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Pope Benedict XVI, The Papal Science

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Page 8

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma.

 

Notice how "understanding of God" is just a means to "the concrete practice of religion". What more could it be? Since understanding becomes equal with examining the laws of reasoning, it can not be an end in itself: you learned the laws, you even wrote thousands of dissertations on them, what will you do afterwards? Many things except understanding what you have understood to the point of exhaustion and boredom. Therefore God goes to sleep and understanding seeks ways to defeat boredom and exhaustion. In order to achieve this, we have to be convinced that our Greek and godly reasoning, is indeed godly and not just Greek. Who is to judge? Reasoning will judge reasoning, with the difference that all arguments should be taken from the Bible. (In a while the pope will critisize the protestant "sola scriptura", which is one more indication of not following the consequences of his own thinking).

 

Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the Λόγος. This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγῳ, with logos.

 

Here starts the papal explanation of the unity of the Greek and Biblical logos, based on Manuel's use of the word logos, that is the same word with that used by John in the Bible. Since the word is the same, John (a Biblical Christian) meant what Manuel Palaeologus (a Greek Christian) meant. Here we have distinctions coming from the zone of science fiction, yet behind them there is a ground we should not ignore. For the pope, no matter how much he studied the Orthodox tradition, the Greek emperor belongs to a world that is first Greek and then Christian, and despite this (from the aspect of belonging to a "schismatic" tradition), and because of this (from the aspect of speaking Greek), he gives us the real meaning of John!

Benedict's claim that Manuel does so because he uses the same word with John, is so naïve, that I start thinking he is not interested in and does not search for the Greek thinking which he tries to explain and even invoke. Perhaps he uses ancient Greece and Byzantium in order to make his thinking more acceptable and ecumenical. This is possible, not necessary, but in any case, what is a fact, is that himself is very little interested in the "Greekness" he invokes.

 

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Cf.  Manuel II Palaeologus Resources * The Papal Chrislamism * What have we done to Christianity..
Orthodoxy and Science : A changing relationship? * Papacy * Constantinople

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