After all of the hullabaloo over Pope Benedict’s speech in Germany, I am wondering how many people bothered to read it and attempt to understand what he was saying. At minimum, in my opinion, the Pope’s speech was a brilliant challenge to both Western secularism and Islamic extremism. But, the fascinating thing is that his central thesis has to do with the relationship between faith and reason. How could such an arcane subject cause such a world-wide firestorm? Well, allow me to paste in a portion of the Pope’s speech. This will make this post long, but it is worth reading. I will then make my own summary comments following the Pope’s words and attempt to show why his insights are so important.

Portions of Pope Benedict’s Speech

“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. … 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.

In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which ultimately led to the claim that we can only know God's "voluntas ordinata." Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done.

This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions.

As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language (cf. Lateran IV).

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 "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Ephesians 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is logos. Consequently, Christian worship is "logic latreía" -- worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Romans 12:1)."

My Summary

The way I would explain the Pope’s comments is to start with the following insight. If God dwells in a realm of transcendent volunteerism (unfettered free will), then there is no real relationship between faith and reason. What Muslims, some other religions and some Protestants believe is that God is not bound by anything whatsoever. His decisions, if He so chose, could be completely arbitrary and make no sense to us because He is understood to be utterly free to do anything He chooses. Such a view of God slashes in two the connection between what seems reasonable and what is of faith. Consequently, Muslim extremists, in an act of faithful obedience, can blow innocent women and children to smithereens while our human reason reels in disbelief because it seems to violate everything that seems just and right. The Muslim extremist, however, responds by saying that the only thing that counts is obedience to God’s will and God wills that infidels are killed. If Allah wills that adultery is good, then adultery is to be done.

As the Pope pointed out in his lecture, the central issue for Christians is the following, “The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.” Christians, since before Augustine have understood that ethics, faith and reason are all lodged in the very nature of God. Therefore, blowing innocent women and children up for religious reasons is wrong because it violates His nature. It is also contrary to reason because God has constructed the world to reflect His nature. The moral laws of nature are simply a description of how God has made things to be. Evil is evil not because God has arbitrarily said some things are good and other things are bad. Rather, God’s nature is His goodness. Evil is wrong because it is contrary to God’s very nature. Furthermore, man, as part of nature, has been designed by God to operate in harmony with His goodness. The fact that men fail to act in harmony with God’s nature does not change this. Therefore, faith and reason are two sides of the same coin.

The Pope’s comments challenge Western secularism because it has elevated human reason to the exclusion of faith. His comments challenge Islam because it denigrates human reason to a faith that views God as utterly sovereign and ultimately arbitrary. The Pope also challenges Christians to hold faith and reason together as bound up in God’s very nature.

Christian environmentalism along with the African AIDs problem are the issues du jour for evangelicals. For instance, in Probe ministries excellent website, www.leaderu.com, Dr. Ray Bohlin writes:

“The church has failed in its mission of steward of the earth. We have spoken out loudly against the materialism of science as expressed in the issues of abortion, human dignity, evolution, and genetic engineering, but have shown ourselves to be little more than materialists in our technological orientation towards nature… By failing to fulfill our responsibilities to the earth, we are losing a great evangelistic opportunity. Many in our society are seeking an improved environment, yet they think that most Christians don't care about ecological issues and that most churches offer no opportunity for involvement.”

In short, Dr. Bohlin believes Evangelicals have failed as stewards of the earth and if we would change our ways we could have a greater evangelistic impact.

Dr. Bohlin goes on to say: “While God intended us to live in harmony with nature, we have more often than not been at odds with nature…For instance, builders know that it is faster and more cost effective to bulldoze trees that are growing on the site of a proposed subdivision than it is to build the houses around them. Even if the uprooted trees are replaced with saplings once the houses are constructed, the loss of the mature trees enhances erosion, eliminates a means of absorbing pollutants, producing oxygen, and providing shade, and produces a scar that heals slowly if at all.”

I might note here briefly, that when Dr. Bohlin says that “we have more often than not been at odds with nature,” I would make the point that nature has more often been the aggressor and humans have been the victims of nature’s “natural” activity (i.e. the Indonesian tsunami and Katrina come to mind).

But what about Dr. Bohlin’s claim that we have been bulldozing trees rather than building around trees. First, Dr. Bohlin has obviously not been in the construction industry nor has he talked with his pioneering ancestors. I would challenge him to attempt to build even a small community with such an approach. Secondly, reforestation not deforestation is the rule of the day in industrialized countries. Here is some information you won’t get in your newspaper.

Reforestation: (Source: “Forests: Conflicting Signals,” by Roger A. Sedjo, January 1, 1995 http://www.cei.org/gencon/025,01438.cfm)

“Although the United States has been the world’s number one timber producer since World War II, U.S. forests have experienced an increase in volume in the past fifty years and have maintained roughly the same area over the past seventy-five years…The total area of forest and other wooded land in Europe increased by 2 million hectares annually between 1980 and 1990…The total forest area of the temperate region’s industrialized countries increased between 1980 and 1990…During 1993, an estimated 4 million trees were planted in the United States each day…The forest biomass in the northern Rockies has increased by 30 percent or more since the middle of the eighteenth century.”

The bottom line seems to be that countries deforest to gather land for agriculture and as economic prosperity increases a stasis develops and then reforestation follows. Roger Sedjo puts it this way:

“The developed countries in the temperate regions appear to have largely completed forestland conversion to agriculture and have achieved relative land use stability. By contrast, the developing countries in the tropics are still in a land conversion mode. This suggests that land conversion stability correlates strongly with successful economic development.”

Here is my point, Evangelicals need to be careful about coming across with an attitude that appears to developing countries like a “we got ours, now we’re going to keep you from getting yours.” The industrialized West has already sewn massive misery in the world with our insistence on a ban against DDT. Literally, millions of people die each year from malaria that need not, all because our insane and unscientific restrictions against DDT.

St. Augustine said (QQ. 83, qu. 30): “All things that were made were made for man’s use, because reason with which man is endowed uses all things by its judgment of them.” The point Augustine was making is that we were not made for the environment; the environment was made for us. Just as the Sabbath was made for man as a blessing and to enhance human life, so the earth and all things in it were made to be a blessing to mankind.

The headline screamed, “Scientists counter Bush view, Families varied, say anthropologists, by Charles Burress, SF Chronicle Staff Writer, Friday, February 27, 2004.

The article read in part, "The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution," said the executive board of the 11,000-member American Anthropological Association…The statement was proposed by Dan Segal, a professor of anthropology and history from Pitzer College in Claremont (Los Angeles County), who called Bush's conception of the history of marriage "patently false."…Segal pointed to "sanctified same-sex unions in the fourth century in Christianity" and to the Greeks and Romans applying the concept of marriage to same-sex couples, not to mention the Native American berdache tradition in which males married males.”

Now Some Sanity

Christianity NEVER sanctified homosexual unions; this is a complete and utter falsehood. The Greeks and the Romans were accepting of homosexuality, but NEVER considered marriage as other than heterosexual (see: http://www.classicsunveiled.com/romel/html/marrcustwom.html). The Native Americans were not part of Western Civilization.

So much for these "scientists.”

If your local pastor were to call for a press conference and make some comparatively outrageous and erroneous statements I can pretty much guarantee what the media would do. There would be no end to the catcalls, gales of laughter and editorials about how ignorant and misinformed the “Christian Right” is. At a minimum the local reporters would do a little checking of the facts. Not, however, with the American Anthropological Association. The above story ran nationally in 2004.

The audacity of Dr. Segal to claim that Christianity “sanctified” homosexual unions in the 4th century is, frankly, nearly blasphemous. Christianity has always held to the scriptural view that homosexuality is a deeply disordered evil. That is until recently. Now in North America 60’s radicals have captured some of the mainline Protestant denominations and are “blessing” homosexual unions. But, can you imagine St. Augustine going along with such nonsense? Of course you can’t.

Here is the point. Radicals are doing the same thing to the soft sciences that they did to mainline Protestant denominations—perverting the truth.

2 Thess. 2:10-11 They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie

What would life be without friends? Friends are helpful, fun and stimulating. They can also be frustrating, maddening and disloyal. Yet, in balance, very few of us would want to go through life without friends. Life would be awfully lonely without them.

My question today, though, is what is God’s highest and best purpose for our friendships? Well, as we have discussed before the great purpose of this life is to attain imperfect happiness which is found in loving God and living an excellent (virtuous) life. An excellent life is expressed in doing the “good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:10).

When St. Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians he ends it by mentioning a few of his friends. Two women that he lists were having a problem of some sort with each other. He pleads with them to be reconciled and asks other mutual friends to intervene and help the disgruntled gals. What I want you to see in this little passage below is how Paul addresses his friends. Note what he says.

Phil 4:2-3 I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord. 3 Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.

Paul uses words like “yokefellow” and “fellow workers” and writes that they are those “who have contended at my side.” These are all ways of talking about friends that we would be unlikely to use if we were writing about our friends. We might say that our friend has a “great sense of humor” or is my “scrape booking buddy.” Why does Paul use these kinds of words?

I think the reason Paul called his friends “fellow workers” and such, is that his friendships had a higher purpose than just providing him with companionship, comfort and delight. I think that Paul knew that his highest delight and comfort came from God and, though, he loved his friends, they were working together for a common and great purpose. If, for instance, imperfect happiness is found in loving God and doing the good works that He has for us, then it would seem reasonable that the best purpose for our friendships is that they assist us in these things. It seems reasonable that we would then find opportunity to do good to our friends; that we would delight in seeing them do good; and that we would be helped by them in God’s good works.

In this understanding of friendship, whether it is in the active pursuit of doing God’s work through our lives or in the contemplation and love of God, friends will play a key role in assisting us to find imperfect happiness in life. Together with our friends we will become what God desires for us to be. However, if our friends are only there to comfort us, provide us with companionship and delight, it is unlikely that we will find God’s imperfect happiness in this life.

In heaven, however, we will find perfect happiness in God Himself. What then will happen to our friendships? What role could companionship play in heaven when we have God? I would suggest that our friendships in heaven will be like icing on a cake. They will induce a wonderful sense of completion and well-being to our ultimate happiness. Augustine said about our friendships in heaven that, “…perhaps it is only by this that they see one another and rejoice in God, at their fellowship.” In other words, though we won’t need anything else but God in heaven, our joy and delight will be made fuller as we see one another rejoicing in His majesty.

Pope Benedict XVI set off a firestorm of controversy throughout the world by quoting a medieval dialogue between a Byzantine Emperor and a Persian philosopher in which the Emperor asked the question if Islam has brought anything to the table other than that which is evil and inhumane. The Pope did not endorse or reject the quote but used it as a springboard for his talk on the relationship between faith and reason. One of Benedict’s key points was that coercion and violence in the name of religion is a violation of nature and of God Himself.

Throughout the Muslim world many political leaders denounced the Pope charging him with everything from insensitivity to ignorance to hatred. As a way of proving that Muslims are not inhumane or evil, churches were firebombed in Israel and an Italian nun working in a hospital in Somalia, Sister Leonella, 65, was shot in the back four times by pistol-wielding attackers. Her bodyguard was also killed. She had just finished training medics to be able to serve the poor and retched people of Somalia who have been brutalized by civil war.

One, of course, could make the case that the firebombings, killings and riots taking place throughout the Muslim “world” were isolated incidents. Unfortunately, this seems hard to square with the unified voice of Muslim political leaders denouncing the Pope from such far-flung countries as Turkey, Egypt, Somalia, Iran and Indonesia. These were the political leaders. Certainly, the religious leaders of Islam had plenty to say about the Pope; however, what was most interesting was the unanimous denunciation of those in the seats of power.

Imagine for a second if the situation was reversed. What would Western political leaders do if an Islamic religious leader quoted a medieval source that said that Christianity is inhumane and evil. Well, actually they would do absolutely nothing. The fact is, Muslim religious leaders all over the world consistently say the most outrageous things imaginable about Christianity. The Western media and our political leaders do not even notice. Additionally, when Muslim governments engage in cruel acts of genocide against their own Christian populations such as in the Sudan, it literally takes a huge private effort by Christians and humanitarian organizations to get our politicians to put the slightest pressure on such unjust governments.

The point is that there is a gigantic disconnect in Western thinking between what we see right in front of our noses and what we think we see. The Pope read a source that said Islam is inhumane and evil. Muslims immediately sprung into action name-calling, rioting, killing and firebombing. They also threatened to continue the mayhem unless the Pope apologized for saying the obvious. Now, to people in their right mind, it would be clear that Islam, unfortunately, has often expressed itself in evil and inhumane ways which has been visibly demonstrated by its adherents this week. However, Westerners are not yet in their right mind. We continue to live in Alice in Wonderland’s upside down world. However, I have every confidence that Muslim extremists will finally be able to convince even the most noodle-headed Westerner that Islam, if not controlled by its better angels, can express itself in evil and inhumanity.

Until that time, please note the irony of Muslim assassins shooting a 65 year old Christian nun in the back who was working with some of the poorest Muslim people in the world, training them to be medics in order to relieve their suffering. The Muslim assassins were upset that the Pope read a medieval source that indicated that Islam has inhumane and evil tendencies.