Friday, November 16, 2007
Why We Have The Right To Bear Arms
WHY WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS
The discussion about our right to own firearms completely misses the point. The writers of the Constitution were not worried about our ability to hunt, nor were they concerned about assuring that we could ward off burglars. The sole reason that firearms were important enough to be included in the Bill of Rights was to guarantee our ability to protect ourselves from OUR government.
If we are armed in order to keep the government in check, to keep it from taking away our rights, then our weapons have to be threatening to the government. In 1791 the citizens of this country were armed almost as well as the army was. The government had many reasons to protect the rights of the citizenry: one of those reasons being the last resort of revolution. The arms of the citizens kept the government honest.
That idea has been purposely buried so as to confuse the issue. We hear concerned police and leftist politicians concede that hunting guns make sense; that we should have the right to own a shotgun, but that assault rifles and semiautomatic handguns are too dangerous for citizens to own. We hear pundits say that many arms are too dangerous and too threatening. The media never mentions that our arms must be as dangerous and threatening as those in the hands of Homeland Security and the local Sheriff’s Department in order for the Second Amendment to be meaningful.
But now there are many government entities working to limit the firearms that we can own, and at the same time the government is militarizing our police departments. Your local sheriffs department is now armed with M16s, grenade launchers, high-powered sniper rifles, body army and grenades. What is that firepower for? It is a bit excessive for crime fighting. It is equipment that is designed to control large mobs with deadly force. The expense involved in this militarization is huge; the total cost of this militarization it is in the billions. Why is the government arming to confront large groups of people here in the United States?
The NRA has not been a very good representative of gun owners because they do not share the philosophy of mistrust in our government. They have become a big Washington lobby that is part of the system, not a check on the system. So citizens need to write their Congressmen and make noise in the press and on the Internet. We need arms that allow us to be a legitimate threat to the government. Do not let them take away our assault rifles. At the same time we need to demand that the police departments be de-militarized. We are not well served by police that can control us all.
We are being told that it is patriotic to keep step with the government. That is a LIE! It is patriotic to make the government fear US, not for us to fear the government.
“A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”
~George Washington
Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.
~George Washington
This is an update to the article I wrote last year.
I ran across an article making the case that in every case of genocide in the last 100 years, the government took away the people's right to won guns first. Click on the window below to see the statistics, or click here to read the article.
Second Update
I wrote this article about a year ago. I made an addition below, by adding the chart that ties acts of genocide to the control and confiscation of guns.
Now I have to add another set of comments because our second amendment rights are under attack like never before in our history by a bill that was introduced to Congress on January 6th 2009, titled HR-45, Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009.
The bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee on the day that it was introduced and on the 9th of February it was referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.
Normally a bill this bad would have died quietly in the Judiciary Committee, but this Orwellian nightmare has taken a step closer to being voted on. This may happen and you need to write your Congressmen and stop this horrible legislation.
And here are the details of this bill that will effectively repeal the 2nd Amendment:
1.- If you own guns you will need a Federal gun owners ID, which will include retina scans, fingerprints
2.- Each gun that you own must be registered.
3.- You may only sell a gun to a registered gun collector or gun dealer and each transaction has to pay a $25 fee. You may not sell a gun directly to a friend. Guns cannot be passed from one generation to another without going through a gun dealer.
4.- If you have a gun lost or stolen you must report it within (I don't remember - a week I think)
5.- Failure to report a lost or stolen gun will result in fines and up to 2 years in the pen.
6.- If children under 18 years old reside in your home your guns must be disassembled and kept under lock and key.
7.- Federal inspectors can request to see your guns and your paperwork at any time. If they find that your guns are not locked up, then you will be.
How's that sound?
If you don't have any unregistered guns, get some.
Buy lots of ammo. Lots of ammo. Other people may need it too.
Don't keep all your guns and ammo in the same place.
Third Update:
Fortunately the horrible HR45 was not passed. Good news doesn't happen very often in statist America, we should be happy for every victory.
Following is a terrific video shot during a Senate hearing to ban "assault weapons". Pay extra attention to the last minute. The Senators don't get it, but Dr. Suzanna Hupp certainly does.
The discussion about our right to own firearms completely misses the point. The writers of the Constitution were not worried about our ability to hunt, nor were they concerned about assuring that we could ward off burglars. The sole reason that firearms were important enough to be included in the Bill of Rights was to guarantee our ability to protect ourselves from OUR government.
If we are armed in order to keep the government in check, to keep it from taking away our rights, then our weapons have to be threatening to the government. In 1791 the citizens of this country were armed almost as well as the army was. The government had many reasons to protect the rights of the citizenry: one of those reasons being the last resort of revolution. The arms of the citizens kept the government honest.
That idea has been purposely buried so as to confuse the issue. We hear concerned police and leftist politicians concede that hunting guns make sense; that we should have the right to own a shotgun, but that assault rifles and semiautomatic handguns are too dangerous for citizens to own. We hear pundits say that many arms are too dangerous and too threatening. The media never mentions that our arms must be as dangerous and threatening as those in the hands of Homeland Security and the local Sheriff’s Department in order for the Second Amendment to be meaningful.
But now there are many government entities working to limit the firearms that we can own, and at the same time the government is militarizing our police departments. Your local sheriffs department is now armed with M16s, grenade launchers, high-powered sniper rifles, body army and grenades. What is that firepower for? It is a bit excessive for crime fighting. It is equipment that is designed to control large mobs with deadly force. The expense involved in this militarization is huge; the total cost of this militarization it is in the billions. Why is the government arming to confront large groups of people here in the United States?
The NRA has not been a very good representative of gun owners because they do not share the philosophy of mistrust in our government. They have become a big Washington lobby that is part of the system, not a check on the system. So citizens need to write their Congressmen and make noise in the press and on the Internet. We need arms that allow us to be a legitimate threat to the government. Do not let them take away our assault rifles. At the same time we need to demand that the police departments be de-militarized. We are not well served by police that can control us all.
We are being told that it is patriotic to keep step with the government. That is a LIE! It is patriotic to make the government fear US, not for us to fear the government.
“A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”
~George Washington
Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.
~George Washington
This is an update to the article I wrote last year.
I ran across an article making the case that in every case of genocide in the last 100 years, the government took away the people's right to won guns first. Click on the window below to see the statistics, or click here to read the article.
Second Update
I wrote this article about a year ago. I made an addition below, by adding the chart that ties acts of genocide to the control and confiscation of guns.
Now I have to add another set of comments because our second amendment rights are under attack like never before in our history by a bill that was introduced to Congress on January 6th 2009, titled HR-45, Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009.
The bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee on the day that it was introduced and on the 9th of February it was referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.
Normally a bill this bad would have died quietly in the Judiciary Committee, but this Orwellian nightmare has taken a step closer to being voted on. This may happen and you need to write your Congressmen and stop this horrible legislation.
And here are the details of this bill that will effectively repeal the 2nd Amendment:
1.- If you own guns you will need a Federal gun owners ID, which will include retina scans, fingerprints
2.- Each gun that you own must be registered.
3.- You may only sell a gun to a registered gun collector or gun dealer and each transaction has to pay a $25 fee. You may not sell a gun directly to a friend. Guns cannot be passed from one generation to another without going through a gun dealer.
4.- If you have a gun lost or stolen you must report it within (I don't remember - a week I think)
5.- Failure to report a lost or stolen gun will result in fines and up to 2 years in the pen.
6.- If children under 18 years old reside in your home your guns must be disassembled and kept under lock and key.
7.- Federal inspectors can request to see your guns and your paperwork at any time. If they find that your guns are not locked up, then you will be.
How's that sound?
If you don't have any unregistered guns, get some.
Buy lots of ammo. Lots of ammo. Other people may need it too.
Don't keep all your guns and ammo in the same place.
Third Update:
Fortunately the horrible HR45 was not passed. Good news doesn't happen very often in statist America, we should be happy for every victory.
Following is a terrific video shot during a Senate hearing to ban "assault weapons". Pay extra attention to the last minute. The Senators don't get it, but Dr. Suzanna Hupp certainly does.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Second Generation Latinos and You
A curious thing happens to low income Hispanic immigrants in the United States. The first generation, those that come across the American border either with proper documentation or without, embody the American dream in all its hope and ambition. By and large, they are humble, law abiding, respectful people. Their crime rates per capita are lower than the national average. They come here to work, save money and to offer a better life to their children than they had as poor campesinos south of the border. But their children, the second generation, and succeeding generations seem to lose the work ethic, they lose respect for America and fall into cultural dysfunction. Why does this happen? Is American society doing something that impedes Hispanic immigrants from passing their positive values and habits on to their children?
Most first generation Hispanic immigrants come from low-income families with little formal education and they work considerably longer hours than native-born Americans do. They save much more money as a percentage of their income than their Americans counterparts do. Most are religious and a greater percentage attends regular religious services than low income Americans do. Given the opportunity, more low-income first generation Hispanics buy and own their own homes than their low-income American counterparts. Although it is difficult to find valid statistics about this group of people because many of them are undocumented and do not show up in most surveys, it appears that they are much less likely to be involved in illegal activity than Americans in the same income group.
The curious thing that happens to the Hispanic population is that a large percentage of the second generation abandons the values of its progenitors. There are factors that determine the extent of this dichotomy, for instance family stability, the amount of time that parents spend with their children and the involvement of the parents, especially fathers, in the schooling of their children. The more attention that children receive from the parents the less likely that they will end up in trouble. But an inordinate percentage of young Latinos take the wrong road, have trouble with the law and don’t finish school or get good jobs. They adopt a culture of rebellion that frightens the Anglos around them. Hip Hop clothes and attitudes designed to intimidate are common. Why does this change happen from one generation to the next?
I submit that the cold, hateful welcome that these people receive is one of the major reasons for the rebellion of their children. Hispanic families are very tight. Pride is important to them and in their cultures respect and courtesy are observed with more formality than they are here. Americans are actually quite rude, our modern culture seems to look down on courtesy, and perhaps it is old fashioned. So we think nothing about being rude and direct with a Hispanic immigrant who is with his children. This scorn, which may be nothing more than a disapproving glance at the grocery store, is recorded by the kids watching the public humiliation of their Mom and Dad. It happens all the time and often it is quite striking. It is especially telling when the kids see how badly treated their parents are by their employers. The reaction to humiliation is powerful and the Latino kids who witness their parents’ belittlement turn away from mainstream Anglo culture and find their heroes in the rebels.
It also happens in schools. The Anglo kids who learn racism at home with Mom and Dad shun the Latino kids. The Latinos are often ridiculed and then in turn they shun the Anglo kids and tend to stick with their Hispanic friends. These groups easily turn into gangs and fight each other. The heroes to the young Latinos then are fighters, gangstas who make money without having to humiliate themselves before the scornful white folks.
If we want to do something to stop this syndrome, try being nice to people, especially poor Latinos. If you can’t be nice, at least be polite and respectful. Their kids are watching.
Most first generation Hispanic immigrants come from low-income families with little formal education and they work considerably longer hours than native-born Americans do. They save much more money as a percentage of their income than their Americans counterparts do. Most are religious and a greater percentage attends regular religious services than low income Americans do. Given the opportunity, more low-income first generation Hispanics buy and own their own homes than their low-income American counterparts. Although it is difficult to find valid statistics about this group of people because many of them are undocumented and do not show up in most surveys, it appears that they are much less likely to be involved in illegal activity than Americans in the same income group.
The curious thing that happens to the Hispanic population is that a large percentage of the second generation abandons the values of its progenitors. There are factors that determine the extent of this dichotomy, for instance family stability, the amount of time that parents spend with their children and the involvement of the parents, especially fathers, in the schooling of their children. The more attention that children receive from the parents the less likely that they will end up in trouble. But an inordinate percentage of young Latinos take the wrong road, have trouble with the law and don’t finish school or get good jobs. They adopt a culture of rebellion that frightens the Anglos around them. Hip Hop clothes and attitudes designed to intimidate are common. Why does this change happen from one generation to the next?
I submit that the cold, hateful welcome that these people receive is one of the major reasons for the rebellion of their children. Hispanic families are very tight. Pride is important to them and in their cultures respect and courtesy are observed with more formality than they are here. Americans are actually quite rude, our modern culture seems to look down on courtesy, and perhaps it is old fashioned. So we think nothing about being rude and direct with a Hispanic immigrant who is with his children. This scorn, which may be nothing more than a disapproving glance at the grocery store, is recorded by the kids watching the public humiliation of their Mom and Dad. It happens all the time and often it is quite striking. It is especially telling when the kids see how badly treated their parents are by their employers. The reaction to humiliation is powerful and the Latino kids who witness their parents’ belittlement turn away from mainstream Anglo culture and find their heroes in the rebels.
It also happens in schools. The Anglo kids who learn racism at home with Mom and Dad shun the Latino kids. The Latinos are often ridiculed and then in turn they shun the Anglo kids and tend to stick with their Hispanic friends. These groups easily turn into gangs and fight each other. The heroes to the young Latinos then are fighters, gangstas who make money without having to humiliate themselves before the scornful white folks.
If we want to do something to stop this syndrome, try being nice to people, especially poor Latinos. If you can’t be nice, at least be polite and respectful. Their kids are watching.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Washington’s Political Nobility
Our system of government was conceived as a Republic governed by citizens as representatives of their peers. The citizen-politician embodied this ideal. Many great Americans went to Washington as Representatives or as Senators for one term or maybe two, but never with the idea of making a career out of politics. It was seen rather as a responsibility to serve the nation.
Things have changed over the years. We have arrived at the point where service in the House of Representatives and the Senate is seen as one of the most lucrative careers that a man or woman can aspire to. It is seen as the most desirable long-term position; one that if done well, will employ a person in luxury until their very comfortable retirement. The trouble is that in order to get the true monetary advantages and power that the positions in the Senate and the House can offer a successful candidate from Dogstown, that new Representative must be sharp enough to look for the benefits that are not included in the job description.
Washington revolves around the 535 men and women who serve in the House and the Senate. The entire metropolitan area is involved directly or indirectly with the Federal government. So the people that can move things along, who can propose or change legislation, that can add earmarks to benefit the farm lobby or the big manufacturer back home in Howardsville, have incredible clout in Washington. The lobbyists and restaurant maitre d’s and pages and subsecretaries of the myriad agencies and departments all fall over themselves sucking up to the mighty 535. Given such constant attention, some (or maybe most) of our representatives forget where they came from and become Washington’s “political nobility”.
I have decided to use the term "political nobility" to describe that class of Washington politician who serves and is served by professional political apparatchiks: either lobbyists, bureaucrats or pundits that are also divorced from the world outside of the beltway. Our Political nobility, like the grandchildren of the Dukes and Baronesses that Louis XIV had relocated permanently to Versailles, and who under Louis XVI played palace politics while Paris burned, is much more preoccupied with each one’s political position and prestige in Washington than they are concerned about the effects of their policies on the rest of the nation and the rest of the world. Their vision is only inward, policies that should be made into law are important only insofar as they generate more power or attention in Washington.
The opinions of the rest of America are seen to be quaint and easy to manipulate when the Noble has good relations with the mainstream media. After all the recognized members of the mainstream media are also included in Washington's nobility, although at a lower and dependent level. Together with the real royalty, the leaders of corporate America, the political nobility and the Dukes and Barons of the media present an alternative reality to America. The reality presented to Americans has little or nothing to do with what really goes on in the Capitol.
What really goes on is a constant competition for favour and influence. What matters is bulding the relationships that allows for greater power among the other nobles. Therefore the political nobility is afraid of advancing radical ideas that might jeopardize an important power group because they avoid creating dangerous enemies. The political nobility is a closed club where confrontation is for show and real conflict disappears with behind closed-door arrangements. The maverick who does stand up for principles is shunned by the nobles and is not awarded with commitee chairs and other positions of power.
Some of the men and women elected to represent us are completely compromised by this system, others are amazingly resistant to the system’s temptations, and of course the majority of our representatives find themselves somewhere in between the virtue of true service and the crime of corruption. Examples abound, but I would suggest that Tom DeLay, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Shumer are some of the worst examples of the political nobility. In contrast, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and Russ Feingold are examples of citizen-politicians.
The term “political nobility” is therefore useful to describe this group that lies and postures and drives us to ruin, with no concern about anything more transcendental than how it will spin in Washington. Thanks to the political nobility’s preoccupation with personal privilege and power we have two pointless wars, a crashing dollar and a world that sees us as killers and torturers.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Ron Paul Honors Pope John Paul II- A Consistent Pro-life Figure
HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS, BEFORE THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES April 6th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join my colleagues in paying tribute to the life and legacy of Pope John Paul II. Pope John Paul II was one of the great religious leaders of modern times, and an eloquent champion of human freedom and dignity. Unlike all-too-many misguided religious leaders, the Pope understood that liberty, both personal and economic, is a necessary condition for the flourishing of human virtue.
The Pope’s commitment to human dignity, grounded in the teachings of Christ, led him to become one of the most eloquent spokesmen for the consistent ethic of life, exemplified by his struggles against abortion, war, euthanasia, and the death penalty.
Unfortunately, few in American politics today adhere to the consistent ethic of life, thus we see some who cheered the Pope’s stand against the war and the death penalty while downplaying or even openly defying his teachings against abortion and euthanasia.
Others who cheered the Pope’s opposition to abortion and euthanasia were puzzled or hostile to his opposition to war. Many of these “pro-life supporters of war” tried to avoid facing the inherent contradictions in their position by distorting the Just War doctrine, which the Pope properly interpreted as denying sanction to the Iraq war. One prominent conservative commentator even suggested that the pope was the “enemy” of the United States.
In conclusion, I am pleased to pay tribute to Pope John Paul II. I would encourage those who wish to honor his memory to reflect on his teachings regarding war and the sanctity of life, and consider the inconsistencies in claiming to be pro-life but supporting the senseless killing of innocent people that inevitably accompanies militarism, or in claiming to be pro-peace and pro-compassion but supporting the legal killing of the unborn.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join my colleagues in paying tribute to the life and legacy of Pope John Paul II. Pope John Paul II was one of the great religious leaders of modern times, and an eloquent champion of human freedom and dignity. Unlike all-too-many misguided religious leaders, the Pope understood that liberty, both personal and economic, is a necessary condition for the flourishing of human virtue.
The Pope’s commitment to human dignity, grounded in the teachings of Christ, led him to become one of the most eloquent spokesmen for the consistent ethic of life, exemplified by his struggles against abortion, war, euthanasia, and the death penalty.
Unfortunately, few in American politics today adhere to the consistent ethic of life, thus we see some who cheered the Pope’s stand against the war and the death penalty while downplaying or even openly defying his teachings against abortion and euthanasia.
Others who cheered the Pope’s opposition to abortion and euthanasia were puzzled or hostile to his opposition to war. Many of these “pro-life supporters of war” tried to avoid facing the inherent contradictions in their position by distorting the Just War doctrine, which the Pope properly interpreted as denying sanction to the Iraq war. One prominent conservative commentator even suggested that the pope was the “enemy” of the United States.
In conclusion, I am pleased to pay tribute to Pope John Paul II. I would encourage those who wish to honor his memory to reflect on his teachings regarding war and the sanctity of life, and consider the inconsistencies in claiming to be pro-life but supporting the senseless killing of innocent people that inevitably accompanies militarism, or in claiming to be pro-peace and pro-compassion but supporting the legal killing of the unborn.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
"Faith and Reason" by Pope Benedict XVI
APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG
(SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg
Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Faith, Reason and the University
Memories and Reflections
Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the 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. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he 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". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. 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...".
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.
At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the 8`(@H". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, F?< 8`(T, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.
In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply declares "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.
In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul - "8@(46¬ 8"JD,\"", worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).
This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.
The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.
Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.
The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue, and I do not intend to repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization. Harnack's central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw it, restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.
This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.
I will return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.
Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.
And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. 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. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.
***
NOTE:
The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional.
TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG
(SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg
Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Faith, Reason and the University
Memories and Reflections
Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the 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. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he 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". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. 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...".
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.
At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the 8`(@H". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, F?< 8`(T, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.
In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply declares "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.
In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul - "8@(46¬ 8"JD,\"", worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).
This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.
The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.
Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.
The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue, and I do not intend to repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization. Harnack's central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw it, restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.
This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.
I will return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.
Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.
And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. 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. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.
***
NOTE:
The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Mary Remembers
A couple of years ago, I realized that I was going to be forced from my home on the shore of the Seno Reloncaví and would have to go back to the United States, at least for some years.
The idea filled me with a terrible sadness, and I imagined how it would be to remember the full moon on the water as a little blanquillo swims in the silver light.
And I saw that the memory was fragile and would crack or fade each time it was brought into the mind's eye.
And then I saw that even the face of my daughter would be broken like this glass until I could go back to my home.
Click on the picture to see the painting more clearly
The idea filled me with a terrible sadness, and I imagined how it would be to remember the full moon on the water as a little blanquillo swims in the silver light.
And I saw that the memory was fragile and would crack or fade each time it was brought into the mind's eye.
And then I saw that even the face of my daughter would be broken like this glass until I could go back to my home.
Click on the picture to see the painting more clearly
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
War Is The Enemy Of Liberty II
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all,
it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy,
and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice,
the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
-- Goering, at Nuremberg Trials
it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy,
and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice,
the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
-- Goering, at Nuremberg Trials
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