FUNNY THE THINGS THAT HAPPEN WHEN FOLKS HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE:

When even the pope has to whisper (Spengler, 1/10/06, Asia Times)

Strange as it may seem, the pope must whisper when he wants to state agreement with conventional Muslim opinion, namely that the Koranic prophecy is fixed for all time such that Islam cannot reform itself. If Islam cannot change, then a likely outcome will be civilizational war, something too horrific for US leaders to contemplate. What Benedict XVI thinks about the likelihood of civilizational war I do not know. Two elements of context, though, set in relief his reported comments concerning Islam's incapacity to reform.

The first is that Benedict's comments regarding the nature of Muslim revelation are deliberate and informed, for his primary focus as a theologian has been the subject of revelation. In his 1953 doctoral thesis, biographer George Weigel reports, Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope,

... following Bonaventure, argued that revelation is "an act in which God shows himself"; revelation cannot be reduced to the propositions that result from God's self-disclosure, as certain forms of neo-scholasticism tended to do. Revelation, in other words, has a subjective or personal dimension, in that there is no "revelation" without someone to receive it. As Ratzinger would later put it, "where there is no one to perceive 'revelation', no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed".

The Judeo-Christian view of revelation, as summarized above by Father Fessio, expresses the mutual love between Revealer and recipient of revelation, a concept alien to Islam.

A second element of context is Benedict's admiration for the US separation of church and state. In an essay published in this month's issue of First Things [not yet on-line], Benedict makes the remarkable (for a pope) statement that the US model is what the early church really had in mind. He proceeds from the famous argument of Pope Gelasius I (492-496) that "because of human weakness (pride!), they have separated the two offices" of king and priest. Neither the state church model of Northern Europe nor the secular model of France, Italy and Spain has sufficed, Benedict observes. But he continues:

Situated between the two [failed] models is the model of the United States of America. Formed on the basis of free churches, it adopts a separation between church and state. Above and beyond the single denominations, it is characterized by a Protestant Christian consensus that is not defined in denominational terms but rather in association with its sense of a special religious mission toward the rest of the world. The religious sphere thus acquires a significant weight in public affairs and emerges as a pre-political and supra-political force with the potential to have a decisive impact on political life.

It is useless to bemoan the fact that Americans do not understand what they are until a European comes along and explains it to them; that has been true since Alexis de Tocqueville. It is most promising that a European, indeed one who speaks with the authority of the throne of St Peter, has explained the difference between the Christian foundation of the US political system and theocratic Islam - even if the explanation came in the form of a stage whisper. I expect this to have profound consequences.

Note how minimal is the Reformation that would be required even by Spengler's own terms: the recognition within Islam of mutual love between God and Man and elevating Islam above the State, but disestablishing it governmentally. The paucity of theocracies in the Middle East and in the history of the Islamic world suggests just how alien actual Church control of the State is in practice.

Of course, we do well to consider the possibility that even such minimal Reform could prove to be beyond the capacity of Islam, and if that were to prove to be the case the results would be dire for either Muslims or for Islam itself. The former though is why it won't likely prove impossible. Men have never had much trouble shedding unworkable ideas, no matter how fiercely they may temporarily seem committed to them.

MORE:
Father Joseph Fessio, a student and friend of Pope Benedict XVI, on the problems Christianity, especially in Europe, faces with the spread of Islam (Hugh Hewitt Show, 1/05/06)

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 9, 2006 8:09 AM