Pope Benedict XVI (April 16, 1927-December 31, 2022) Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was born in Marktl am Inn, Germany.
His father, a police officer, came from a traditional family of farmers from Lower Bavaria. He spent his adolescent years in Traunstein, a small town on the Austrian border.
During the Second World War, Joseph remembers seeing his parish priest being beaten by Nazis before celebrating Holy Mass, and was well aware of the fiercely hostile atmosphere to the Catholic Church that existed in Germany at the time. Towards the end of World War II, Joseph was enrolled in the auxiliary anti-aircraft service.
From 1946 to 1951, he studied philosophy and theology at the University of Munich and at the higher school in Freising. Together with his brother Georg, he was ordained a priest on June 29, 1951 in the Cathedral at Freising.
In 1953, Fr. Ratzinger obtained a doctorate in theology with a thesis entitled: "The People and House of God in St Augustine's doctrine of the Church".
He became a university professor and taught in Bonn, Münster, Tübingen and Regensburg.
He was present at the Second Vatican Council and in 1977, Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of München und Freising. He was proclaimed Cardinal by Pope Paul VI on June 27, 1977 and in 1981 was appointed by Pope John Paul II as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
On April 19, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected the 265th Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, selecting the name Benedict XVI. He served until his retirement in February of 2013
Pope Benedict XVI's speech at the University of Regensburg, September 12, 2006, received international attention for requesting a dialogue with Muslims based on reason. His invitation was met with violent Muslims riots, his image being burned in effigy and a nun murdered.
In his speech, Pope Benedict XVI referred to an episode in history during the 14th century while the Muslim leader, Sultan Bayezid I (1354-1403) was laying siege to the Christin capital of Constantinople. While Sultna Bayezid I's rival Muslim leader, Tamerlane, was conquering Asia, Sultan Bayezid I crossed the Danube and attacked Romania, then Constantinople from 1391 to 1401. He was repulsed by Hungarian King Sigismund then captured by Tamerlane, who, it was rumored, kept him in a cage till he died.
During Bayezid I's siege of Constantinople, the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Paleologus II (1350-1425) carried on correspondence with a distant Persian Muslim.
This correspondence was referred to by Pope Benedict XVI in his address:
<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-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 probably 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 the responses of the learned Persian.
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 of the "three Laws": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. In this lecture I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself - 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 ("diálesis"-controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad. The emperor must have known that Sura 2:256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." It 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 turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "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 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 is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably ("syn logo") 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 Hazm 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 practice idolatry...
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, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the 'logos.'"
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.
Pope Benedict said God had a purpose for the Scriptures to be written in the Greek language: The vision of St. 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.
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 declares simply that he is, 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. Psalm 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 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 ...
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...
We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way...as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today... "Not to act reasonably (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.> 1927PB001
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
1927PB001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Pope Benedict XVI, September 12, 2006, speech at the University of Regensburg.