FYF 101

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

God is...

The Pope has been saying interesting things lately.
{The Pope's] discourse Tuesday sought to delineate what he sees as a fundamental difference between Christianity's view that God is intrinsically linked to reason (the Greek concept of logos) and Islam“s view that "God is absolutely transcendent." Benedict said that Islam teaches that God's "will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." The risk he sees implicit in this concept of the divine is that the irrationality of violence can potentially be justified if someone believes it is God's will. "As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?"

The full article is here.

Can you identify any of the Pope's presuppositions/assumptions in the paragraph above? Do you agree with him?

4 Comments:

  • Apparently muslim clerics do not agree with him.

    By Blogger Anthony, at Fri Sep 15, 08:08:00 PM 2006  

  • Do you think it would have helped any if he had started off his speech apologizing for the Crusades?

    His notion that a trancendent God (i.e. beyond comprehension) is not (always) rational (able to be understood) seems plausible; but his link to the justification of violence seems to be the hot button.

    And, Christianity has lots of irrational tenents - as I mentioned last class - the Trinity holds 3 = 1. (Check out the Wikipedia warning label on that entry!)

    Probably we should read the Pope's entire speech to get a full context; but he's a smart guy and I'd expect his intentions to be cleared up by his (subsequent) actions. Let's keep an eye on him!

    By Blogger Anthony, at Sat Sep 16, 06:37:00 AM 2006  

  • I just see a great irony in his comments about Islam being spread by violence, given they way Christianity has been spread in the past - that's no doubt why people are carrying signs calling him a hypocrite.

    The difference between this and your analogies being that *his office* was directly responsible (i.e. the Pope ordered the Crusades.)

    By Blogger Anthony, at Sat Sep 16, 06:17:00 PM 2006  

  • Thanks!

    You should feel free to dispute my opinions; I am happy to say they are not fixed and I still have things to learn.

    By Blogger Anthony, at Sun Sep 17, 06:00:00 AM 2006  

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