Posted on 01/19/2004 5:53:37 AM PST by SJackson
Edward Feser's recent article 'Does Islam need a Luther or a Pope?' begs a reply. The article he writes is partly about whether Islam needs a Luther or a Pope, but is also a Catholic apologetic. He takes the Reformation, and in a few brief revisionist strokes reduces it to a non-event, claiming the subsequent glories of the Enlightenment for medieval Catholicism.
On science, Feser is correct to point to the fabulous achievements of medieval thinkers. One has only to read the works of Anselm and Thomas Aquinas to begin to see quite how far medieval scholars were pushing forward philosophical inquiry. As with Confucianism's later thinkers, we would be wrong to simply view the medieval scholars as part of a stagnant tradition.
But when it comes to the question of authority, Feser is leagues wide of the mark. What he omits to explain is that the Reformation was, aside from its political usefulness to Henry VIII, about who had the monopoly on truth. Prior to the Reformation, ordinary people were not allowed to read the Bible in their own tongue.
In England, William Tyndale translated the scriptures into English so that 'the common ploughboy' could understand them. Tyndale was burned at the stake for his pains, but his life's work illustrates a key difference between the two churches. The Catholics believed in the infallible word of the Pope, and in the divine appointment of the priesthood. There was no need to translate the scriptures into the vernacular because the priesthood could explain it for the sake of the masses.
The point is not that this was undemocratic but rather that it allowed the priests a monopoly on truth without being directly answerable to any outside body. It comes as no surprise then that soon enough people were paying the clergy to foreshorten their time in purgatory. Worst of all, if divine revelation was true then the priesthood was preventing the people from reading God's word for themselves. The priesthood had taken on the very role of God.
What Protestantism brought was a translated Bible and a new focus on the importance of faith. People were now able to read for themselves such un-Popish verses as 1 Timothy 2 verse 5, "For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus…" With biblical truth accessible, it became clear that contact with God required no ecclesiastical hierarchy.
But there was more too. The great scientific discoveries of the ensuing years caused much angst to the Church as they often went against its teaching. It is interesting to note, however, that these discoveries did not in fact contradict scripture, but only Romish teaching, such as Galileo's proposition of a round world. (The Roman Catholic Church admitted its mistake over Galileo in 1992.)
Years later, the Church of England would make a similar error with Darwin, and a less superstitious approach has shown us that Darwin and Genesis are in fact compatible. Indeed, the Genesis story remains an apt illustration of creation, and one not at odds with the discoveries of science.
In this sense, religion and science have nothing to fear from one another. Indeed, I believe that without a law-making God there can be no ordered universe, no natural laws. And I am convinced that without an ordered universe governed by natural laws, science becomes meaningless. Such thinking also propelled the work of key figures like Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon.
Furthermore, the dangers of pursuing science as an absolute truth without any religious belief have already been studied. It was the Social Darwinists (atheists, unlike Darwin himself) who argued that the 'survival of the fittest' theory showed that different races had been in competition and that some had outstripped others. They also assumed that different races had come from different mothers (recently disproved.) Whilst some, notably Kropotkin, would go on to argue the need for 'mutual aid,' many would begin to see Indo-Europeans as a master race.
But what the Reformation achieved was to remind the Christian that there was no human monopoly on truth and that, since all men are fallen and sinful (even the Pope), all men could study nature for themselves and find in it the creative genius and ordering hand of the divine. There was nothing to be feared from truth and inquiry.
And just as salvation was for all through Christ, so the use of mental and sensory faculties to explore the world need not be limited to priests and prelates.
When Luther nailed his theses to the church door in Wittenburg, it was not because he had failed to work with the Church, but because he had read his Bible and realized how far from gospel truth the Church had strayed. In matters of justification, sanctification, propitiation, authority and the afterlife, the Church had wandered away from the teachings of Christ and his apostles. Luther would seek to replace an institution with the person of Christ himself.
It is worth looking back briefly to the origins of the Papacy in order to better understand why history also allows us to reject its self-declared authority.
A document claiming to be the donation of Constantine was used in the 8th century as proof that the Pope was divested with all spiritual power and authority, but also granted him an enormous estate. The paper named him 'Prince of the Apostles, Vicar of Christ.' It is likely it was forged in the 8th century as the Latin is from that era. Those who questioned the document's veracity were burned at the stake until the document was proved false when first studied in the 16th century.
The 'Decretals of Isidore' then appeared in its place, actually written around 845 AD. It consisted of letters describing the early Church of Rome, though oddly enough in a state of splendor it reached only in the 9th century. The Decretals became part of canon law.
Feser is right that we should beware writing off the Middle Ages. But we must nonetheless remain aware of the level of superstition and falsehood that governed it and its institutional Church.
What about Islam?
Islam needs no Pope. The confusion of political power with divine appointment has sparked terrible policies throughout history. Massacres and murders have too often been perpetrated in the name of all major world religions, when this mistake has been made. Furthermore, falsehood has been allowed to go unchecked.
Feser aptly emphasizes the importance of the rule of law in any successful political system. He argues that the rule of law was far better achieved under a Pope than under a book because a book has many interpretations, citing the denominational break-up of Protestantism as his proof.
But the rule of law works precisely because it elevates no particular individual. Instead, it elevates a social code. The establishment of the rule of law came about due to a belief in a higher authority that was not human. It is worth recalling the recent words of a senior Chinese politician -- 'I don't believe in God and I don't believe in the rule of law.'
The Reformation saw the rule of law begin to emerge as an authority higher than any prelate. But it requires a deeply Conservative view of humanity for this to come about. One must first believe in the fallibility and natural selfishness of all men if one is to set laws above all men. One must also believe that all men are equal before such a set of laws. There is simply no place for an infallible Pope.
Islam would profit from such a politics in its heartlands, one that divides off the political system from the religious leadership. What many Islamic countries perhaps need is a figure who acknowledges that all people are fickle and need checks on their power, a man who understands even his own limitations and faults. Politics would then come to be viewed as a necessary execution of power but one that needs to be held closely in check.
My muse is the man who brought down a despotic King but turned down the crown of England, the man who told his own portraitist to depict him "warts and all." What Islamic countries need, for all his faults, is not a Pope but a Cromwell.
Alexander is a frequent TCS contributor. He last wrote for TCS about Machiavelli and North Korea.
Something like a rabies vaccine.
What Islamic countries need is Christ!
But what the Reformation achieved was to remind the Christian that there was no human monopoly on truth ...
And so moral relativism had its start and its hold.
All religions including Judaism and Christianity have had tehir crazies and their periods of excessive reliance on state power to enforce a degree of doctrinal uniformity, but the excesses do not DEFINE the religion. Contrarily, Islam is quite specifiecally DEFINED as the call by the deity allah to conquer the entire world and make it submit to Mohammed's vision for mankind.
The concept of execution for "apostasy", either actual (renouncing Islam) or contrived (suggesting that the Quran is NOT God's word and needs further study), has been so tightly woven into Islamic culture that in the 1940's the Muslim President of Pakistan could write a book complaining that he can't believe people have actually started thinking it is OK to NOT execute apostates from Islam. Up until about 1850, the question did not even arise.
As to what Islam needs, once they had something like a Pope, the Caliph, and it is only during the late Caliphate that the PC view of Islam as a tolerant religion has any basis at all. St. John of Damascus was the equivalent of Lord Chamberlain to one of the Caliphs of Damascus, and was persecuted only in court intrigues, not for penning the first Christian critique of Islam (which he regarded as a heresy rather than a proper separate religion).
Unfortunately, the current lead in the race to reoccupy the throne of the Caliphs is none other than Osama bin Laden, so it doesn't look like a Muslim 'papacy' will help at all. Of course the whole of Islam has an approach to their scriptures very much like the protestant approach to the Christian canon (except no one claims the right to throw out a sura here and a sura there like Luther did with the rest of the Old Testament, but I digress): any Muslim can read the Koran and the Hadiths (life of Mohammed) and issue fatwas (religious rulings, most notoriously including Islamic anathemas with a death sentence attached, but not limited to these). How widely regarded a fatwa is will depend on such things as how well regarded as a Koranic scholar its issuer is, how politically powerful its issuer is, or how popular among Muslims the position enunciated already is.
The other poster is right, what Islam needs is Christ (and not just for the salvation of the souls of now-deluded Muslims).
Islam and Protestantism rely on a book as their continuing contact with the divine. The problem, as with all works of purported non-fiction, is one of authentication.
The case for the authenticity of the Koran is laughable ... such as: you know it is from Allah, b/c of its unique eloquence and depth. There are numerous, probably hundreds of unanswerable objections to the authenticity of the Koran, but if you are a believer then you live at the level of tautology and no criticism is worth listening to.
Protestants who believe in the Bible as the ultimate authority face a similar problem. Who authenticates the Bible, a book which (unlike the Koran) is not claimed to be the literal words of God, but the words of men inspired by God?
That is why the Catholic Church at least has logic on its side (no pun intended). The starting point, the authentication for Christianity iself, is the Resurrection of Christ. Yet the proof of that Event are eyewitnesses, whose testimony has been preserved by Tradition, the passing on from person to person.
That is why the Apostolic tradition is so significant, at least for those who believe Jesus to be the literal Son of God, and Himself divine.
The idea of the Catholic Church is to preserve the unbroken tradition, to transmit the authenticity of Christianity so that it can be traced back to the very beginning.
Islam and Protestantism (to oversimplify) both believe in every man for himself. They are unmoored (no pun intended) because their ultimate "proof" is that their beliefs are self-evident, and you must be a bad person if you do not see it for yourself.
As the history of the Catholic Church helps demonstrate, all human beings are sinful, some moreso and some less so, regardless of professed beliefs. That is the value of having an institution which is outside one generation or one person.
True, but I was ignoring that comment so this doesn't get thrown into another Crevo argument.
Galileo's house arrest was due NOT to his assertions about the shape of the earth. His detention was the result of his arrogant assertions concerning the teaching authority of the Church. Papal astronomers had advised the Pope that Galileo's ideas were probably correct. But Galileo deduced from his research theological concepts, and in that area he was incompetent. It was Galileo's proud contradiction of teaching authority doctrine that got him in trouble, not the details of astronomical data.
The Church in 1992 did not apologize for theological error. It admitted only that Galileo's detention was unwarranted.
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