,/ that they might lovely be'. 'For Christ plays in ten thousand places,/ lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his/ To the Father through the features of men's faces'.
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