Different Understandings of God's Nature

Here is the portion of Benedict XVI's speech at Regensburg concerning Islam:

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by professor Theodore Khoury (Muenster) 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 probably 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 the responses of the learned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Koran, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship of the "three Laws": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran.

In this lecture I would like to discuss only one point -- itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself -- 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 ("diálesis" -- controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that sura 2:256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." It 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 Koran, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels," he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "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 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 is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably ("syn logo") 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 practice idolatry.

Here then, the Pope illustrates a fundamental difference between Christianity and Islam, and it is very interesting to see how this has been reflected in the reaction of the "Muslim street." Whereas Christians respond to statements deemed to be anti-Christian with argument (if they see fit to respond at all) and any violence or the threat of violence is condemned, the first reaction of the Muslim world is to riot, firebomb churches, kill nuns and threaten the Pope himself with violence. This same thing was also evident in the Danish cartoon controversy, when the first reaction of Muslims was to riot and threaten death to anyone who published the cartoons, as opposed to explaining why the cartoons were a slander against Islam and Mohammed in particular.

It seems to me that difference between the Christian understanding of God's nature and Islam's is at the root of the differences between Christian and Muslim reaction to perceived insults. For both the Christian and the Muslim, God is the source of all truth. However, the similarities end there. For the Christian, God is inherently rational, His creation reflects that rationality, and reason is His gift to man- whom He has created in His image and likeness- so that he may come to know the truth. For the Muslim, God is entirely transcendant, and it is thus impossible to know the truth, save by divine revelation. Because of this, it falls upon any given Muslim to defend his faith by whatever means is at his disposal. If he can answer a criticism of Islam or overcome an argument against it by force of reason, he may certainly do so, but if that is not an option for him, it is justified to oppose the criticism or argument with violence because it must necessarily be sophistry, and thus a threat to those Muslims who might be tempted away from Islam by it. However, such behavior also casts severe doubt on Islam's claims to the truth in the eyes of rationalists.