The Pope’s Other Shoe

Reason without Faith ain’t pretty either

Pope Benedict XVI caused a bit of a stir recently when he quoted a few words from a medieval potentate regarding the efficacy of Mohammed’s aggressive proselytizing efforts. The comments were made in the course of a lengthy disquisition on the dangers of pursuing Faith untempered by Reason, and of pursuing Reason untempered by Faith. The tendency towards violence alluded to by his comment was meant as an illustration of what can happen when Faith is allowed to go romping about unconstrained by Reason. And the response he received from the usual quarters of the Islamic world proved the point nicely.

Many have written about this contrived controversy, and I will not attempt to add to the pile-on, except to say that the Pope was right in what he said, and right to say it out loud.

I would rather focus on the Pope’s other shoe. You know, the one that didn’t drop. Well, it actually did drop, but it didn’t make any front pages across the world. Benedict XVI (or B16, as cool Catholics call him) starts from the traditional Catholic (and to a large extent Christian) position that God has invested human beings with the faculties of both Faith and Reason. They are different aspects of our nature which allow us to understand ourselves, our world, and even God from differing perspectives. It is crucial that we use both Faith and Reason, that we link them together, in order to achieve humane, just and happy results. Together they produce a true (not secular) humanism.

When one starts from this position, the world cultures rather quickly sort themselves out into three categories: Those which reject reason while embracing faith, those which reject faith while embracing reason, and those which embrace and seek to synthesize the two. Those who reject reason obviously include chunks of fundamentalist Islam. It is interesting to note that in my opinion it also includes a good chunk of the whacky left, which may help to explain their otherwise inexplicable affinity for gay-stoning, women-beating tribal Islamofascists. So as to keep it ecumenical, we should note that application of faith without reason can reasonably be blamed for many of the violent horrors perpetrated in the name of Christianity over the years.

What of the other extreme? What of a culture which exercises Reason unconstrained by Faith? This is actually where the great majority of the Pope’s speech was focused, and particularly on the critical role of academe in ensuring that faith doesn’t get tossed overboard. In Pope Benedict’s view, the twin towers of the modern Christian tradition – ancient Greece and ancient Israel, Reason and Faith – are not an artifact of history, they are the absolutely critical defining aspects of modern Western civilization.

To exclude either one or the other from the academic, intellectual, scientific, philosophic or religious framework is to cheat ourselves of half our firepower. This passage (available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html – neat thing that Internet) sums it up in a manner reminiscent of C.S. Lewis:

If science as a whole is this [reason devoid of faith] and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origins and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by “science.”

In the context of the modern age, in which it is essential for remarkably differing religions and cultures to talk sensibly with each other, we face a significant obstacle. An obstacle made worse by the slavish devotion to multiculturalism by ignorant academics, bureaucrats and NGOs. We have an Islamic culture unwilling to speak the language of reason, and we have a Western intellectual culture unwilling to speak the language of faith. To quote again: “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.”

I think the Pope is right on the money with this. How can we expect our secular and intellectual elites to come to grips with the nature of our foe – never mind to converse with him – when they have removed the entire categories of faith, religion and ethics from their intellectual tool kits? No wonder so many in the west seem to have a deer-in-the-headlights look as they try to understand Islam.

The Pope’s couple of lines from Manual II Paleologus got all the attention. But it wasn’t what mattered most about this speech. What mattered most was his challenge to the intellectual West to illuminate reason with faith. Humane science and any hope for cross-cultural dialogue demand it.

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