Annonce

**morjane** · 16 septembre 2006, 17h36

Discours de Benoît XVI aux représentants de la science à l’université de Ratisbonne (extraits)

Ratisbonne, le mardi 12 septembre 2006
Source : site du Vatican

***

Faith, Reason and the University
Memories and Reflections

Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. 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.
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 8`(@H". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, F×< 8`(T, 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.

**morjane** · 16 septembre 2006, 17h38

In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply declares "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.
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, in its later developments, 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 - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language.

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, as Saint Paul says,"transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul - "8@(46¬ 8"JD,\"", worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).
This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.
The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.

Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.

**morjane** · 16 septembre 2006, 17h38

The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue, and I do not intend to repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization. Harnack's central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw it, restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology.

On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.

This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.
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.
Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.

**Bachi** · 16 septembre 2006, 18h43

« Ne pas agir selon la raison s’oppose à l’être de Dieu »

Cela dépend comment on définit Dieu, quelle idée on s'en fait...
Pour le pape, ça devrait couler de source, une lapalissade: il n'y a de raison qu'en Dieu, n'est-il pas le détenteur de toutes les vérités.

[l’empereur déclare] : « Dieu ne prend pas plaisir au sang, et ne pas agir de manière raisonnable est en contradiction avec la nature de Dieu. La foi est un fruit de l’âme, non du corps. (…) Pour convaincre une âme raisonnable, on n’a pas besoin de son bras, pas d’instrument pour frapper, ni d’aucun autre moyen avec lequel on puisse menacer quelqu’un de mort. »

Idem pour lempereur, mais il ajoute sa vérité concernant la foi. Une vérité absolument cohérente, selon moi.

Dieu est absolument transcendant ; sa volonté ne dépend d’aucune de nos catégories, même pas celles de la raison. Khoury cite à l’appui une étude du célèbre islamologue français R. Arnaldez, qui affirme qu’Ibn Hasn va jusqu’à dire que Dieu n’est même pas lié par sa propre parole et que rien ne lui fait obligation de nous révéler la vérité. Si tel était son vouloir, l’homme devrait même se livrer à l’idolâtrie.

Voilà qui est encore plus logique. Qui dépasse les sentiers battus: "Dieu veut ci, veut ça" . Alors que tous s'entendent pour dire que Dieu est omnipotent.

Ici s’effectue une bifurcation dans la compréhension de Dieu et dans la réalisation de la religion, qui nous interpelle directement aujourd’hui. Est-ce seulement grec de penser qu’agir contre la raison est en contradiction avec la nature de Dieu, ou bien est-ce une vérité de toujours et en soi ? Je pense qu’en cet endroit devient visible l’accord profond entre ce qui est grec, au meilleur sens du terme, et la foi en Dieu fondée sur la Bible. En référence au premier verset de la Genèse, Jean a ouvert le prologue de son Évangile avec la parole : « Au commencement était le Logos. » C’est exactement le terme qu’emploie l’empereur : Dieu agit avec logos. « Logos » désigne à la fois la raison et la Parole – une raison qui est créatrice et peut se donner en participation, mais précisément comme raison. Jean nous a ainsi fait don de la parole ultime du concept biblique de Dieu, parole dans laquelle aboutissent et trouvent leur synthèse tous les chemins, souvent difficiles et tortueux, de la foi biblique. Au commencement était le Logos, et le Logos est Dieu, ainsi nous parle l’Évangile. La rencontre de l’annonce biblique et de la pensée grecque ne fut pas un hasard. (…)

Le pape prêche pour sa paroisse. Le contraire m'aurait étonné d'un tel borné.

Cette rencontre était depuis longtemps en marche [cf. le nom de Dieu donné à Moïse (« Je suis »), et la traduction des Septante]. Dans le Moyen Âge tardif s’est également développée une tendance à l’intellectualisme augustiniste et thomiste de Duns Scot, qui a fait éclater la synthèse entre ce qui est grec et ce qui est chrétien. Dieu devient tellement transcendant et arbitraire que la vérité et le bien ne sont plus des miroirs de Dieu. (…)
À l’encontre de cela, la foi chrétienne a toujours affirmé fermement qu’entre Dieu et nous, qu’entre son esprit créateur éternel et notre raison créée, il existe une réelle analogie, dans laquelle les dissimilitudes sont infiniment plus grandes que les similitudes, mais cela ne supprime pas l’analogie et son langage. Dieu ne devient pas plus divin si nous l’éloignons dans un volontarisme pur et incompréhensible, mais le véritable Dieu est le Dieu qui s’est manifesté dans le Logos et qui a agi et qui agit par amour envers nous. Certes, l’amour « surpasse » la connaissance (…), mais reste néanmoins amour du Dieu-Logos. (…)

Et il en rajoute, il en rajoute, le Benoit...

La rencontre intime qui s’est réalisée entre la foi biblique et les interrogations de la philosophie grecque n’est pas seulement un événement qui concerne l’histoire des religions, mais un événement décisif pour l’histoire mondiale, qui nous concerne aussi aujourd’hui. Quand on considère cette rencontre, on ne s’étonne pas que le christianisme, bien qu’il soit né et ait connu un développement important en Orient, ait finalement trouvé son véritable impact grec en Europe. Nous pouvons aussi dire, à l’inverse : cette rencontre, à laquelle s’est ensuite ajouté l’héritage de Rome, a fait l’Europe et reste au fondement de ce qu’on peut appeler à juste titre l’Europe.

C'est bien connu, l'Europe est la mère de l'universel et de l'humanisme, de la bonté. tout quoi !
Elle est chrétienne, tout de même!

Le pape, faut l'excuser, les amérindiens, l'Europe catholique, après tout elle n'a voulu que leur bien, les faire sortir de leur grande noirceur. L'esclavagisme, idem...

L’Occident est menacé depuis longtemps par le rejet des questions fondamentales de la raison,

N'en jette pas plus, nous savons tous que la raison, en pape infaillible, c'est toi qui la détiens.
Mais voilà, l'occident s'est forgé ses propres raisons et il ne va pas plus mal. Ses femmes, par exemple, ont envoyé à la poubelle votre raison pour se trouver d'autres plus dignes. Les états ont trouvé meilleures raisons dans l'opinion de leurs populations et dans la science. Etc...

et ne peut en cela que courir un grand danger.

Oui, oui, l'enfer...
S'il faut aller en enfer pour avoir échappé de l'enfer de vos doctrines moyenageuses, on a tout de même gagné au change. Votre enfer menace et chantage, n'effraie plus personne.

**Absente** · 16 septembre 2006, 19h06

et qu'on ne dise pas que voilà un discours improvisé...

en tous cas, nous ne sommes pas derrière lui
absolument pas

**morjane** · 16 septembre 2006, 19h26

Envoyé par Makéda

qu'on ne dise pas que voilà un discours improvisé

Tout à fait, c'est impossible quand on est Pape surtout à notre époque qui n'existe que par la communication et quand on est sois disant le représentant de l'Eglise chaque mot , chaque virgule a une importance et on fait attention à celà avant de prononcer son discours. Il ne peut pas y avoir d'improvisation à moins d'être totalement irresponsable mais dans ce cas là on ne devient pas Pape.

Merci Bachi pour tes commentaires.

**claudehenri** · 16 septembre 2006, 19h27

Mes Voeux Pour Demain

A vous tous Musulmans de mon pays natal et vous tous Musulmans d'ici ou d'ailleurs,

Il n'était nullement besoin pour Benoit XVI notre pape, en tous les cas le mien, de soulever une polémique telle que celle là qui plus est pour sa première sortie officielle. Comme il lui en reste de nombreuses autres je crains le pire. Je ne suis pas allé au fond de son discours mais d'avance j'en suis peiné, pour tous. Pour lui car s'il n'a pas la capacité de réflechir aux conséquences de ses discours c'est grave. Pour les musulmans qui peuvent tout à fait légitimement se sentir atteints dans leur foi, pour le monde entier car nos "chefs" ou plutôt nos représentants spirituels se doivent de ne pas risquer d'offenser les autres et d'oeuvrer pour une reconnaissance fraternelle des uns et des autres et pour un rapprochement. Cela est bien sur valable pour tous et pas seulement pour le Pape. Aussi je prends la liberté de vous dire ma géne pour cet incident, mon respect pour ceux qui se sentiront blesséds et pour ceux qui, malgré leur blessure, sauront garder une juste proportion à ce regrettable incident.
Salam à vous tous.

**mene** · 16 septembre 2006, 22h32

Merci ClaudeHenri pour ces mots gentils. J`espere que les integristes de tous poils ne vont pas profiter de cette maladresse pour porter atteinte a des croyants innocents ou a leur propriete.

L`histoire du christianisme et particulierement le catholicisme est une partie de l`histoire Algerienne. Il doit y`avoir plus de points qui nous rapprochent des catholiques que des points qui nous separent.

Annonce

Le discours de Benoit XVI à Ratisbonne à l'origine de la polémique

Le discours de Benoit XVI à Ratisbonne à l'origine de la polémique

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