Last week on September 12th pope Benedict XVI gave a speech at his old school, the University of Regensburg in Germany. It was about how reason without faith is a dead end and so theology has an important part to play in the West’s search for the truth.
One small part made news around the world:
Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.
These are not the pope’s own words: he is quoting Manuel II Paleologus, one of the last Byzantine rulers. The Muslim Turks at the time were taking over his country and destroying it.
The pope did not quote Manuel II as if he agreed with him. In fact he said he even found it surprising.
This led to protests all over the Muslim world and demands that the pope take back his words. Some boneheads have even threatened violence against Christians. So far one nun has been killed and seven churches have been attacked in Muslim lands. That will show the pope that Islam is not a violent religion!
On Sunday the pope did not take back his words but said he regretted that some took them the wrong way.
To be fair, the speech left it as an open question whether Islam is a violent religion. But it was not about that.
What the pope’s speech was really about:
Theology is not merely about why Christians or Muslims or Jews believe as they do. Rather it should be part of the West’s search for the truth, as it once was.
The marriage between Christianity and Greek philosophy was not a matter of chance but something God intended. It was a great step forward in mankind’s search for truth. But now the West has lost its way for two reasons:
- Protestants and others, in search of “pure” Christianity, have removed the Greek elements in Christian thought. They call them “accretions”: since they were not an original part of the Christian faith, they are not part of the pure and true faith. But this has only shrunken our understanding of Christianity.
- Science, while it has greatly increased our understanding of the world, at the very same time it has greatly shrunken our understanding of what truth is. It has come to be little more than whatever science can prove. But science, by its very nature, cannot prove anything about God or right and wrong. We are much the poorer for it.
Yet even science, in what it assumes about the world, points beyond itself. For example, it assumes that the reason built into our minds is the same reason the universe was built on. Why? How? It is not something evolution can answer without talking in circles. Only theology can answer that.
See also:
Abagond 
Very true. Lately, for some reason, theology has had a strange pull one me. And its probably the subject that interests me the most.
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