The theological underpinnings of moral outrage

[mdlbear]

Here is a link, thanks to andyheninger, to the Pope's recent and controversial speech. The relevant passage is:

This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

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 (F×< 8`(T) 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 practise idolatry.

Now, this is a pretty obscure reference, in a speech the main point of which is that Christian theology has a place in the university -- among the sciences, no less -- because it is based on rationality. I'll get back to that.

But at this point, it seems to me that the Pope could have picked any of a huge number of quotations to illustrate his main point, and that he may well have selected this one because it made a secondary argument "against violent conversion." I'll gladly give him credit for that much subtlety. But if he's that subtle and intelligent, he must have known how Muslim extremists view any kind of criticism of the Prophet.

It does little good, after setting up a bright red light in front of an angry bull, to argue that red is an internationally-known stop signal. The bull is going to see red, and charge ahead anyway.

The Pope goes on and returns to this same dialog in his conclusion:

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

...to say that it "doesn't reflect his personal feelings" seems ingenuous at best -- the passage is central to his whole argument.

But it's an earlier part of the speech with which I, for my part, most strongly take issue:

I will return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology’s claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.

I am not a religious person, and I reject the Pope's implication that, because I do not believe in a deity -- any deity, but of course he means his deity in particular -- I am incapable of behaving ethically and indeed of developing a system of ethics. I reject his implication (and he's stated it explicitly on other occasions) that morality -- his morality -- is absolute and universal, and not culturally based. That there is some rational, provable basis on which to conclude that the Pope gets his ethics directly from God.

I disagree with the Muslim fundamentalists both in their motives and their methods, but I have considerable sympathy with their sense of moral outrage. They're not the only ones to have their beliefs insulted in this speech.

Comments

I didn't vote for him, either

[capplor.livejournal.com]

.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

*wryly* Speaking as someone who teaches it, I don't think ethics is a science. But I don't think that's saying anything bad about ethics. "Science" doesn't mean "everything worth studying." It applies to a particular set of problems that we can investigate in particular ways. Ethics is not open to investigation in that manner - but that doesn't mean that everything is up for grabs and you can do anything ethically.

I'm a weak objectivist; I do think there are things that are always wrong. But I'm not a theological objectivist (and I may well be wrong about *which* things are wrong. *grin*)

[mdlbear]

"'Science' doesn't mean 'everything worth studying'"

All very true -- math and philosophy fall well outside the sciences, as do music and computer science (any field that has to put "science" in its name, probably isn't). Come to think of it, that works both ways -- science was once called "natural philosophy", distinguishing it from real philosophy.

It's the recognition that one might be wrong that makes it possible to have a rational discussion about ethics.

[patoadam]

I find the Pope's speech boring. The world would be a calmer place if everybody did.

[mdlbear]

*chuckle*

[thefrugalgamer.livejournal.com]

You are probably right that the Pope should have realized that quoting this passage would generate a controversy. On the other hand, as a Cardinal, he must have given thousands of speaches like this (he was chief theologian to the Catholic Church), and this was a pretty dry setting. I'm willing to bet that he hadn't yet come to real grips that as Pope, anything and everything he says, even in dry academic circles, is going to be scrutinized and offence will be taken to any preceived slight. On the other hand, the bureaucracy should have caught this one: stuff like this is what they're supposed to be good at. Substantively, I tend to agree with him: Islam has to give up the sword.

Anyway, to your main point, for many religious people, morality/ethics are themselves a manifestation of God's will, and God is the source of all morality and of ethics. Isn't this the lesson of Abraham offering Isaac up for sacrifice? If there's any deviation between one's own perception of morality or ethicallity and the injunction of God, then it is one's perception that must be adjusted. This is, of course, the attitude that allows for suicide bombers and the slaughter of innocents. The milder form of it is what you're preceiving. They simply cannot contemplate any form of morality based on anything other than God's edicts.

As a (I hope) thinking, believing person, I think that they have the cart before the horse. Our sense of morality, ethics and justice is one of the greatest gifts of God, and it is in our understanding of these aspects of ourselves that leads us to God. If God appears to "violate" our innate sense of ethics/morality/justice, then we have to be doubly careful, because someone is probably attempting to manipulate us into using God as an excuse to pursue his own ends. This is where you might have a problem with MY view as opposed to the Pope's. He thinks you can't have a rational sense of ethics without basing it on God's pronouncements. I think that your sense of ethics is an innate gift of God, and of course you develop your own sense of ethics. Of course, you probably don't care what I or the Pope thinks. (grin)

[mdlbear]

I have no complaint against people who believe that their sense of morality, ethics, and justice came from God. The problem comes when they take the next step and believe that everyone else has to come to the same conclusions because it all came from the same deity -- theirs, of course -- and that they need to make everybody else follow their beliefs, by law or if necessary by force.

Oddly, the ones who don't find it necessary to use force all seem to believe that someday, everyone all over the world will be convinced in the rightness of their beliefs, and their religion will triumph because it's *true*. All but at most one of them are wrong, but that doesn't seem to bother them.

Actually, I care a great deal more about what you think than about what the Pope thinks; I might feel differently if he were commenting in my LJ. [grin]