The Pope has been appologizing repeated in the last few days for some remarks about Islam. I too found the quote that he used to be rather inflamatory. Yesterday, however, I read the Pope’s full remarks. While I still think he could have chosen a better quote, seen in context it is not nearly so bad. The interesting thing is that the speech has very little to do with Islam. Rather, the topic is the relationship between reason and faith.
This had special relevance to me now because I attended a couple lectures at a science and religion conference here at Yale last week. Physicist Laurence Krauss made a presentation which addressed this issue of reason and faith, so it was a topic still rattling around in my thoughts. This quote from the Pope caught my attention:
The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity.
Something I also learned from the Pope’s address is that the greek word in the first chapter of John’s gospel is logos: In the beginning was the logos. If I remember correctly from communication class in high school, logos refers to logical reasoning in speech. This makes a huge difference in my reading of that text.
Latest Comments
Atom