Fallit igen

Politiken er for morsom: nu leder man igen efter virkeligheden, men kan ikke finde den:

Forholdet mellem religion og rationalitet og især [min fremhævelse] religionens forhold til vold var temaet for pave Benedikt XVI’s foredrag på et tysk universitet i sidste uge.

Alt andet lige er det en væsentlig overdrivelse, der overhovedet ikke fremmer forståelsen af emnet: en sådan fremstilling gør ikke paven ære - og i denne sag må jeg sgu tage hatten af for om ikke hans person og hans hykleri så i det mindste indholdet af talen.

Talen handler ikke om forholdet mellem religion og især vold de herrer! -: misforstået og 03 til redaktionen i tekstforståelse!

Talen handler om forholdet mellem fornuft (i sokratisk/platonisk forstand: Logos) og religion, hvoraf Kristendommen ifølge paven står i pagt med fornuften, mens Islam fremstilles modsat!

Paven fremstiller simpelthen med sit eksempel Islam som en religion, der transcenderer fornuften, hvorimod han i resten af talen argumenterer for Kristendommens allerede tidlige "ægteskab" med den græske filosofi!

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) 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 presumably 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 those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - 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 (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this 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 Qur'an, concerning holy war. 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. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably.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 practise idolatry.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 [word?] ". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts 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.

Og det allerbedste her er jo, at paven har en klokkeklar pointe! Lad mig bare elaborere: Judæa var under hellensk kulturel indflydelse fra og med Alexander den store allerede godt 300 år før Jesus. Naturligvis er kristendommen under kraftig indflydelse af græsk filosofi - og især græsk mystik afledt af platonismen. Der er mange lighedspunkter mellem Sokrates og Jesus virke og liv. Det nye testamente er radikalt anderledes end Toraen i både gudsforståelse og moralisme.

Imidlertid bliver kristendommen kapret af en ignorant, som til og med er analfabet, hvis mission bliver at tæmme ørkenkrigere for at gennemtvinge sin vilje - der primært består i hævn! Der er vel ikke noget at sige til, at Islam bliver en irrationel religion?

The complete irony being: ignorantens (Muhammeds) arvtagere er så velbevandrede udi idioti, at de næppe opdager den egentlige provokation - dybt forankret i både nutid og fortid og til stadighed illustreret af islamisternes egen selviscenesættelse - paven her stanger ud.

Man kan altså ikke beskylde paven for bevidst at ville provokere [...]

I det hele lederens forudgående ræsonnement til fordel for den "konklusion" er forfejlet (uden basis i teksten), og fordi paven faktisk gør meget mere end bare at citere, ja så må jeg sige, at hvis ikke det er en bevidst provokation, så er paven dummere end talen tillader mig at tro, at han er!

Det er foruroligende, hvis den katolske kirkes nyvalgte overhoved, som påstår, at dialogen er hans egentlige ærinde, ikke har erkendt, at en dialog mellem religionerne kun er mulig, hvis religionerne er i stand til at udøve selvkritik.

Hvad der til stadighed er foruroligende er Politikens elendige redaktion, hvor selvkritik er en by i Rusland: at dosere medicin, man ikke selv vil tage, er suspekt mine herrer! Enhver dialog uden udgangspunkt i virkeligheden er komplet og aldeles spild af tid - akkurat som Politikens ledende prut!

I den sammenhæng skulle de historiske eksempler og erfaringer gerne bruges til at blive klogere af, ikke til at gentage historiens dumheder.

Og det kræver naturligvis først og fremmest, at man kan læse og forstå, men i den henseende er Politiken og islamisterne tilsyneladende pot og pande...

Og så bare lige for the record: Nej, jeg anser ikke kristendommen for at være rationel, men jeg medgiver gerne paven, at han har bedre kort på hånden end Muhammeds poltergeist...

Per