Vincent J. Curtis
23 Dec 2015
In Pope Benedict
XVI’s famous speech at Regensburg, the following passage occurs:
“The decisive statement in this argument
against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is
contrary to God's nature.[5] 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.[6] 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
practise idolatry.[7]”
The thrust of the argument that Pope Benedict made at Regensburg
is uncontroversial in the Catholic tradition.
His point was to place religion on the same intellectual basis as
science is, and to argue that the nature of God is the logos, that is, the word and reason. This fact of logos is what makes God comprehensible, however imperfectly, to
man. In the passage above, he contrasted
the orthodox Christian position in respect of religion with that of Islam.
Islam, Benedict argues, rejects Hellenic reasoning; that is,
it does not accept the Law of Non-Contradiction. Islam believes that Allah is transcendent,
meaning that Allah is capable of contradicting himself and is entirely
incomprehensible to man. In his
Regensburg speech, Benedict subtly invites the leading lights of Islam to
debate religious matters on the basis of reason. This they cannot do for by trying to reason
with Benedict they would run into the Law of Non-Contradiction, which they must
reject or be destroyed by it. Perhaps
Benedict was guilty of taunting the believers in Islam, and the fearsome
rioting and violence against Christians around the world that followed the
speech was the Islamic reply to that taunt.
Natural theology is that part of philosophy which treats of
the traits of God and His attributes, as far as they can be known by
reason. Natural theology is divided into
three principal parts: the first treats of the existence and unity of God, the
second treats of the attributes of God in Himself; the third treats of the
attributes of God in relation to the world or to his creatures. Natural Theology is distinct from Sacred
Theology in that the former is reason based on the sensible, while the latter
is reason based on divine revelation.
Islam, as Benedict observed, must reject that a Natural
Theology is possible. On their view,
Allah is not susceptible of analysis, and moreover is not bound by the laws of
logic, in particular of the law of non-contradiction. Therefore, if Allah exhibits attributes,
there is no reason why these attributes cannot be different at a different time;
and lacking any necessary consistency, divine attributes are not deducible by
human reason. (We shall see the
consequences of this position below.)
Nevertheless, Muslims claim to know the mind of Allah all
the time. For example, Allah is
described as “The Compassionate,” and “The Merciful.” At various times in history Muslims
attributed their military successes and failures to the favor or disfavor in
which Allah held the Ummah. Their early military successes Muslims hold
to be proof of the truth of their faith and the favor in which they were held
by Allah. Muslims believe that Allah
ought to favor them over all others in the world because they are the bearers
of his last word. As Benedict would
point out, these incoherencies are possible because Islam rejects the law of
non-contradiction.
Regardless of whether one is atheist or Christian, there is
no disputing that Natural Theology is a rational discipline whose findings
represent metaphysical demonstrations.
It is from Natural Theology that come the proofs of the existence of a monotheist
God, as well as the attributes, both absolute and relative to man, that God must
possess, expressed in ways that finite minds can understand. From Natural Theology we gain an
understanding of why the universe possesses the order that it does, and why it
persists in existence. Without these
explanations, the order seen in the universe and the persistence of the
universe in existence are completely mysterious. Without the explanations of Natural Theology,
the order and persistence of the universe remain brute facts without
explanation.
Natural Theology says that the divine attributes are not
known by man directly, but man can attain to a knowledge of them from the
perfections which he discovers in creatures.
Here are a few of the findings of the necessary characteristics of God as derived by Natural Theology:
Aseity. Aseity is the
attribute by which God is of Himself or from Himself. It is the primitive attribute from which
Natural Theology can deduce all the others.
God is immutable, that is, His perfections can neither be
increased nor diminished; He is subject to no alteration or change. [From this perspective it follows that the
Islamic belief that Allah is capable of change must be a projection of the
limitations of the human mind upon the attributes of Allah.]
God is immense, that is, He is in His essence present to all
things. Since God is infinite or without
limits, he is everywhere infinitely – in Himself, in the world, and even
outside the world- in that He can fill all possible space extended ad
infinitum, without the least circumspection of His being.
God knows Himself perfectly; He knows all things outside
Himself, all future contingent and possible things. It is this eternal and unchangeable
affirmation of Himself that constitutes truth in itself, absolute and essential
truth, the prototype and supreme norm of all truth. God has a perfect knowledge of all real
beings, because it is He who created them with their essences and
perfections. Since God by His knowledge
is the cause of all things, His knowledge and His power have the same extent;
and since He is the cause of all that exists in every individual, it follows
that His knowledge embraces all beings also in their individuality.
God has a perfect will; he loves himself necessarily, all
else He loves freely. As it enters into
the perfection of the will to communicate the good which one possesses, so it
is consonant with the divine goodness to be in some way diffusive of itself to
others. But God does not will this
absolutely and necessarily, because, being infinitely perfect, He needs nothing
external to himself; since God’s knowledge is infinite, and therefore more
perfect knowledge or “a fuller consideration of the matter and circumstances”
as motives of repeal, is an utter impossibility.
God is omnipotent, that is, He can do every thing that does
not imply a contradiction.
God being infinitely perfect, is eminently sufficient for
Himself. Yet it was fitting His goodness
that others, viz, creatures, participate in His perfections; and therefore he
created, that is, He drew out of nothing all that exists.
God loves all existing creatures, because they are good and
come from Him; and He loves them the more the better they are, for they are
better simply because God wills them to have more good. With God, it is His love that is the cause of
their existence and of the measure of goodness that He imparts to them.
(From these it also follows that:
Satan owes his existence to the action of God.)
The act of creation is an essentially free act of the divine
will. As God is eminently sufficient for
Himself, he is in this act bound by no necessity, whether external or
internal. To hold that God made the
world not by an act of His free will but from an irresistible impulse, is
virtually to hold that God does not suffice for Himself, that He is not
infinite, that he is not God.
The end which God proposes to Himself in creating the world
is the manifestation of his perfections, or His own glory. God, being infinite wisdom, must have had an
end in the act of creation, and this end must be the manifestation of Himself
and His perfections, particularly His power, His wisdom, and His goodness. But since God is infinite, he can acquire
nothing further for Himself, and the glory that accrues to Him from creation is
purely accidental and extrinsic.
God is the first cause of all the beings of the universe,
since He has given them existence by creating them; therefore they cannot cease
to depend on Him for their existence; and they continue to exist only so long
as he preserve it to them.
Although God can annihilate creatures, yet it is certain
that he will never annihilate even one of them.
The gifts of God are without repentance, and having willed to give being
to creatures, God, in a sense, owes it to His wisdom, Him immutability, and His
glory, to preserve them.
If God does not exist, there is no longer good or evil, man
may follow at will his most perverse inclinations, society is without
foundation, and the law of might alone prevails. History, besides, bears witness that all the
epochs of atheism have been epochs of intellectual debasement, of moral
corruption, and of great social upheavals.
If the above seems to savor of Christian beliefs it is because
of the close connection between Hellenic reasoning and Christian revelation
that developed in Christianity practically from the beginning of the Church. (A criticism leveled at the Roman Catholic
Church is that it is a religion conditioned by philosophy.) The first discovery of a rational proof of
the existence of a monotheist God was made not made by a Christian, but by the
ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, and the exposition of that discovery forms
the last third of his work Metaphysics. Benedict holds that the early encounter of
Christian revelation and Hellenic reasoning was not “by chance.”
On analysis, the Islamic belief of the absolute transcendence
of the being they call Allah necessarily implies that Allah is less than the being of absolute
perfection, simplicity, power, love, wisdom, knowledge, immensity, and so forth
of the God discovered by Natural Theology.
The being that Islam calls Allah lacks “aseity,” and because the being
Islam calls Allah lacks aseity it is possible for this being to be self-contradictory,
to be inconsistent, to change his mind, to play favorites among his creatures,
to love some and to call that others be killed, and so forth. In short, while undoubtedly powerful, Allah,
in the Islamic belief, seems to display some of the weaknesses of man. The
consequence of imputing absolute transcendence to Allah, to make him capable of
contradiction, is to render him not more powerful, but less powerful than the
God of Christian belief. Islamic
scholars have never had to address this point, nor are they capable of
addressing it because they reject the law of self-contradiction in respect of
matters of religion. The Muslim
response, as was seen after Benedict’s Regensburg speech, was to react with
violence rather than with counter-argument.
The question then arises, if Allah really exists, who could
he be?
Natural Theology does not provide an answer to that
question. The answer to that question may
lie in another medieval intellectual discipline.
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