Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

Nikolaus Wandinger

Dramatic Reflections on Christian-Muslim Dialogue. Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Lecture Revisited  

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PAPER

1        Introduction

At first I want to apologize for not finishing my paper in time, so that it was not available for you, and also for its content. Maybe it does not fulfill the expectations that were raised by ma abstract. I found that the matter was more complicated than I had thought. So I am presenting to you merely some considerations not really satisfying to myself.

To get them in the right context I have to say a few words on the audience it is directed to: It is Christians who struggle to engage in dialogue with Muslims and who are somewhat lost at how to do that best. We experienced this week – and the pope experienced in Regensburg – that when one party tries to be very accommodating and seeks for the common ground, there is another party who misses candor. And when the other party is candid and points toward certain problems, the dialogue tends to become conflictive very soon and the candid party is even accused of paranoia. This has partly to do with our – Christian and Western – problems of knowledge about Islam. It has, however, also to do with a pluriformity and diversity of Islam, so that Muslims themselves often do not seem to know what Islam says about this or that. How should we know, then?

It occurred to me then that in our Christian tradition there is a precedent for a conflictive religious dialogue, which ended in a killing, but – we believe – also in a resurrection. And I wanted to try to gain some insights for a Christian approach to dialogue with Muslims today.

So I will start out with a brief analysis of some themes in Jesus of Nazareth’s conflict with the religious authorities of his day, as Raymund Schwager analyzed it and then there are some very fragmented ideas of how this can help us. In trying this it also occurred to me that some critical questions arise that I as a Western, post-enlightenment Christian would like to have answered by Islam. And by that I mean not an Islamic scholar who say so but another one will say differently. By that I mean the majority of Muslims who contribute to the world-wide perception of Islam.

2        Jesus’ conflict with “Scribes and Pharisees”

I want to mention three important subjects of the mentioned conflict and then analyze the consequences.

2.1      Image of God

The most important aspect of the conflict is, according to R. Schwager’s dramatic theology the question of the image of God. While the tradition of his people, as recorded in what Christians call the Old Testament, contained diverging images of God – a merciful and loving God as well as a vindictive and violent avenger –, Jesus strove to clarify God’s image and to depict an unambiguously benign and merciful Father. On the one hand Jesus remained completely within the tradition and theology of his people: He did not introduce a new image of God absent from Israel’s tradition; he merely emphasized one of the images contained in that tradition over against other images found there as well. Neither did he initiate a new method of biblical interpretation at this stage of the drama. He did what Jewish rabbis did and what the prophets had done: reinterpreting Scripture by placing different emphases on different passages and by linking different passages with each other as using them to throw new light at each other.

Yet, on the other hand, Jesus revolutionized this conduct. By consistently drawing on and using himself imagery of the merciful Father, he cleansed the image of God from all violent connotations, something that had not been done in that clarity. And in making his new emphases he claimed an authority normally not assumed by a rabbi. The gospel of Matthew actually depicts Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount as claiming an authority superior to that of Moses by counter-posing the law of Moses with his own commandments.

We will return to the matter of the law again immediately, but before that I want to draw your attention to a summary of the image of God that Jesus proclaims – according to Schwager – and to the consequences Jesus infers from that image:

„Jesus called for love of one’s enemy and based this high demand on the observation that God even lets the sun rise over the good and evil and the rain fall on the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:43-47). Jesus’ radical demand on people to love their adversaries arose out of his conviction that God himself treats his enemies — sinners — graciously. The theme, so important in the Old Testament, of God’s anger and vengeance, was absent from his message from the start. Just as he himself had experienced Yahweh as Abba, so he proclaimed him as the gracious Father who forgives sinners.“[1]

So Jesus’ emphasis on the image of God was not just a theoretical or academic argument. Since he made God the model of human conduct and in effect called upon his followers to emulate God’s love for and treatment of His enemies, his image of God should have clear repercussions for human conduct.

2.2      Interpretation of the Law

Another important point of contention between Jesus and his adversaries was the interpretation and application of the law. Jesus did not aim at a revocation or alleviation of the law (cf. Matt. 5:17) but he intended a reinterpretation of the law according to its spirit. Not legal intricacies but the grasp of the inner sense of the law and an interpretation along the lines of this inner sense was his guiding principle (Matt 22:35-40). The consequence of this new principle of legal interpretation was, however, that the literal meaning of certain laws and prescriptions was superceded by the guiding principle, being the double-command of love of God and love of neighbor. Thus the strict regulation of the Sabbath, for example, may well be suspended when a human being is in need of help.

This, however, gets still another twist when linked with the image of God we mentioned already. The God Jesus proclaims is such that he completely identifies His greater glory with the human good. The glory of God and the human good are not antagonistic rivals in need of guidelines to avoid clashes. They are rather two sides of the same coin, so that particular laws can be seen as instantiations of this general rule. In the case of the Sabbath this rule is: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).[2]

In the same vein one may argue that for the Christian understanding, love of God and love of neighbor are not two distinct realities that add up together to a Christian conduct. Rather, love of God, love of neighbor and the healthy love of self – which Jesus gives as criterion for the love of neighbor – are inextricably linked, are the manifestations of the one human capacity to love.[3]

As a consequence, the Christian commandment of love is not a commandment to be fulfilled once and for all, it is a dynamic principle of development which aims at ever greater fulfillment.[4] The practical consequence was that the importance of laws was reduced not because of laxism but because of the boundless dynamism of the commandment of love. To be sure: the Christian churches have not always succeeded in maintaining that: they often reverted to legalistic moralism, or diminished the high ideals of the dynamism to mere evangelical “counsels”. It might be said, however, that another consequence of Jesus’ interpretation of the law and the split between the Church and Judaism that happened during the first century led Christians to distinguish the cultic from the moral law, accepting the latter in principle but abolishing the former with the idea that it was superceded by the new Covenant Jesus brought.

2.3      Human Tradition disguised as God’s commandment

One particular element of Jesus’ conflict with the religious authorities of his time in the context of the law was his contention that many purportedly divine commandments were but human traditions. Let me briefly illustrate that:

Scribes and Pharisees criticized Jesus because his disciples “break the tradition of the elders” (Matt. 15:2) by not washing their hands before eating. Jesus turns the tables by chiding them for breaking God’s commandment for the sake of human tradition:

“⁴ For God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ ⁵ But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’ then that person need not honor the father. ⁶ So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. ⁷ You hypocrites!” (Matt. 15:4-7).

The hypocrisy consists in substituting human customs for the law of God and pretending that they are God’s law. And its consequence is that a rivalry between God’s honor and the human good is re-opened: the support of old-aged parents or a donation to the temple are played off against each other. So the hypocrisy on the juridical level has repercussions for the theological level and Jesus’ main message.

Jesus employs a similar legal mode of arguing when asked about the rules for divorce contained in the Mosaic law: “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” (Matt. 19:8), although here the modification of the original God-given command is not seen as hypocritical but as motivated by human deficiency. Still Jesus wants to make clear the difference between the pure divine command and the human adaption of this command. It is interesting that he localizes this adaption already in Moses and not in later interpreters of the law. So again he introduces a new distinction: even the law of God, as given by Moses, is not the immediate law of God. There is a difference of mediation and of situative adaption even in God’s own commandments.

2.4      (Mimetic) Consequences

The consequences of Jesus’ conflict with the religious authorities of his day are all too well known: on a first level they were Jesus’ conviction as a blasphemer by the religious court, and as an insurgent by the Roman authority, both of which led to his execution on the cross.

From the point of view of mimetic theory and dramatic theology these consequences must be seen as mimetic reactions to Jesus’ conduct. By his actions he created, without intending it, a rivalry between his claim of religious authority and his adversaries’ claim. An antagonistic mimesis between Jesus and the Scribes and Pharisees ensued that Jesus could not prevent, although he avoided any mimetic dependence on his adversaries. As long as they use him as an antagonistic model the structure is inescapable for him.

The deeper reason why they treat him as that, is however, that they project an antagonistic mimesis with God into him. For them he is the one presuming undue authority not only over against them but in the final meaning over against God. In the end the accusation against Jesus of making himself like God betrays the deepest currents in the heart of his adversaries: they fall into an antagonistic mimesis with God and project this onto Jesus, who, quite on the contrary, entertains a benign and positive mimesis with the divine Father. So in a sense, the conflict between Jesus and his adversaries is a conflict about positive versus rivalrous mimesis of God, and only as a consequence it is a conflict between humans.

3        Conclusions for inter-religious Dialog

Now what, if anything, can we gain from that for Christian-Muslim dialogue?

3.1      Parallel Themes

I think that the three themes I distilled from Jesus’ conflict are recurring themes between Christian-Muslim and/or Western-Muslim dialogue. Let me indicate that in reverse order:

3.1.1      Human Tradition disguised as God’s commandment

The motif of human tradition disguised God’s commandment seems to play a larger role in today’s points of contention between Western thinking and Islam. I want to draw your attention to two possible instances:

One is the question of veiling women in public that many Muslims think is mandated by a divine commandment. The fact, however, that there are Muslim societies that do not regard this a mandatory practice and that traditions greatly differ in the question of how much has to be covered – ranging from a woman’s head to her whole body – seems to indicate that this could be a case of a human tradition posing as a divine commandment.

A similar case is the practice of so-called female circumcision – which is better named genital mutilation of women – which only exists in certain societies, where it is justified with a reference to Islam, while most Muslim nations do not have the practice.

It is not for me as a Christian theologian to decide whether Islam in fact does mandate these practices or not. Yet I can put the question to Muslims, a question enriched by the experience we made in our religion that sometimes human traditions do indeed pose as a divine law. My suspicion is that Muslims and even Muslim theologians might not be able to give a unified response. So the larger question is: can the Muslim community come to a broad consensus on this question or can they not, and what hermeneutic and criteria do they apply in the process?

3.1.2      Interpretation of the Law

The second point is the general guiding principle of legal interpretation and in connection with it of juridical authority. In the case of Jesus his claim to name the inner pattern of the law that endows it with coherence implied an additional claim about his own authority. For the non-Muslim it is quite difficult to understand who and how a Muslim religious authoritiy can issue a sentence, even a death sentence against others. This also pertains to the above problem: how can the Muslim community come to a consensus on these matters? Can there be – in analogy to the Christian distinction between the cultic and the moral law – a distinction between a believer’s obligations and a society’s duties? And what are the hermeneutical tools and standards for the interpretation of the Koran and religious laws?

A further question would be: is it possible for a Muslim to argue about prescriptions given by Mohammed in a way of situating them in a certain environment and use this as a tool for reinterpretation. Thee Smith argued the other day that Mohammed’s relation to violence should be seen in relation to the attitude about violence in his environment and the Arabic tribes he was speaking to. This seems to me very similar to Jesus saying: Moses permitted that because of humans’ hardened heats. Is it feasible that this can become an accepted Muslim figure of argumentation as well?

3.1.3      Image of God

Behind all that surely stands the larger question of the image of God. Christians, Muslims – and Jews for that matter – all proclaim that there is one God who has created the universe and who is profoundly good and aims at perfection for His creation. However, the question of what is good and how God acts to bring the good about is answered quite differently between and within the Abrahamic religions. I am not saying that Christians or Jews have settled this question once and for all. But in this context it seems pertinent to finally come to the pope’s Regensburg lecture. One of the themes he mentioned there, which was almost forgotten because of the commotion about the Mohammed quote, was the question of whether God can be known by human reason. The pope related that Emperor Paleologos argued for the non-violent conduct of religion because spreading it violently would be against reason and everything against reason was also against God’s nature.[5] Then he goes on saying that for important Muslim thinkers God is so sovereign and thus above and beyond reason that human reasoning cannot tell us anything about Him; God is not even bound by his own word. If God decreed it, humans would have to worship idols. So, the divine will is not guided by any reason connatural to him but it is arbitrarily sovereign.[6]

Benedict took these ideas from Adel Theodor Khoury. In the meantime the pope’s lecture has been published in German in a small volume commented on by Khoury, and two other personalities.[7] It is interesting for me that Khoury completely affirms the pope’s relation of his thoughts in this regard. He even emphasizes for the important theological school of the Ash’arites: “God also is the absolute Lord of good. His unconditioned will determines in a free decision what has to be regarded as good and as evil. Good and evil are not objective qualities of an act and cannot be recognized from objective criteria. They are a positive decree of the divine will. God’s decrees are the sole norms of good and evil […].“[8] In a footnote Khoury also confirms that for some Muslim theologians “God is not even bound by His own word and nothing obliges Him to reveal us the truth.”[9]

However, Khoury counter-poses that to another theme in Islamic theology. He claims: “Still, God is not an arbitrary despot. Above all he is the Lord of life, not merely in the sense that he makes alive and dead, but that he attends to humans and guides their lives with mercy and benevolence. […] God’s will is absolutely free but, his own revelation testifies, the decisions of his will for humans are grace and mercy.”[10]

It is, or course a problem that, if it is true that God is not even bound by his own Word, the testimony of that revelation cannot be trusted. It follows that the role Islamic theology accords to reason, has to be clarified. For without that, even the position that revelation supercedes reason and we know God’s decrees from revelation rather than reason cannot be sustained. And springing forth from here, the much more practical question about God’s relationship to human violence can be addressed.

However, one other thing has to be said. Palaeologus seems to view human reason as a completely independent faculty. And it seems that in this part of his lecture Pope Benedict agreed with this view. Yet we know that it is not altogether evident for human reason that religion should be non-violent. Humans have always found good reason to be violent but mimetic theory tells us that these reasons are for the most part mimetic self-deceptions and that the Abrahamic religions revealed that to the world. So reason cannot stand alone, the revealed image of God has to grace and convert reason to enable it to judge the things in the right way. Basically the Pope is saying that later on in his lecture – that faith needs reason but that reason also needs faith. An I think in this part, which is actually an appeal to Western secular reason not to discard faith – and vice versa – lies the actual aim and the strength of the pope’s lecture.

I hope I could very briefly show you through these parallel themes that Jesus’ conflict with the religious authorities of his day has some potential for Christian-Muslim dialogue. It is now high time to emphasize the main difference between the two, and why it is not possible to make direct inferences from it.

3.2      Basic Difference

The basic difference is that Jesus’ conflicts were inner-Jewish conflicts and not inter-religious at all. Jesus argued as a Jew with Jewish authorities, he was not engaged in inter-religious dialogue. The very idea would probably have seemed queer to him.

This has several consequences. One is that referring back to Jesus as the revealer of hypocritical or presumptive conduct with God and religious language cannot be used in a hyper-mimetic us-vs-them mode. It does not say that Christians by referring themselves back to Jesus, have overcome these temptations once and for all. On the contrary it means that these dangers are ever-present in religion, no matter what brand name it might espouse. It should make Christians especially vigilant for these dangers in their own back-yard. That said, however, it should be allowed to utilize the experiences it gave Western societies as a tool of interpretation for other cultures in order to maybe formulate critical questions. But it remains for the other culture, in our case for Muslims, to find answers to these questions from their own tradition and religious culture. Growing out of this basic difference, we can develop some suggestions for a modified approach of religious dialogue:

3.3      Modified Approach

Jesus claimed a special authority in his conflicts. Irrespective of the Christian belief in his divinity he could only do so because he was engaged in an inner-religious dialogue. This kind of authority cannot be claimed over against another religion. However, a different type of authority can be utilized:

The authority of the converted sinner. The Christian church itself has over-abundantly committed the mistakes Jesus warns against. It could now put this painful experience to use as a sign of trustworthiness when it poses – maybe painful and therefore conflictive – questions to others in inter-religious dialogue. This way it also has some hope not to initiate a cycle of antagonistic mimesis. Jesus’ path shows that such a cycle cannot be avoided completely when others want to enter into it; but the danger of starting it can be minimized that way. Thus I think the themes I mentioned are useful themes for Christian approaches to the dialogue. And these themes by themselves hold the potential for conflict. This type of conflict cannot be avoided, if the dialogue is to be honest. Yet these questions need not be brought forward as confrontational accusations but as questions from the perspective of the converted, yet still ever tempted and fallible sinner.

Here Jesus’ argument that human tradition often disguises as divine commandment could be particularly helpful. With regard to the pope’s lecture I still maintain that he did not affirm Palaeologus’ statement that Mohammed had brought nothing but evil to the world and therefore the reaction to this quote was outrageous. Yet I do think it was not wise at all to use this quote. For it lays the blame for what a Christian might criticize on certain Muslim theologies on the very founder of Islam. The question at stake here is not so much whether this is historically correct or not – who would know what the historic Moses had in mind in his regulations for divorce? – The question at stake is whether a religious community has the room for re-interpretation within the bounds of its religion or whether it must get the impression that it becomes unfaithful to its own tradition by transforming certain views or practices. Jesus’ appeal back to the original lawmaker allows for the transformation of traditional and long-held tenets without damaging the foundations of a religious tradition. If Christians talking to Muslims deny them this possibility they actually play in the hands of the fundamentalists. Here I find theological fault with Pope Benedict’s selection of Palaeologus’s quotation, even if the pope did not affirm it himself, and – as I believe – did not even think about the negative perception because in the context of his speech it was merely an occasion to launch his theme of violence and reason.

4        Epilogue: On the Difference between Church and State

For a conclusion I just want to make two remarks, one again on the possible role of the pope in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims; another a question about the violence perpetrated by extremists who claim to be motivated by Islam.

In his Regensburg lecture, I think, the pope did a rather bad job in engaging in a fruitful Christian-Muslim dialogue. Yet, this was not his intention there. He was talking at a Western state university and he was engaging in a dislogue with secular Western academic culture. In that he did very well by suggesting that human reason can be the bridge between the Christian faith and secular Western culture. Gesine Schwan, President of the Viadrina European University and professor for political theory and philosophy, explicitly concurs with the pope when he emphasizes the necessity of faith for Western reason.[11] If Christian representatives, especially the highest official of the Catholic Church, conduct dialogue with Islam in the manner suggested – arguing not about the validity of Islam as such but of its interpretations, not attacking its founding figure but rather employing the founding figure as grounds for questioning certain traditions and practices that may have superceded the real core of the Muslim faith, and arguing from the position of the converted, yet still ever tempted sinner – they could enhance the dialogue between Christianity and Islam and also serve as a kind of bridge between Islam and secular Western culture.

Secular Western culture and the nation states on the other hand have the right and obligation to enforce their laws also by police force. In how far military force outside their territory can be justified too, is a very difficult question. While I was originally quite sure that the intervention against the Taliban hosts of Al Qaida in Afghanistan was justified, and the ill-fated Iraq war was certainly not, now I am not so sure about Afghanistan either. By interfering in foreign lands whose problems and cultures we do not really know we might create more problems than we solve. Maybe “defense” should again be read in the strict sense: defending your own territory against an intruder, not invading a possible intruder’s territory in order to prevent his becoming an actual intruder. There is also a kind of in dubio pro reo in matters of interstate conflicts. But the rule of law was not only bypassed in that regard. Western societies corroborate its adversaries’ accusations to the degree they they divert from their own values and laws: in dubio pro reo, Habeas corpus, innocent until proven guilty. The mode of suspicion pervading our societies is counter-productive to that.

One last thought: To me as a Western observer of many violent acts committed by Muslims, purportedly against the godless West, it seems strange that so many of these acts do not hit secular Westerners or Christians at all but other Muslims: the ambushes in Iraq have cost by far more Iraqi lives – along Sunni / Shiite lines – than American ones. Even the outrage at the Danish Mohammed cartoons has cost more Muslim than Western or Christian lives. A Muslim scholar posing some of the questions I advocated today to ask might risk his or especially her life if they did so in a Muslim country. From this the question arises whether the violence wrought by persons who claim to do this out of Muslim religious motivation, is not really a kind of inner-Muslim, religious war that sometimes spills over the margins into the West.

Could it be that Westerners and Christians are merely afflicted bystanders of a virulent and violent inner-Muslim mimetic struggle for the right interpretation of their faith already going on? Are we the needed outside enemy to divert at least some of the inner-Muslim violence? If that is the case the massive inner-Muslim violence that occurs in spite of this deference shows how grave the conflict is. The fairly recent fact that the Palestinian organizations Fatah and Hamas cannot even be stopped from fighting each other by their common enemy, Israel, seems to corroborate this thesis.

In that case the Christian churches have two more experiences that we could communicate in dialogue to Muslims: One is our experience of religious wars and how it brought Europe to the brink of self-annihilation. The other is the Christian core experience: The cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth: we have seen that Jesus engaged in, even initiated, a conflict in his own religious tradition which in the end brought him to death, a death he foresaw at a certain point but did not seek. The reaction of his immediate followers was not revenge on his killers nor desperation that he had been damned by God. They found faith in his resurrection and the strength to forgive and see their own partaking in putting him to death. Can there be a Muslim parallel to that? Can that be linked with the Muslim concept of the virtue of weakness of which we heard on Wednesday? It would, however not be a virtue that you gain by not being able to use violence but that you gain by refraining from using violence even when it is possible.

From Jesus’ example Christianity should have learned that radical commitment in God’s service indeed entails to be willing to give one’s life, but it rules out taking another’s life. Christianity forgot this lesson later on and only the near self-annihilation of the reformation wars brought it back against fierce resistance of the institutional churches. From these two experiences we could make clear that religious freedom is not a luxury flowing from lack of faith but a consequence of committed faith in a God who is the “Lord of life, [… who] attends to humans and guides their lives with mercy and benevolence”[12]. There is need for committed faith that allows for forgiveness instead of ever ongoing revenge and for reverence for those who lost their lives not in taking that of others but in preserving that of others, while still engaging in non-violent struggles for the values they deeply believe in.