Allah 'Unlimited' by Reason?

Ibn Hazm

Cordoba, Spain

Google Images

I offer today another explanation by James V. Schall of theological voluntarism, which he expressed in an article titled "Regensburg Revisited: The Roots of Islamic Violence" (The Catholic Thing, October 1, 2013):

In its Muslim form, [theological voluntarism] . . . seems to be rooted in al-Ghazali and in Ibn Hazm, to whom Benedict referred. In Islam, the notion that God is limited by anything, even His own decrees or reason, is seen to be an insult to Allah. Allah can do the opposite of what he commands. He can call good evil and evil good. He is under no obligation to reveal truth to man. And if he does, he can change his mind and will the opposite later on. These positions are spelled out carefully in the Regensburg Lecture.

Thus, the philosophic root of violence means that such violence used to convert people is perfectly legitimate if Allah commands it, which he appears to do. To deny this possibility as "irrational" would be itself to blaspheme. We would claim that reason could limit the freedom of Allah to which we are to submit ourselves as the only reality to which we need to pay attention.

A question arises: Do al-Ghazali and in Ibn Hazm speak for Islam itself in their understanding of Allah's nature as arbitrary will?

Thawed-Out Neanderthal

Unfrozen Caveman

Google Images

A day or so ago, a physicist friend of mine from the Ozarks who works for Beyond Photonics sent an email to me and a lady-friend diplomat, whom I'll refer to as "Dee," also from the Ozarks, saying this:

Hi Bruce and Dee,

I'm sorry, but when I happened across this headline in the local Boulder paper this morning, I was constitutionally unable to keep from making the following connection:

Pope Benedict XVI resigns Thursday, now 'simple pilgrim' . . .

One of my personal all-time favorite Phil Hartman bits [was his 'simple' Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer] (along with his genius take on Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office with the Girl Scouts, etc. . . .)

See you -- Charley P.

I didn't know my name was "Bruce" . . . or am I "Dee"? Whatever. I replied:

Dammit, Pete, are you inferring that I look like a Neanderthal?!

What's that? Don't I mean "implying"? Huh? Just what are you trying to infer? That I can't spell? Well, I may be a simple hillbilly, but I did learn how to spell, and I know that "inferring" is not spelled "i-m-p-l-y-i-n-g."

So, take that and stick it somewhere beyond photonics!

Oddly enough, my physicist friend took inexplicable offense:

HO!

Now Jeff, I did not come within 161 km of implying that you look like the Pope, and you know it!!

Boy oh boy, touchy frickin' expat, I tell you what. Jeez! And also, that Pope dude is really quite a handsome old fellow just for good measure, I think. So there.

But seriously, I take any opportunity I can get to invoke the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. (Well, not that it comes up very often, but come on, that was too good to pass up . . .) That Phil Hartman, he was da bomb. I hope he's keeping everybody in stitches, whereever he is.

I like your take on BP's name. I have to call people up frequently to buy things, get quotes, etc., and half the people when I tell them our name, think the company is "Beyond Phonics" -- ha. But I'm getting used to it. Have a great weekend, or whatever weird foreign thing you guys have over there -- Pete

At least, he called me "Jeff" . . . even if he does think the pope is handsome and that I look nothing like the pope (ex-pope). Wonder what that 161 km is about . . . . Anyway, Dee then offered her input:

Lawyers, Popes, and cavemen. Same playbook. Find someone slower and take whatever they've got.

Not very diplomatic of her, so I replied, more bluntly than usual:

I can't speak for lawyers or popes, but my fellow cavemen were the ones truly left behind. I'm the only Neanderthal who's survived, and your modern world frightens and terrifies me. For instance, should I invest my money in Apple . . . or in Samsung? Both companies have been criticized for their business practices, so investing in one or the other is a scaaaary thing. Now, I'm just a simple Neanderthal, but an honest Neanderthal, like me, wants to make the ethical choice. For that, however, I need inside information. Nothing complex, just advance knowledge of a new, breakthrough technology that will send the company's stock sky-high. If I only knew that, I'd know where to put my money, namely, in that particular company, for its business practices are bringing on a better future by bringing in the money. And that fits perfectly with my personal ethics. Buy low, sell high is my moral motto. And with the fortune I'd make, I could secure the future of my family. No one can deny the ethics of that. Plus, I'd be a model for any future unfrozen Neanderthals, an inspiration that they, too, can make it in this frightening, terrifying modern world. Again, ethical. But that's me, I just ooze ethics all over.

There. Honest folks can now see where I stand! Less than honest folks will suffer doubts . . .

Brief Remark on Law in Islam and Christianity

Pope Benedict XVI

(Wikipedia)

As the heading above indicates, I'm posting a brief remark on "Law" in Islam and Christianity. In yesterday's blog entry, I noted the tolerant views of Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb. Let us recall his remark on "Law," which he calls Shari'a:

"The fact that all the divine revelations are [revelations] of a single religion should not lead us to believe that they all share the same religious law [shari'a]. 'Religion' is the constant core essence of each revelation. It is one and does not vary, because it is anchored in universal, constant truths that do not change. Conversely, religious law does vary from one divine revelation to the other. By 'religion' we mean the divine message that goes to the common universal principles shared by all revelations, such as the fundamental tenets of faith, morals, and worship. But 'religious law' is the divine law that regulates the life and social behavior of the believers, which changes from time to time and from place to place. While religion, according to the philosophy of Islam, is one, religious law is not. It varies among people, and in accordance with the environment, time, place and circumstances. Therefore, the Koran emphasizes the variety of religious law among the believers: 'To each among you have we prescribed a law and a course. If Allah had so willed, He would have made you a single nation [5:48].'"

This sounds rather unlike what one usually hears from Islam, which often insists upon the primacy of Shari'a over all other systems of law because it is grounded in revelation. Al-Tayeb doesn't elaborate upon the grounding of law, but his Qur'anic citation suggests that Allah has "prescribed a law" to each religiously defined nation, presumably through revelation, though this revelation leaves room for alterations dependent upon time and place. On the one hand, this is tolerant on the part of Al-Tayeb, for it allows for difference. On the other hand, this is problematic, in that it leaves open the question of the law that a Muslim should follow when living in a non-Muslim state. Does Al-Tayeb think that Muslims have the right to follow their own Shari'a even in a secular state, such as those that make up the EU? There also seems to be no rational ground for distinguishing good laws from bad laws since Allah apparently prescribed different laws for different groups. But I'm speculating without sufficient evidence.

At any rate, Pope Benedict XVI, in a recent address in Berlin, reminded his audience of the mainstream Christian view of Law:

How do we recognize what is right? In history, systems of law have almost always been based on religion: decisions regarding what was to be lawful among men were taken with reference to the divinity. Unlike other great religions, Christianity has never proposed a revealed law to the State and to society, that is to say a juridical order derived from revelation. Instead, it has pointed to nature and reason as the true sources of law -- and to the harmony of objective and subjective reason, which naturally presupposes that both spheres are rooted in the creative reason of God. Christian theologians thereby aligned themselves with a philosophical and juridical movement that began to take shape in the second century B.C. In the first half of that century, the social natural law developed by the Stoic philosophers came into contact with leading teachers of Roman Law. Through this encounter, the juridical culture of the West was born, which was and is of key significance for the juridical culture of mankind. This pre-Christian marriage between law and philosophy opened up the path that led via the Christian Middle Ages and the juridical developments of the Age of Enlightenment all the way to the Declaration of Human Rights and to our German Basic Law of 1949, with which our nation committed itself to "inviolable and inalienable human rights as the foundation of every human community, and of peace and justice in the world".

The Pope was speaking to the Germans, and he begins by noting -- in a manner similar to Al-Tayeb -- that Law has often been based on religion, differing according to the religion of a people. But unlike Al-Tayeb, he ends up in a different legal place. Christianity does not propose a law grounded in a particular revelation. Rather, it grounds Law in universal Natural Law discovered through reason. There is, then, ultimately one Law for all humanity.

On the surface, Al-Tayeb's view sounds more tolerant, but it allows for arbitrary laws, including those that most civilized people find repugnant, such as the cutting off of hands for thievery. Conversely. the Pope's view sounds less tolerant, but it insists upon the rationality of Law and thus offers a standard for rejecting laws repugnant to civilized people.

Or so things seem to me . . .

Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb Calls for a Moderate Islam

Ahmed Al-Tayeb

(ArhamOnline)

Not all news from the Islamic world is bad, though my many posts on Islamism might leave that impression. MEMRI reports on "The Sheikh of Al-Azhar in an Exceptionally Tolerant Article" (MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series Report No. 741, September 27, 2011):

In the article, Al-Tayeb distinguishes between the fundamentals of the faith on the one hand and religious laws (shari'a) on the other. He states that the three Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, and Christianity -- share the fundamentals of faith, ritual, and morality, and differ only in their specific shari'a laws. He adds that since shari'a depends on circumstances of time and place, the existence of different shari'as is only natural. In saying this, he not only legitimizes Judaism and Christianity, but also implicitly sanctions the differences in shari'a between the Sunna and Shi'a, and among the various Sunni religious schools.

MEMRI notes that these open views are not merely recent pronouncements:

In an Al-Ahram article published January 2007, Al-Tayeb stated that Islam's ties with the religions that preceded it are not political, cultural, or social in nature; rather, they are ties of brotherhood, for Islam is a sister to the religions of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. He stressed that Islam must open up, shed its self-imposed isolation, and stop treating the followers of other religions as enemies who must either be eliminated or drawn into the fold of Islam.

MEMRI quotes from a June 2011 article by Al-Tayeb:

"The fact that all the divine revelations are [revelations] of a single religion should not lead us to believe that they all share the same religious law [shari'a]. 'Religion' is the constant core essence of each revelation. It is one and does not vary, because it is anchored in universal, constant truths that do not change. Conversely, religious law does vary from one divine revelation to the other. By 'religion' we mean the divine message that goes to the common universal principles shared by all revelations, such as the fundamental tenets of faith, morals, and worship. But 'religious law' is the divine law that regulates the life and social behavior of the believers, which changes from time to time and from place to place. While religion, according to the philosophy of Islam, is one, religious law is not. It varies among people, and in accordance with the environment, time, place and circumstances. Therefore, the Koran emphasizes the variety of religious law among the believers: 'To each among you have we prescribed a law and a course. If Allah had so willed, He would have made you a single nation [5:48].'"

This is certainly a very different message than we constantly hear from the Islamists of the Muslim world. On the other hand, Al-Tayeb isn't perfect:

On two occasions, Al-Tayeb responded sharply to statements by Pope Benedict XVI, which he perceived as offensive to Islam or as interference in Muslim affairs. The first occasion was after the Pope's September 2006 lecture, which enraged Muslims worldwide, and prompted Al-Tayeb to demand an official apology. The second occasion was following the Pope's call, in January 2011, to protect Christians in Egypt (after the New Year's Eve attack on the Church in Alexandria) -- a call Al-Tayeb perceived as interference in Egypt's affairs.

I wonder if Al-Tayeb ever attempted to find out exactly what the Pope said in that 2006 lecture. I went directly to the German speech on video at the time of the controversy and found that the Pope's actual words were significantly different than reported in English, and I assume that the same holds for the reports of the Pope's talk in Arabic, which were likely translated from English rather than German. In the original German, the Pope's own words showed him distancing himself from the words of the Byzantine emperor whom he quoted as criticizing the violence practiced by Islam. As for the Pope's call for the protection of Christians in Egypt, that's perfectly legitimate and scarcely interference in Egypt's affairs -- or would Al-Tayeb say that Muslim religious leaders have no right to criticize persecution of Muslims in lands where they constitute a minority?

But even with these caveats, I'm pleased to hear a mainstream figure in such a position of authority as the Sheikh of Al-Azhar speak out for tolerance and better understanding among religions and call for Muslims to seek peaceful relations with non-Muslims.

I just hope that Al-Tayeb will be shown to have spoken consistently on these matters . . .

Robert Reilly on Lafif Lakhdar: Call for Islamic Rationalism

Robert R. Reilly

(Image from American Foreign Policy Council)

In looking for more information about the Tunisian Muslim reformer Lafif Lakhdar, whom I quoted in a post two days ago, I came across some of his remarks on rationality and Islam cited in an interesting interview that Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch conducted with Robert R. Reilly, author of a recently published book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind, which dates that intellectual closing to Islam's early rejection of Mu'talizite rationalism and emphasis upon Allah's nature as pure, omnipotent will, limited by nothing, not even by rationality.

Mr. Spencer had asked about the possibilities for reviving the "period of Mu'talizite domination in Islam," which by virtue of its rationalism was"a kind of golden age of philosophical reason, intellectual innovation, and openness" in the Muslim world. Specifically, Mr. Spencer asked if there were any "Islamic thinkers today who are trying to do this," i.e., to revive Muslim rationalism. In response, Mr. Reilly cited Mr. Lakhdar as an example of one such Muslim thinker:

Reformist Tunisian-born thinker Latif (sic. Lafif) Lakhdar calls for a revival of "Mu'atazila and philosophical thought that subjected the holy writings on which the religion is based to interpretation by the human mind." He said "it is absurd to believe the text and deny reality."

Mr. Reilly is quoting from two different articles. The first is from Aluma Dankowitz's summary of Mr. Lakhdar's views in "Tunisian Reformist Thinker: Secularism is Vital for the Future of the Arab and Muslim World" (Memri, May 19, 2005, No. 222):

In addressing the question whether secularism means disconnection from Islam, Lafif Lakhdar explains that it is disconnection from the negative autocracy and theocracy in the Muslim world, but is also a revival of the connection with other elements in Islam -- such as mu'atazila [rationalist] and philosophical thought that subjected the holy writings on which the religion is based to interpretation by the human mind.

The second is from the article by Mr. Lakhdar that I cited a couple of posts ago, "Moving From Salafi to Rationalist Education" (Meria, Volume 9, No. 1, Article 3, March 2005):

Open religious rationalism -- subjecting the religious text to rational investigation and research -- ought to become the core of the aspired religious education in the Arab-Islamic region, since it is absurd to believe the text and deny reality.

Both of these Lakhdar citations appear to be related, given their chronological proximity (Spring 2005) and their mutual emphasis upon rationality applied to religious texts. Mr. Reilly -- in speaking of the 'de-hellenization' (expulsion of reason) that took place in Islam with the rejection of Mu'talizite rationalism -- goes on in the interview to make a point that I have also made:

If reason is illegitimate, how are differences to be adjudicated? Force will decide. The stronger will decide. Why does Islam use violence to affirm its theology? Because it is the theology of power, of the doctrine that "right is rule of the stronger," raised to the level of God. The primacy of the will always seeks success through force.

Benedict XVI told his audience in Regensburg that not only is violence in spreading faith unreasonable and therefore against God, but that a conception of God without reason, or above reason, leads to that very violence. This is the problem in Islam. That which is unreasonable is against God only if God is reason. This is not so in majority Sunni Islamic theology. He is pure will and power, unconstrained even by his own word. Therefore, there are no solid barriers between the statement that God is pure will and power, and the startling declaration of Abdullah Azzam, which Osama quoted in the November 2001 video, released after 9/11, that "Terrorism is an obligation in Allah's religion." This can only be true -- that violence in spreading faith is an obligation -- if, as Benedict XVI said, God is without reason. This is why the problem we are facing is primarily a theological one.

In September 2006, I made much the same point as Mr. Reilly:

The Pope's larger theme lay in his subtle argument that Islam might have a problem with violence because it has a problem in its theology. If God's nature is defined centrally by his radically free will, then believers cannot appeal to reason in their aim to convert nonbelievers but must demand submission to an arbitrary God who cannot be rationally understood. If the force of reason cannot be used in converting nonbelievers, then the force of violence will be.

If Mr. Reilly and I are correct, then this problem at the heart of Islam will be very difficult to rectify, for an appeal to reason can be met by a resort to force, so how does one go about restoring rationality to the irrational?

Let us not give up hope, however, for even Christian theology had to overcome a radically voluntarist conception of God . . . and generally succeeded.

Shallow Reflections on Deep Faith

Triumph of Faith over Idolatry

Jean-Baptiste Théodon

(French, 1646–1713)

Church of the Gesù

Rome, Italy

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm re-reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, so I have encountered for the second time an aphorism on religious belief:

"Faith, the least exclusive club on earth, has the craftiest doorman." (David Mitchell, "Letters from Zedelghem," Cloud Atlas: A Novel, page 75)

This remarkable, offhand remark is penned by Robert Frobisher, would-be composer -- and son of a sinecured Anglican minister -- as he later records the thoughts first entertained while sitting in a Catholic church in Bruges envying the believers kneeling in prayer . . . and also envying God for being privy to their secrets.

Whatever what Frobisher might mean by "faith" -- and I'll reflect on that in a moment -- the Hebrew terms are "'emeth" (firmness), "'emuwn" (faithfulness), or "'emuwnah" (firmness), etymologically related to the more familiar term "amēn," meaning (according to the Blue Letter Bible):

1) firm

a) metaph. faithful

2) verily, amen

a) at the beginning of a discourse - surely, truly, of a truth

b) at the end - so it is, so be it, may it be fulfilled. It was a custom, which passed over from the synagogues to the Christian assemblies, that when he who had read or discoursed, had offered up solemn prayer to God, the others responded Amen, and thus made the substance of what was uttered their own.

None of these quite captures Frobisher's use of the term "faith," which seems to imply a trustful emotion that runs deep in the believer. Nor does any of these clearly express what I've sometimes been told about the Hebrew understanding of faith, that it means belief expressed in action.

When I was growing up in the church, I understood the word "faith" to designate dependence, a deep trust in God that whispered not even a single doubt . . . but I've long since come to deeply distrust that understanding because I've seen that it often means trusting in some other person's subjective insistence on God's will.

I've gone through a pretzel's tangle of different positions on this faith issue, but I've ultimately come to the conclusion that God wouldn't demand an irrational faith, for the character of God, properly and correctly understood, would have to be -- as Pope Benedict maintains in his Regensburg lecture, "Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections" -- eminently reasonable:

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 λόγος [logos]" . . . . God acts, συν λόγω [syn logō], 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.

One need not be Catholic to appreciate an insistence that God is essentially reasonable. If God's not, we're all in big trouble, for if God's character is not reasonable, then faith itself must be unreasonable, even irrational, never truly engendered by trustworthy persuasion but always imposed with the threat of violence. We see this most explicitly in the faith of religious terrorists, but the threat is more often implicit, especially when obscured through the manipulative cunning of some who would set their own subjective faith up as the objective standard by which to judge everyone else's. Not that I'm thinking of anyone in particular . . .

The Greek term for "faith," incidentally, is pistis, which has the following meanings in the New Testament (borrowed from the Blue Letter Bible):

1) conviction of the truth of anything, belief; in the NT of a conviction or belief respecting man's relationship to God and divine things, generally with the included idea of trust and holy fervour born of faith and joined with it

a) relating to God

1) the conviction that God exists and is the creator and ruler of all things, the provider and bestower of eternal salvation through Christ

b) relating to Christ

1) a strong and welcome conviction or belief that Jesus is the Messiah, through whom we obtain eternal salvation in the kingdom of God

c) the religious beliefs of Christians

d) belief with the predominate idea of trust (or confidence) whether in God or in Christ, springing from faith in the same

2) fidelity, faithfulness

a) the character of one who can be relied on

The correspondence of pistis to the Hebrew terms "'emeth," "'emuwn," and "'emuwnah," as well as to "amēn," is clear, though this Greek term seems to carry a good deal more theological content.

Just to satisfy curiosity, mine anyway, here's the etymology for the English word "faith," borrowed from the Online Etymological Dictionary:

mid-13c., "duty of fulfilling one's trust," from O.Fr. feid, from L. fides "trust, belief," from root of fidere "to trust," from PIE base *bhidh-/*bhoidh- (cf. Gk. pistis; see bid). For sense evolution, see belief. Theological sense is from late 14c.; religions called faiths since c.1300.

All of this is very interesting, I suppose, though I'd need to reflect on it a lot before I'd have anything interesting to write, but why did Frobisher say that faith has the craftiest doorman? We have to read the aphorism in its context:

"Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I've stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street again." (David Mitchell, "Letters from Zedelghem," Cloud Atlas: A Novel, page 75)

That sounds a bit like disappointment, but perhaps Mr. Frobisher is simply directed to where, deep down, he really wants to find himself, and the doorman's craft thus consists in recognizing this innermost desire, but you'll need to read the larger context, the entire "Letters from Zedelghem" story, to find out for sure.

After all, why trust me?

Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Pedophile Scandal

Pope Benedict XVI

(Image from Wikipedia)

Ross Douthat has a recent, topical column on the current Pope and his troubled Church in the New York Times, "The Better Pope" -- meaning better than Pope John Paul II. Douthat acknowledges that Benedict is not untouched by the scandal over pedophile priests, but he has some kind words to say about Benedict as reformer, a role that I was unfamiliar with:

[T]here's another story to be told about John Paul II and his besieged successor. The last pope was a great man, but he was also a weak administrator, a poor delegator, and sometimes a dreadful judge of character.

The church's dilatory response to the sex abuse scandals was a testament to these weaknesses. So was John Paul's friendship with the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ. The last pope loved him and defended him. But we know now that Father Maciel was a sexually voracious sociopath. And thanks to a recent exposé by The National Catholic Reporter's Jason Berry, we know the secret of Maciel's Vatican success: He was an extraordinary fund-raiser, and those funds often flowed to members of John Paul's inner circle.

Only one churchman comes out of Berry's story looking good: Joseph Ratzinger. Berry recounts how Ratzinger lectured to a group of Legionary priests, and was subsequently handed an envelope of money "for his charitable use" [opera carita, "an elegant way of giving a bribe"]. The cardinal "was tough as nails in a very cordial way," a witness said, and turned the money down.

This isn't an isolated case. In the 1990s, it was Ratzinger who pushed for a full investigation of Hans Hermann Groer, the Vienna cardinal accused of pedophilia, only to have his efforts blocked in the Vatican. It was Ratzinger who persuaded John Paul, in 2001, to centralize the church's haphazard system for handling sex abuse allegations in his office. It was Ratzinger who re-opened the long-dormant investigation into Maciel's conduct in 2004, just days after John Paul II had honored the Legionaries in a Vatican ceremony. It was Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict, who banished Maciel to a monastery and ordered a comprehensive inquiry into his order.

We might find these these things admirable -- these actions by Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI -- even if too little, too late, given the dimensions of the pedophile scandal, but these are things that we should also know and consider in arriving at a judgment on the current Pope.

Some might argue that the crucial questions about Pope Benedict XVI are like those posed about President Nixon during the Watergate scandal: "What did he know, and when did he know it?"

But I think that there's a third question to be asked: "When did he have the power to act upon what he knew?"

He certainly knew something about the case of Reverend Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, for "[i]n 1998, eight ex-Legionaries filed a canon law case to prosecute . . . [Delgollado] in then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's tribunal." But little happened for six years. According to Jason Berry's report, "Ratzinger told a Mexican bishop that the Maciel case was a 'delicate' matter and questioned whether it would be 'prudent' to prosecute at that time."

That sounds horrible to us looking back at the extent of the pedophile scandal that is shaking the Catholic Church, but consider this:

Maciel had the staunch support of three pivotal figures: [Cardinal Angelo] Sodano[, Vatican secretary of state from 1990 to 2006]; Cardinal Eduardo Martínez Somalo, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life; and Msgr. Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Polish secretary of John Paul. During those years, Sodano pressured Ratzinger not to prosecute Maciel, as NCR previously reported.

A generous reading of Ratzinger's inaction is that he was biding his time until he had gathered the power to act effectively. I suspect that we will learn more on this issue in the next several months.

A less generous reading of inaction on this pedophile issue might prompt one to pose a fourth question: "Why didn't somebody of importance see the problem clearly, recognize the need to act, and step outside the ecclesiastical bureaucracy to cry 'J'accuse'?"

Short answer: That calls for more courage than most of us have.

Long answer?

Sheikh Yousuf Al-Ahmad: "cast fear in the hearts of Allah's enemies"

Sheikh Yousuf Al-Ahmad

(Image from Memri Blog)

The very useful Memri folks who translate statements made by Islamists have provided a clip with English subtitles (as well as a transcript) of the statements in an interview uttered by a professor of Islamic law at Al-Imam University in Riyadh, Sheikh Yousuf Al-Ahmad, expressing hardline opinions concerning -- among other topics -- the owners of 'liberal' Saudi television channels, e.g., Al-Walid bin Talal. He maintains that they "should be tried in an Islamic court of law and sentenced to death."

When challenged by the interviewer, who insisted that "Islam is a religion of tolerance and leniency," Al-Ahmad retorted:

Allah says otherwise. Islam is lenient, but the infidel West trembles in fear of it. Allah has ordered us to prepare: "Prepare for them what force and steeds of war you can, to cast fear in the hearts of Allah's enemies and of your own." Our human nature may tell us that stoning is unacceptable, but this is a punishment decreed by Allah. If Allah decrees death -- this is how it should be. If the Islamic scholars ruled that the punishment for drug dealers is death, this is how it should be.

Al-Ahmad seems to be citing the Qur'an, "Al-Anfal" 8:58-59:

58 Let not the unbelievers think that they can get the better (of the godly): they will never frustrate (them). 59 Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. (Yusuf Ali Translation)

The sura "Al-Anfal" is understood as referring generally to the spoils of war, but from Al-Ahmad's interpretation -- and, indeed, from the above verses -- "war" would appear to be quite broadly defined.

Be that as it may, Al-Ahmad's remark on the necessity of carrying out Allah's decrees no matter what we might think about them suggest that he is of the opinion that Allah could order anything at all, no matter how cruel, and we would be compelled to carry it out or face the consequences -- a position remarkably similar in principle to that expressed by Ibn Hazm, who held 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" (Pope Benedict XVI, "Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections," September 12, 2006).

The Pope admits that Christians have sometimes construed God in nearly Islamic terms as pure will -- and I think that Prostestants are more guilty of this than Catholics -- but the mainstream of Christian thought has emphasized faith and reason, such that God's will is not entirely inscrutable, for God is essentially rational.

That would appear to be missing in Al-Ahmad's theology, but I await further enlightenment.

Rémi Brague on Medieval Philosophy's Broad Influence

Rémi Brague Explains

(Image from Universidad de Navarra)

As some will recall, I recently re-read Rémi Brague's masterful Eccentric Culture, which motivated me to blog about it again. In doing so, I discovered a couple of interviews that Brague gave, and I blogged on a question raised in my mind by a passage in the longer interview, the one on The Legend of the Middle Ages.

I went so far as to email Professor Brague and inquire:

Pardon me for contacting you, for you do not know me, but I have a query -- I think a simple one.

I am currently re-reading your book Eccentric Culture and have blogged on it recently (as well as earlier), and I happened to read -- and then blog about -- the interview conducted by Christophe Cervellon and Kristell Trego for the collection of articles in The Legend of the Middle Ages.

In that interview, an editor (I suppose) has introduced the heading "Cosmology as a Postulate." Following this heading is a passage that suggests to me that the editor has misunderstood your point, for you seem to me to be saying that for premodern man, cosmic order was not a postulate but a given.

Have I read you correctly?

Of course, you may have no time for this query, and I will understand and accept if I do not hear from you.

But I did hear from him:

This was a real joy to receive your message. I must be brief: I am in a small community in la France profonde, i.e. in the sticks. Internet is available only in the town-house.

Thank you for your close reading of my stuff. I will have to postpone a real answer till September: I haven't my own books there, let alone their English translations.

Have a nice summer.

From the evidence provided by this email, I'd say that he must be a really nice man, and I now have something to look forward to. But I won't leave you with the merely autobiographical blog entry today (after all, this isn't really my vacation), for I want to share another passage from the longer interview on The Legend of the Middle Ages that left a vivid impression on me because of its implications as to why the West developed as it did:

In medieval Europe, philosophy became a university course of studies and a pursuit that could provide a living. It also supported a mass of untenured, garden-variety "philosophy profs," few of whom have left their names in the manuals, even though we can exhume their courses, which we discover to be full of surprises. But these were the men who made it possible for philosophy to make a profound impact on the minds of the jurists, physicians, and others they taught, hence for it to become a factor in society.

This is significant because philosophy's emphasis upon reason surely played some role in preparing the rational European mind for the scientific revolution but also because it held theologians to rational standard. Christian theology had always required philosophical grounding, but the middle ages institutionalized philosophical study and therefore, as Brague remarks, ensured that philosophy might have a broader influence on society, something that did not occur in Islamic civilization because philosophy was never institutionalized there.

Brague goes on to make the point that "'theology' as a rational exploration of the divine . . . exists only in Christianity," which stands as a considerably strong claim to make, but I'll leave you to read the interview if you want to know precisely why he holds this view. I will add that his point is similar to the point made by Pope Benedict XVI in his Regensburg lecture, namely, that the central significance of the "Logos" in Christianity was crucial to Christian theology's openness to reason.

I agree with the Pope and Brague on their point about the significance of the "Logos," but I also think that the Christian doctrine of the incarnation raised profound philosophical questions -- concerning, e.g., matter and spirit, temporality and nontemporality, spatiality and nonspatiality, etc. -- that needed to receive answers if Christians were to respond to questions posed by the non-Christian culture in which Christianity grew, especially since Christianity did not begin as a successful political and military power, could not force non-Christians to submit, and thus had to rely solely on persuasion.

Until Constantine, anyway.

Mankind made in the image of Allah?

Islamic Adam and Eve

Not exactly your garden variety . . .

Manafi al-Hayawan (منافع الحيوان: Usefulness of Animals)

From Maragheh in Mongol Iran, 1294-99

(Image from Wikipedia)

Adam and Eve in this Muslim painting look rather different from the Adam and Eve usually seen in Western paintings. Eve in particular calls to mind images of the Buddha from Central Asia, which undoubtedly shows the influence of some tradition of painting from outside Islam itself.

Despite differences from the Western depictions of Adam and Eve, and despite what I've long heard and even accepted about Allah having no image and Islam rejecting the Jewish and Christian view of human beings being made in God's image, I have just learned that Islam does have traditions about man being made in the image of Allah.

I sometimes do wild Google searches, and yesterday, I was thinking about an article that I read over ten years ago about an aboriginal tribe of northern Australia that had some contact with traders from Indonesia prior to British colonization. This tribe had apparently learned something of the the traders' religion, and in the tribe's own tradition drew an image of Allah, perhaps the only one ever made (or so the article speculated). I was interested in finding that article and so performed the search that led to today's post.

I should interject that I've long held that the Qur'an's suras telling of Allah commanding the angels to bow down to the newly created Adam (7.11; 15.31-32; 38.74-75) presuppose that Adam was made in Allah's image (else why the command to bow down?). However, since I had been told, and had also read, that Islam rejects the belief that mankind was made in the image of Allah -- for Allah is totally other than anything created -- then I did not expect to find any Muslim acceptance of the so-called Imago Dei. But I found precisely this in a commentary on a hadith stating that "Allah created Adam in His image" -- and I have pasted the entire discussion by someone named Madarijas-Salikeen:

Commentary on the hadeeth, "Allaah created Adam in His image"

Question: When Prophet says "Allah created Adam in his image" what does "his image" refer to and how should we understand it?.

Answer: Praise be to Allaah.

Al-Bukhaari (6227) and Muslim (2841) narrated from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "Allaah created Adam in His image, and he was sixty cubits tall. When he created him he said, 'Go and greet that group of angels who are sitting and listen to how they greet you, for that will be your greeting and the greeting of your descendents.' So he said, 'Al-salaamu 'alaykum (peace be upon you),' and they said, 'Al-salaamu 'alayka wa rahmat-Allaah (Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allaah).' So they added (the words) 'wa rahmat-Allaah.' Everyone who enters Paradise will be in the form of Adam, but mankind continued to grow shorter until now."

Muslim (2612) narrated that Abu Hurayrah said: The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "When any one of fights his brother, let him avoid the face, for Allaah created Adam in His image."

Ibn Abi 'Aasim narrated in al-Sunnah (517) that Ibn 'Umar said: The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Do not say 'May Allaah deform your face' [a form of cursing in Arabic], for the son of Adam was created in the image of the Most Merciful." Shaykh 'Abd-Allaah ibn al-Ghunaymaan (may Allaah preserve him) said: "This hadeeth is saheeh and was classed as such by the imams and by Imam Ahmad and Ishaaq ibn Raahawayh. Those who classed it as da'eef have no evidence, except for the view of Ibn Khuzaymah, but those who classed it as saheeh are more knowledgeable than him.

I should interject here that there exist four categories of hadith based upon the hadith's isnad (chain of narrators): sahih (sound), hasan (good), da'if (weak), and maudu' (fabricated, forged). Apparently, there was a dispute over this hadith about Adam being created in the image of Allah (possibly due to Allah's utter otherness in Islamic theology?). But to return to Madarijas-Salikeen's discussion:

Ibn Abi 'Aasim also narrated (516) that Abu Hurayrah said: The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "When any one of you fights let him avoid the face, for Allaah created Adam in the image of His Face." Shaykh al-Albaani said: its isnaad is saheeh.

These two hadeeth indicate that the pronoun in the phrase "in His image" refers to Allaah, may He be glorified.

Al-Tirmidhi (3234) narrated from Ibn 'Abbaas that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "My Lord came to me in the most beautiful image and said, 'O Muhammad.' I said, 'Here I am at Your service, my Lord.' He said, 'What are the chiefs (angels) on high disputing about . . .'" Classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Tirmidhi.

According to the lengthy hadeeth about intercession, it says, ". . . then the Compeller (al-Jabbaar) will come to then in an image different than the image in which they saw Him the first time . . ." Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 7440; Muslim, 182.

From these ahaadeeth we learn that it is proven that Allaah has an image (soorah in Arabic), in a manner that befits Him, may He be glorified and exalted. His image is one of His attributes which cannot be likened to the attributes of created beings, just as His essence cannot be likened to their essence.

Again, I interject. Here, Madarijas-Salikeen appeals to Islamic orthodoxy in such a way as to interpret "image" in a sense other than its usual meaning, for if Allah's image is one of his 'attributes' and if Allah's attributes cannot be likened to attributes of created beings, then Madarijas-Salikeen is effectively denying that Adam was made in Allah's image, for an image means a likeness. Obviously, the argument in sophisticated Islamic commentary would be rather complex and would explicate the nuances of the Arabic term for "image" . . . but ultimately, the hadith is rendered meaningless if "image" means "not in the likeness of." Madarijas-Salikeen deals with this very issue in a typical way by denying that image implies any sort of likeness. The point seems to be that a likeness would have to be exact, whereas an image is not exact. The problem that I see here is that even an image implies resemblance, even if one is not speaking of physical resemblance. The term "image" is thus emptied of meaning, as we shall see when Ibn Qutaybah says that "Allaah" having an "image" is accepted by Muslims along with Allah's other attributes, "but we do not discuss how any of them are":

Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah said: "The word soorah (image) in this hadeeth is like all the other names and attributes narrated (in the texts) where the words used may also be applied to created beings, in a limited manner. When these words are applied to Allaah, they carry a unique meaning, such as al-'Aleem (All Knowing), al-Qadeer (All-Powerful), al-Raheem (Most Merciful), al-Samee' (All Hearing), al-Baseer (All-Seeing), and such as His creating with His hands, rising above the Throne, etc." Naqd al-Ta'sees, 3/396

Everything that exists must inevitably have a form or image. Shaykh al-Islam said: "Just as everything that exists must have attributes that, so too everything that exists by itself must have a form or image. It is impossible for something that exists by itself not to have a form or image."

And he said: "There was no dispute among the salaf of the first three generations that the pronoun in the hadeeth refers to Allaah, and it is narrated through many isnaads from many of the Sahaabah. The contexts of the ahaadeeth all indicate that . . . but when al-Jahamiyyah became widespread in the third century AH, a group began to say that the pronoun refers to something other than Allaah, and this was transmitted from a group of scholars who are known to have knowledge and to follow the Sunnah in most of their affairs, such as Abu Thawr, Ibn Khuzaymah, Abu'l-Shaykh al-Asfahaani and others. Hence they were denounced by the imams of Islam and other Sunni scholars."

Naqd al-Ta'sees, 3/202

Ibn Qutaybah (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: "That Allaah should have an image is no stranger than His having two hands, fingers or eyes. Rather those are readily accepted because they are mentioned in the Qur'aan, but this idea (image or form) is regarded as strange because it is not mentioned in the Qur'aan. But we believe in them all, but we do not discuss how any of them are."

Ta'weel Mukhtalif al-Hadeeth, p. 221

Shaykh al-Ghunaymaan said: "Thus it is clear that the form or image is like all the other divine attributes. Any attribute which Allaah has affirmed in the Revelation, we must affirm it and believe in it."

Sharh Kitaab al-Tawheed min Saheeh al-Bukhaari, 2/41

Shaykh Ibn Baaz (may Allaah have mercy on him) was asked: There is a hadeeth narrated from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) in which he forbids saying "May Allaah deform your face", and says that Allaah created Adam in His image. What is the correct belief with regard to this hadeeth?

He replied:

This hadeeth is proven from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), in which he said: "If any one of you strikes (another), let him avoid the face, for Allaah created Adam in His image." According to another version: "In the image of the Most Merciful." This does not imply resemblance or likeness.

What is meant, according to the scholars, is that Allaah created Adam with the ability to hear and see, and to speak when he wants. These are also attributes of Allaah, for He is All-Hearing, All-Seeing, and He speaks when He wants, and He has a Face, may He be glorified and exalted.

But it does not mean that there is any resemblance or likeness. Rather the image of Allaah is different from that of created beings. What is meant is that He is All-Hearing, All-Seeing, and He speaks when He wants, and He created Adam also able to hear and see, with a face and hands and feet. But man’s hearing is not like Allaah's hearing, his seeing is not like Allaah's seeing, his speaking is not like Allaah's speaking. Rather Allaah has attributes that befit His majesty and might, and man has attributes that befit him, attributes that are finite and imperfect, whereas the attributes of Allaah are perfect, with no shortcomings, infinite and without end. Hence Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

"There is nothing like Him, and He is the All‑Hearer, the All‑Seer" [al-Shoora 42:11]

"And there is none co-equal or comparable unto Him" [al-Ikhlaas 112:4]

So it is not permissible to strike the face or say "May Allaah deform your face".

End quote. Majmoo' Fataawa al-Shaykh, 4/226

Another thing that will help to explain the meaning of this hadeeth is the words of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him): "The first group to enter Paradise will be in the image of the moon (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 3245; Muslim, 2834." What the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) meant here is that the first group will be in human form, but because of their purity, beauty and brightness of face they will look like the moon, so they are likened to the moon, but without resembling it. So just because a thing is said to be in the image of a thing it does not mean that it is like it in all aspects.

The Prophet's words, "Adam was created in His image" means that Allaah created Adam in His image, for He has a face, an eye, a hand, and a foot, and Adam had a face, an eye, a hand, and a foot . . . but that does not mean that these things are exactly the same. There is some similarity, but it is not exactly the same. Similarly the first group to enter Paradise are likened to the moon, but they are not exactly the same. This confirms the view of Ahl al-Sunnah wa'l-Jamaa'ah, who say that none of the attributes of Allaah can be likened to the attributes of created beings, without distorting or misinterpreting, or discussing how or likening Him to His creation.

See Sharh al-'Aqeedah al-Waasitah by Shaykh Muhammad ibn 'Uthaymeen, 1/107, 293.

For more information, see: Sharh Kitaab al-Tawheed min Saheeh al-Bukhaari by Shaykh al-Ghunaymaan, 2/33-98, in which he quotes at length from Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah (may Allaah have mercy on him), refuting the misinterpretation of this hadeeth by ahl al-kalaam and those who agreed with them.

And Allaah knows best.

Well, I have certainly learned a great deal from this, namely, that Adam was made in Allah's image but that "image of Allah" in Islamic orthodoxy is emptied of any meaning that Muslims can understand.

There seems to be a type of 'agnosticism' at the core of Islam, an acceptance that nothing can be truly known about Allah. One can only submit to the Qur'anic revelation, for Allah is so utterly beyond human categories that one cannot reason about Him . . . which returns us to the issue that got Pope Benedict XVI in trouble in Regensburg.

But that's a different blog entry . . . or series of blog entries.

In the wake of the Pope's Regensburg remarks...

Aspenia

Journal of Aspen Institute

(Image: Aspen Institute Italia)

Over at Chiesa, but drawing upon the journal of the Aspen Institute in Italy, Sandro Magister offers an interesting article, "The Surprising Geopolitics of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope," that describes how the pope "has left his mark on international politics . . . . with Islam."

Magister directs our attention to the pope's Regensburg address, and since I played a small but, I hope, constructive role in the controversy raised by the pope's remarks on Islam and violence, I'd like to quote four passages from this part of Magister's article:

[T]he first action of Benedict XVI that made a worldwide impact was the long and substantial lecture that he gave at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006. He literally shook the world, for both the right reasons on the wrong ones. That lecture explained the new pope's view of the Church and of the West and his plans for them, including relations with Islam.

According to the canons of geopolitical realism, Benedict XVI should never have delivered that lecture in its entirety. He should have had it reviewed and purged beforehand by the diplomatic experts, something that he intentionally declined to do. And a number of people in the Vatican curia criticized him for this.

And yet, two years later, the facts tell a different story. Despite the alarm of the Cassandras, a dialogue emerged between the Catholic Church and Islam that had never existed before Regensburg, and had even seemed impossible. This dialogue is not only intellectual -- represented, for example, by the initiatives following the "letter of the 138 Muslim scholars" -- but also political. The political dimension advanced considerably after the audience at the Vatican on November 6, 2007 -- the first of its kind in history -- between the pope and the king of Saudi Arabia.

Even after Regensburg, one aspect that distinguishes the relationship with the Muslim world inaugurated by Benedict XVI is its apparent imprudence. Pope Ratzinger is not afraid of alternating gestures of openness -- one thinks of his silent prayer in front of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul -- with actions at odds with diplomatic caution. He had no qualms about granting an audience to Oriana Fallaci, one of the most committed critics of Islam, which she believes to be violent by nature. At the Easter vigil at St. Peter's in 2008, he baptized Magdi Allam, a convert from Islam and a radical critic of his religion of origin. But what is most astonishing is the heart of Benedict XVI's reasoning. The pope is asking Islam to undertake the same kind of demanding self-renewal that the Catholic Church carried out over the span of two centuries, beginning at the time of the Enlightenment.

In case anyone has forgotten, here is what the pope was 'officially' reported to have said in Regensberg concerning Islam and violence, and note the red font showing that he distanced himself from the words that he attributes to the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus (1350-1425):

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.

Despite the pope's careful words, and in a context within which he also deplored the church's own use of violence in its past, he was harshly criticized immediately after his talk, and Islamist radicals incited Muslims to violent riots in various parts of the world to protest the pope's words.

But as I pointed out at the time, the pope's words were not only careful in the English translation, they were even more careful in the original German, and I provided my own translation:

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 an astonishing brusqueness, for us an astounding brusqueness, bluntly 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 very forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.

The pope continued to receive much criticism, of course, for the first but erroneous English translation of his words was so widely reported that the later, corrected version went largely unnoticed. Some people must have noticed, however, for my blog entry on this issue received a couple thousand hits within a few minutes after Ramesh Ponnuru linked to it in The National Review Online.

But let me return to Magister's article and quote a passage demonstrating that despite a careful distancing from the Byzantine emperor's words, the pope holds that Islam really does have a problem with violence because it has too radically separated faith from reason in the aftermath of its rejection of the philosopher Averroes (though he didn't explicitly state this in his Regensburg address):

Two thirds of the lecture in Regensburg is dedicated to criticizing the periods in which Christianity dangerously separated itself from its rational foundations [as I also noted]. And the pope is proposing that Islam do the same thing: that it interweave faith and reason, the only way to shelter it from violence. The difficulty of this enterprise -- recognized as arduous but necessary even by leading Muslim thinkers like Mohammed Arkoun -- lies in the fact that in the history of Islamic thought, any fruitful relationship between faith and reason practically ceased with the death of the philosopher Averroes in 1198. After this, Islam has been characterized by the separation between faith and "reasonableness" about which the pope cautioned all, Muslims and Christians, in the most memorable passages of his lecture in Regensburg.

Magister's point is that these things need to be said and that the pope has opened dialogue on this issue by saying them. I think that this is correct. The best response to Islamist threats to free speech is more speech. Personally, I don't like controversy, and I also prefer not to insult anybody, but the perception of insult is subjective, so we have no control over how others might 'feel' in response to what we say. An Iranian student told me a couple of weeks ago that the widespread criticism of Islam by non-Muslims has been good because the clerics in Iran have given up on trying to threaten violence against 'infidel' critics, and even Muslims can now discuss things openly that would have been taboo just a few years ago.

The pope, it seems, has contributed to this new state of affairs.

Islamist Distrust of Human Reason

Matthias Kuentzel

(Image from International Analyst Network)

From my reading on Islamism this semester as I lead discussions with my students, I've learned that Salafi Muslims would have some objections to human curiosity and the knowledge that it seeks. Indeed, the Salafists objections are far more radical than any objections formulated by St. Augustine, and I suppose that we need another Blumenberg to explore the "trial of theoretical curiosity" in Islam.

I'd like to quote a passage from Quintan Wiktorowicz, "Anatomy of the Salafi Movement," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 29:3 (2006), 207-239:

Perhaps the most dangerous challenge to pure Islam, from the Salafi perspective, is the application of human intellect and logic to the original sources ("rationalism" in the Salafi lexicon). Salafis operate as though the Qur'an and hadith are self-explanatory: if the scholar has enough training and knowledge, then the vast majority of derived rulings are clear and indisputable. As a result, there is no need to apply human systems of logic. The scholars are, in a sense, reduced to the archeology of divine texts: their function is to simply unearth the truth that lies somewhere in the Qur'an and Sunna. In this understanding, there is really no such thing as interpretation -- the sources either sanction or prohibit particular beliefs, choices, and behavior; there is a single truth, as revealed by the Qur'an and the Prophet Muhammad; and there is no room for interpretive differences or religious pluralism. Any time humans attempt to apply their own logic or methods of reasoning (the scientific method of Sir Francis Bacon or Ibn Khaldun, for example), they open the way to human desire, distortion, and deviancy. Approaches that are guided by human logic will necessarily fall foul of human desire, which will lead to the selective and biased extrapolation of religious evidence to support human interests rather than religious truth. (Wiktorowicz, "Anatomy of the Salafi Movement," page 210)

Wiktorowicz is describing the suspicion with which Salafi Islamists view any use of reason in interpreting the Qur'an or the hadith, but since the problem lies specifically in how human desire misleads reason, then this distrust of our reasoning powers would seem also to apply in all realms of knowledge.

Well, that's Salafi Islam, a Sunni form of Islam. What about Islamist views in Shia Islam? From reading Matthias Kuentzel's article "Antisemitism, Messianism and the Cult of Sacrifice: The Iranian Holy War," SPME Faculty Voices (April 10, 2008), I learn that Iranian Shi'ite Islamists have a similar distrust of human reason, as several passages from a subsection entitled "Reason as sin" will demonstrate:

For us, the employment of reason is the most self-evident thing in the world. For Islamists the use of reason -- apart from in the natural sciences -- is an expression of arrogance -- hence our castigation as the "World of Arrogance" -- and an offence against God. Their starting point is that the Koran must be interpreted and applied literally. But evidently, any kind of reason-based doubt undermines such an approach to the Koran. As a result, doubt and conjecture are opposed.

I'm not sure why Kuentzel exempts the "natural sciences," but let's see what else follows:

For Islamist academics, the term "Western imperialism" refers not so much to economic aggression, but first and foremost to an "intellectual invasion" of the world of Islam. In the words of the Islamist Syed al-Attas, "The contemporary challenge of Western civilization . . . is the challenge of knowledge . . . which promotes scepticism, which has elevated doubt and conjecture to 'scientific status' in its methodology." The primary goal of academic Islamism is to "de-westernize" the sciences, i.e. to free them from the principles of doubt and conjecture.

So far, Kuentzel is talking about Islamism generally, not specifically Shi'ite Islamism, for he quotes the Sunni Muslim Syed al-Attas (Syed M. N. al-Attas, cited by Bassam Tibi, Islamischer Fundamentalismus, moderne Wissenschaft und Technologie (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), page 139). However, Kuentzel supplies evidence that Shi'ite Islamists think similarly:

At Columbia [University] Ahmadinejad clearly articulated his aversion to the Western concepts of "reason" and "reality". According to him science is permitted only to the strict believer: "Science is the light which illuminates the hearts of those who have been selected by the Almighty . . . . Science is the light and scientists must be pure and pious" . . . . Ahmadinejad is here laying down the criteria to be followed in purging the teaching body of Iranian universities.

At the same time Ahmadinejad also showed in [his speech at] Columbia that he defines his notion of "reality" in religious terms. What is real is the message of the Koran, while "material desires place humans against the realities of the world." And so, just as only the "pure and pious" can be a scientist, so only those who have fully subordinated themselves to the Koran can grasp what "reality" truly is. At Columbia Ahmadinejad said: "Corrupted independent human beings resist acceptance of reality and even if they do accept it, they do not obey it."

Now, Kuentzel may be using the term "science" here in the German sense of "Wissenschaft," which is broader than our English use of the term "science," but since "Wissenschaft" would include both the natural and the human 'sciences', then I suspect that for Shi'ite Islamists, using reason to pursue knowledge leads to corrupt knowledge if one is a "Corrupted independent human being," namely, if one is not a Muslim who has submitted reason to Allah's revelation in the Qur'an. At any rate, the denigration of human reason seems to apply pretty broadly for Shi'ites, for Kuentzel suggests that the submission of reason applies in the realm of power as well:

This rejection of human reason also affects how power is understood. The very word Islam means "submission", in the sense of subjection to God. If people cannot achieve knowledge through reason, all the less so are they capable of shaping and determining their own fate. While the secular answer to the question "can people rule themselves" is positive, from an Islamist point of view it is a priori negative: only God is the sovereign, only God can rule via the Caliphate. To sum up: the second characteristic of the new religious war is its goal: the replacement of individual and social self-determination by a sharia dictatorship.

I wish that Kuentzel had cited Shi'ites other than Ahmadinejad, but from my own, broader reading, I think that Kuentzel is probably right.

And if Pope Benedict XVI is correct in his Regensburg address on "Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections," then not merely Islamism but Islam itself has profound doubts about human reason.

"The pontiff will call for terrorists to convert to Christianity"!

Pope Benedict XVI

Apostolic Journey to the US 2008

(Image from Christ Our Hope)

Or so The Telegraph has recently reported.

Calling for Bin Laden to repent, turn to Christ, and enter the Church would constitute a rather provocative act for even this Pope . . . but what does Pope Benedict actually plan to say?

When we read further and find the actual words that the Pope intends to utter in his prayer at Ground Zero, the spot where the World Trade Towers once stood, nothing quite so provocative is planned:

"Turn to Your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred."

What I explicitly read is the Pope praying for God to turn the hearts of terrorists away from hatred and toward love, but for Malcolm Moore, "Pope will pray for terrorists at Ground Zero," (The Telegraph, April 14, 2008), apparently, this amounts to an obvious, provocative call for the conversion of Islamist terrorists to Christianity, a call that will inflame the Muslim world:

The prayer is likely to further incense the Muslim world, which has already attacked the Pope for publicly converting Magdi Allam, a journalist and one of Italy's most high-profile Muslims, at Easter.

Likely? I find this unlikely. If the Pope's innocuous prayer will "incense the Muslim world," then what wouldn't enrage 'Muslims'? I don't expect the Muslim world to take much notice of the Pope's prayer, and I suspect that Mr. Moore was simply trying to drum up interest in his own journalism. But don't take my word for this. Read the prayer in its entirety:

"Pope will also pray terrorists 'turn to the way of love'," Catholic News Agency (April 12, 2008)

Nothing there that explicitly calls for terrorists to convert to Christianity. What about implicitly? On that, Mr. Moore has a point, and if one reads between the lines, then -- speaking theologically -- the Pope will be doing precisely what the reporter claims, namely, calling for Islamist terrorists to convert to the true faith.

Why?

Because that's the operative distinction between these two world religions: Islam demands the way of submission; Christianity offers the way of love. That's surely how the Pope sees things. I can't precisely quote this pontiff on that, but I have no doubt that he holds these views.

The reporter for The Telegraph therefore understood the Pope too well, but I don't expect Muslims to do so.

Blumenberg on Curiositas in the Catalog of vices: The Danger of a Voluntarist God

Karl Barth (1886-1968)

Defending a voluntaristic God?

(Not in the Image of God from Wikipedia)

In the concluding paragraph to his chapter titled "Curiosity Is Enrolled in the Catalog of Vices," Hans Blumenberg noted that God's status as Ruler of the Cosmos embued Him with a voluntarist character that bore implications in a time of somewhat arbitrary imperial power:

To the surrounding Hellenistic world in the time of the Caesars, the right of the Ruler of the World to arbitrariness vis-à-vis His creation could be made plausible more readily than the much more threatening meaning of the supposed miracles as announcements of the revocation of the existence of the world as whole. But just this concealed radicalness stands behind the disputes over the right of curiositas to guarantee itself the future of nature under laws. Dependability, rational constancy, regularity are characteristics of a concept of nature that does not want to admit the world as a metaphysical episode stretched between beginning and end, between creation and destruction. As the behavioral correlate of this concept of nature, with its insistence on man's intra-worldly possibilities, curiositas is definitively entered by Augustine into the catalog of vices. (Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 323)

Thus does Blumenberg position Augustine at a crucial turning point in the development of Christian theology's conception of God's character, for Augustine emphasizes God's arbitrary will. In extreme form, this can pose problems, as Pope Benedict XVI noted in his Regensberg address by citing Theodore Khoury on the example of the Muslim scholar Ibn Hazm:

Theodore Khoury . . . observes [that] . . . 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 Hazm 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. (Pope Benedict XVI, "Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections," University of Regensburg, September 12, 2006)

But the Pope acknowledges that this conception of a totally arbitrary, voluntarist deity was also a danger internal to Christian theology:

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 [of reason] and the Christian spirit [of faith]. 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 Hazm 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. (Pope Benedict XVI, "Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections")

Interestingly, the Pope cites the intellectualism of Augustine. Granted, Augustine was a complex thinker, but from Blumenberg's analysis, Augustine himself bore some degree of responsibility for the Nominalist conception of an arbitrary, voluntarist God.

But I think that the Pope is right in noting some things that preclude Christianity from falling completely into a radical voluntarism:

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 -- "λογικη λατρεία", worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1). (Pope Benedict XVI, "Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections")

The Pope here grounds Christian belief in a rational God on the anthropological-theological concept of a "real analogy" between human beings and God, which in turn is based on the biblical teaching that people are made in the image of God and can therefore trust that the human power of rationality can conceive truths about God. The Pope backs this up by reference to St Paul's thought in Romans 12:1 on God and human worship in harmony with reason, which is even more notable for what the Pope does not explicitly note, that he is also arguing against one influential Protestant tendency in its insistence upon the radical sovereignty of God, a tendency to deny the "real analogy" implied by the biblical teaching of mankind as being "in the image of God." I believe that the Pope is thinking of Karl Barth, who argues in his great commentary, The Epistle to the Romans, that when we stand confronted by God:

[W]e are bound to proclaim the entire absence of every human presupposition. We proclaim that God is free. The Gospel is the glad tidings, precisely because all human conjunctions and adjustments and presuppositions -- however transcendentally conceived of -- are there confronted by the sovereignty of God . . . . [W]e are concerned only with obedience . . . . Obedience means that there is encountered in the known man of this world a vacuum, a place of irruption, where the new [saved] man is able to breathe and move. Obedience is the sense for the specific peculiarity of the Divine and for the Wholly-Other-ness of God, the King, the Monarch, the Despot. (Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, translated from the sixth edition by Edwyn C. Hoskyns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), page 386)

One has to place this glorification of a God who is wholly other than mankind in the context of its times, for Barth was writing these words within earshot of battles being waged during the First World War, whose terrible toll on Europe destroyed belief in so many things, Christian faith among them, and Barth's theology is merely one step short of the agnosticism that much of his generation stumbled into from that war.

But beyond the specific circumstances of his time, Barth's appeal to a wholly-other God demonstrates that the Islamic option of the radically voluntarist deity remains ever a temptation in the unstable Christian coalition of reason and faith.

J.P. Moreland: "Fighting 'Bibliolatry' at the Evangelical Theological Society"

J.P. Moreland

Fighting 'Bibliolatry'

(Image from Wikipedia)

Ted Olsen, an editor at Christianity Today, is attending a meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) being held in San Diego, and he reports on a talk by the philosopher J. P. Moreland:

"Postcard from San Diego: Fighting 'Bibliolatry' at the Evangelical Theological Society: Talbot's J.P. Moreland warns that evangelicals are 'over-committed to the Bible.'" (Christianity Today, November 14, 2007)

The ETS is the organization that Francis Beckwith used to head before he returned to Catholicism, after which, he had to step down from his position as its president. The issue was related to the ETS's membership requirements:

ETS membership has only two doctrinal requirements: you must affirm the Trinity and the inerrancy of Scripture.

The latter requirement posed the problem, apparently. Be that as it may, I find interesting that the ETS requires members to affirm the Trinity, which implies that for them, it's something additional to scripture. Of course, Trinitarianism is orthodox Christian theology, but how does the ETS ground it on the narrow foundation of Scriptural inerrancy? I'm asking in ignorance and perhaps conflating two different issues, i.e., inerrancy of the Bible and sources of theology. Possibly, the ETS insists on biblical inerrancy but allows for other sources of theological truth.

Yet, one of Moreland's points seems to be that the ETS, or perhaps Evangelicals more broadly, exclude any authority outside of scripture:

The problem, he said, is "the idea that the Bible is the sole source of knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole authority for faith and practice."

Which returns us to the problem that I noted. The Trinity is never mentioned in the Bible. Now, I don't doubt that the ETS has a response, for there are a lot of learned and intelligent people in it, including William Lane Craig, but the concept of the Trinity draws on the Greek philosophical tradition and would not make sense (assuming that it does make sense) outside of that tradition.

This sort of thing is what Pope Benedict XVI was referring to in his Regensberg talk as the two streams that join in the Christian tradition, namely, Jewish spirituality and Greek rationality. Readers will recall that I analyzed the Pope's address as being more critical of Protestant 'dehellenization' than of Islam. Well, Moreland could have been channeling the Pope on this in one of the points that he made:

"The sparse landscape of evangelical political thought stands in stark contrast to the overflowing garden both of evangelical biblical scholarship and Catholic reflection on reason, general revelation, and cultural and political engagement," he said. "We evangelicals could learn a lesson or two from our Catholic friends."

That wasn't as provocative a statement coming a few months after the ETS president became one of those "Catholic friends." Catholicism is on the agenda here, and Catholics are both implicitly and explicitly discussed in the meeting's many discussions of justification. But Catholicism doesn’t seem to be the "new open theism" at ETS.

By "open theism," Olson is referring to an ETS controversy of a few years back over God's omniscience, in which some evangelical theologians limited God's knowledge based on biblical passages that seem to show God looking for information or changing His mind. Apparently, the "Catholic issue" is not a hot button one:

No, more provocative was Moreland's argument about why evangelicals became over-committed to the Bible. Rather than developing a robust epistemology in response to secularism, he said, evangelicals reacted and retreated. Now evangelical theologians aren't allowed to come to any new conclusions about the truths in Scripture, and they're not allowed to find truths outside of Scripture. As a result, he said, they're engaged in "private language games and increasingly detailed minutia" and "we're not seeing work on broad cultural themes."

Interesting, at least for me. Too bad that Moreland's paper isn't (yet?) online.