The decisive statement in
this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance
with reason is contrary to God's nature. 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. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French
Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn 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.
Benedict transferred the
centre of the lecture from fanaticism and brutality to the need of a
consistency based in God's subordination to our categories, at least to the
category of rationality. That God is not absolutely transcendent does not
mean that we can see Him in person in front of our eyes, but that our
mind is constructed with laws even He can not transcend, and we can
observe and describe. We can not and need not approach His Face, but we can
and need to observe and examine His Construction, by
speculating on our reasoning as a category to which even He is subject: 1)
God can not hide from us, we could still examine Him against His
will, 2) We need not wish and search for a God alive, what we need is
to worship His categories in the laboratory of our reasoning.
