OK, so we still aren't seeing eye to eye on that Filioque thang,
But I'm rather impressed by the Bishop of Old Rome's latest speech.
According to the BBC, he said:
"I was reminded of all this recently, when I read... 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.
"In the seventh conversation...the emperor touches on the theme of the 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 Muhammad 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 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.'"
"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.
"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?"
"The liberal theology of the 19th and 20th Centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenisation, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative.
"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.
"[But]...any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self... 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... religion or ethics no longer concern it. "
"The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application... Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.
"In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures."
Download entire speech
Pakistan's parliament passed a resolution demanding that the Pope retract his remarks "in the interest of harmony between religions".
When did Pakistan have anything to say on the subject of harmony between religions?
The Pope's spokesman now says the Pope didn't mean to hurt the feeling of Muslims around the world, but the facts speak for themselves. Manuel wasn't faced with rampaging hordes of Lutherans, Buddhists, Taoists, pagan animists, Scientologists, or even Catholics (although his predecessors had serious problems with those damned French and their Venetian paymasters). Further, in context I think the phrases are less inflammatory than they have been portrayed in the media.
Well, I'm off to go have coffee with the Prods. Catch y'all later.
According to the BBC, he said:
"I was reminded of all this recently, when I read... 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.
"In the seventh conversation...the emperor touches on the theme of the 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 Muhammad 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 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.'"
"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.
"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?"
"The liberal theology of the 19th and 20th Centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenisation, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative.
"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.
"[But]...any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self... 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... religion or ethics no longer concern it. "
"The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application... Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.
"In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures."
Download entire speech
Pakistan's parliament passed a resolution demanding that the Pope retract his remarks "in the interest of harmony between religions".
When did Pakistan have anything to say on the subject of harmony between religions?
The Pope's spokesman now says the Pope didn't mean to hurt the feeling of Muslims around the world, but the facts speak for themselves. Manuel wasn't faced with rampaging hordes of Lutherans, Buddhists, Taoists, pagan animists, Scientologists, or even Catholics (although his predecessors had serious problems with those damned French and their Venetian paymasters). Further, in context I think the phrases are less inflammatory than they have been portrayed in the media.
Well, I'm off to go have coffee with the Prods. Catch y'all later.
posted by Just A Decurion at 9/15/2006 07:35:00 PM
2 Comments:
With all due respect,
from Lutheran-turned-agnostic to Greek Orthodox:
The Bishop of Rome rocks!
I particularly like this part:
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 truly like the demonstration of Professor Ratzinger that faith doesn't need to (and should not) have anything to do with deliberate ignorance.
In essence, his little quotation of the old word was the Professor asking the question in his lecture:
"What distinguishes Bavarian Christians from barbarian Islamists?"
(The answer is left as an exercise to the Islamist students.)
ROTCLMAO!!!
[rolling off the carpet laughing my (anatomical term deleted) off]
I personally like the responses by the Muslims. "How DARE that prominent Christian claim we are violent!! That is so wrong, lets just kill him and a few of his people".
Jesus said it well: "By your fruits you shall know them". Do Muslims even have a concept of "testimony"?
Post a Comment
<< Home