We are publishing an extensive intervention by Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which appeared in the Austrian online newspaper Kath.net. The text addresses a question that runs, either explicitly or beneath the surface, through much of contemporary European public debate: can the West still understand itself apart from its Christian roots?
The Cardinal’s answer is clear from the very first line - a blunt “no” - and from that refusal there unfolds an argument that weaves together theology, philosophy, law and political analysis. For Müller, Europe is not simply a geographical entity or a market of nations, but a “cultural community” born of the synthesis between Christianity, Greek metaphysics and the Roman ordering will founded on justice: to give each person his due, according to Ulpian’s formula, which in theological terms becomes the recognition of the inviolable dignity of every human being as the image of God. Deprived of this formative soul, the author warns, Europe risks being reduced to “a dead body”, a no man’s land exposed to whichever power happens to be strongest.
The speculative heart of the text is the relationship between faith and reason. Müller addresses it by taking up and updating Benedict XVI’s famous Regensburg lecture of September 2006 - whose “lasting merit” he explicitly affirms - and by also invoking, in a far from obvious way, Jürgen Habermas’s thesis on the single, true theme of the West. Against the positivist reduction of reason and against a relativism which, far from guaranteeing peace, leads in the author’s view to a “dictatorship of thought”, the Cardinal proposes a “broadening” of reason, one capable of listening once again to the great religious traditions of humanity.
In the second part, the argument turns to the encounter with Islam and to the now crucial question of violence cloaked in religion. Müller carefully distinguishes pseudo-religious terrorism from authentic faith, recalls the conciliar documents Nostra aetate and Dignitatis humanae, and the joint Islamic-Christian document A Common Word, in order to identify natural moral law, universal human rights and love of neighbour as the common ground for a possible coexistence.
What emerges is an essay whose tone is at times sharply critical of secularism, transhumanism and what the author calls the deliberate de-Christianisation of Europe - positions readers will be able to assess in all their radicality. Beyond the individual theses, however, there remains a fundamental question that the Cardinal entrusts to the debate: whether the decisive struggle of our time is not for raw materials or for power, but “for the soul of man”.
“This question can be answered in one word. For the West is…”
Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Müller
This question can be answered in one word: No. For the West is nothing other than the cultural community of the Germanic and Slavic tribes and nations which emerged from the legacy of the Western Roman Empire and are united in faith in Christ, the Son of God and universal Saviour of humanity. Europe is therefore Christianity in its synthesis with Greek metaphysics and the Roman will to order according to the principle of justice, that is, the will to give each person what is his due – suum cuique (Ulpian) – or, in theological terms, the inviolable dignity of every human being as the image and likeness of God. Outside this definition, Europe loses its formative soul and becomes a dead body which, like ownerless territory, falls into the hands of the next stronger neighbour.
Only those who fail to recognise the dramatically acute situation of today’s world can close themselves off to this insight. Pope Francis often said that we are already living through a Third World War fought piecemeal. One need only think, in the global context, of civil wars, the collapse of the rule of law in many states, the Orwellian surveillance state pursued by Brussels — the Digital Services Act, the bureaucratic erasure of national identities — the migration of millions who can no longer be integrated in Europe but are establishing rival Islamic societies, hunger and poverty affecting half of humanity, global terrorism operating through criminal gangs and rogue states, organised crime, and the unstable political conditions in classical democracies, which are falling into the hands of globalist elites with their project of a single world totally controlled by them, a Brave New World à la Aldous Huxley (1922). Even in our advanced civilisation, of which we in Central Europe are so proud, the crisis of modernity and postmodernity is plain to anyone with eyes to see. The dissolution of social cohesion in marriage and family and of personal identity through so-called gender transition; the deliberate de-Christianisation of Europe, once Jacobin and now neo-Marxist and left-woke; the loss of a unifying idea of the purpose and meaning of human existence in post- and transhumanism; the insistence on egomaniacal self-determination without the organic integration of the individual and collective ego into the common good of the family, the city and nation, and the community of peoples: these are apocalyptic warning signs.
Only the conceit of Western superiority remains alive. Are our secularism and materialism, as in the age of colonialism, to be imposed as a remedy on the supposedly backward East and South under the slogan: development aid only on condition of legalising same-sex marriage and the killing of children in the womb, euthanasia and assisted suicide — all for the sake of a drastic reduction in population in the name of climate protection and the scarcity of material resources?
If the Western world seeks to impose its estrangement from God and its moral relativism on all other cultures, it merely plays into the hands of political and ideological extremists. They cannot be defeated by military and economic means alone. The violent reactions, from Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria and today in Iran with its terror regime, are ultimately proof that without an understanding of the higher — that is, not merely materialistic and imperialistic — meaning and purpose of human existence, there can be no rest of the heart and no peace on earth. Many see only, superficially, the struggle for raw materials and power. What is decisive, however, is the struggle for the soul of man. Only when we rediscover in our hearts and consciences that we all descend from one Father in heaven, and that we are therefore brothers and sisters to one another, can there be fruitful coexistence. In his famous Regensburg lecture (12 September 2006), Pope Benedict XVI said verbatim: “In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures” — among which he counted religious, but not political, Islam, something some failed to hear — “see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their deepest convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion to the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures... For philosophy and, in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and especially those of the Christian faith, is a source of knowledge, and to reject it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding... Courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur — this is the programme with which a theology committed to biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. ‘Not to act reasonably, not to act with the Logos, is contrary to the nature of God,’ said Manuel II, speaking from his Christian understanding of God, to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great Logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.”
And the recently deceased Jürgen Habermas, in his monumental work on the history of philosophy, advanced the thesis that the sole theme of the West — that is, what constitutes the identity of Europe in the wake of the Christianised Roman Empire — is the relationship between faith and reason (Logos), between truth and freedom, between the person in community beyond individualism and collectivism.
The “rationalists”, forgetful of history, objected as follows: a concept of reason oriented exclusively towards the methods of the empirical sciences establishes an unbridgeable opposition between faith and modern science. As a form of consciousness and way of life refuted by science, the Christian faith, and indeed every religion, contributes nothing to solving the great challenges of modernity. In a world created entirely by science and technology, religion necessarily becomes a marginal phenomenon, a private matter among the still unenlightened remnants of the mythological and pre-scientific view of the world and man. Where this worldview is absolutised into a political programme, faith and religion must either be violently eliminated from the education of the young, public discourse and prevailing culture, or quietly disposed of; or else some unenlightened bishops and opportunistic theologians think they can save the Church by replacing the message of the Gospel with a social agenda. Certain “diplomats” thought truth should be subordinated to the calculus of power, instead of humanising power through truth. But the Church proclaims the wisdom and power of God under the sign of the Cross of Christ, not the “wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age” (1 Cor 2:6).
Saint Thomas Aquinas summed up the unity of all knowledge from faith and reason in this way: “In every truth that we know and in every good that we do, the truth of God is already implicitly known and the goodness of God experienced.” The relationship between faith and reason has certainly had its dramatic moments in European intellectual history, ranging from synthesis, through a dialectical relationship, to outright opposition, especially in Enlightenment philosophy, the critique of religion and the atheistic political ideologies of the last century. Pope Benedict XVI did not advocate a return to the age before the emergence of modern natural sciences and technologies: “What is intended is not retrenchment or negative criticism, but a broadening of our concept and use of reason. For, while we rejoice in humanity’s new possibilities, we also see the threats that arise from these possibilities, and we must ask ourselves how we can master them. We can do so only if reason and faith come together in a new way; if we overcome reason’s self-imposed limitation to what is experimentally falsifiable and once more open reason to its full breadth. In this sense, theology belongs in the university and in the broad dialogue of the sciences, not merely as a historical and human-scientific discipline, but as theology proper, as the question of the reasonableness of faith.”
For scientific research is distinguished from aimless groping and conjecture first by method and generally verifiable criteria, not by the materiality or immateriality of its object. The object of ethics and morality, for example, is not materially verifiable things or mathematically describable relations, but the fundamental moral law that shines forth in conscience: that good must be done unconditionally and evil must be avoided without exception. This also applies to knowledge of the natural moral law. Its fundamental principle is the inviolable dignity of each individual human being. This contradicts ethical relativism and every attempt to degrade the human person into a means to an end. Even before knowledge of God in his saving self-communication in the people of Israel and the Church of Christ, God is present and active in the moral conscience of every human being. From rational belief in the existence of God and a relationship with God in accordance with reason follows what Paul formulates in this way: “When Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts; their conscience also bears witness, and their thoughts accuse or even defend them” (Rom 2:14f).
Only where faith is not dismissed as an alienating projection or a useful fiction, but is grasped in its origin and content in the Logos, that is, in God’s self-knowledge in his Word, can it enter into fruitful dialogue with the sciences, as well as with the great interpretations of the meaning of human existence found in philosophies and world religions. For man does not merely want to know how the world is constructed, or how he can improve his living conditions through technology, but still more why there is evil in the world, meaninglessness, death, hatred that threatens to devour all love; whether there is hope beyond this short and suffering-laden earthly existence; or why there is something rather than nothing at all, as the natural scientist, mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) put it.
In view of the increasingly acute global political, economic and cultural crisis, of terrorism and of insoluble conflicts that are driving humanity to the brink of the abyss, the anthropological approach of the Second Vatican Council to the question of God retains its relevance against all projects of self-redemption through belief in progress and science as means to an earthly paradise. The fundamental questions remain and arise with renewed sharpness: “What is man? What is the meaning of suffering, evil and death — all these things which continue to exist despite such progress? What is the purpose of these achievements, purchased at so high a price? What can man contribute to society, and what can he expect from it? What comes after this earthly life?” (Gaudium et spes, 10). Faith is a rational relationship with God and not one among the many ancient and modern scientific theses substantially explaining matter, its structures and its modes of operation.
Inseparable from this is the ethical mastery of the challenges posed by natural science and technology, as well as the search for a universal social order according to the principles of human dignity, global solidarity and worldwide social justice. “A Common Word Between Us and You” of 13 October 2007 begins as follows: “Muslims and Christians together make up more than half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of this world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians. The basis for this peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the absolutely fundamental principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbour.”
The analogy with Christianity is easy to identify. According to the word of Jesus, love of God and love of neighbour are the fulfilment and summation of all God’s commandments. A bridge that can be crossed has been built. In reports following devastating bombings and suicide attacks by terrorists who present themselves as strictly observant Muslims, political and media circles thoughtlessly speak of “religious violence”, without noticing the internal contradiction in this combination of terms. What does the term “religion” even mean in this context?
Religion as a category is ambiguous. The Second Vatican Council defines religion in its decree on religious freedom as “the worship owed to God” (Dignitatis humanae, 1). Religion is not a fictitious means devised by human beings, a placebo for coping with contingency. The most primordial thought of reason is wonder that I and the whole world exist at all. The essence of religious experience is the feeling of gratitude towards the Creator and infinite trust in his providence. Religion is the primal trust that the one who has called me into existence will also bring everything to a good end. The relationship with God in praise and thanksgiving is disturbed by sin, from which the chaotic conditions within humanity arise. Here, in the biblical tradition of Jewish and Christian faith, the gaze is lifted to the Creator, who has promised himself to us as Redeemer.
The imperial interlocutor of the Persian scholar proceeds from the biblical insight: “God is spirit” (John 4:24) and “God is love” (John 4:8). And for him, as a Christian, it is therefore unshakeably clear — also self-critically, in view of Christianity’s historical entanglements with power politics — that “God has no pleasure in blood”, that is, in destructive violence, and certainly not in terrorist and criminal acts or brutal crimes against humanity, for “to act unreasonably... is contrary to the nature of God”. In this sense, he turned to his interlocutor and asked how jihad in the Qur’an should be understood. For war, with all its atrocities, can never be holy, that is, pleasing to God, because the spread of faith takes place only through human understanding and freedom. The relevant political and religious authorities in cultures and states shaped by Islam must find an answer as to how the so-called sword verses of the Qur’an are to be reconciled with the right to freedom in matters of faith, a right grounded in human nature. It is not only the violent means used to spread a religion or a political ideology that must be rejected, but also the goal of religious-political world domination. Those who point out the self-contradiction of every form of violence that claims a pseudo-religious foundation do not offend God; those who invoke God for their crimes do. One would like to shout at the madmen: it is not God who commands you to kill the unbelievers, as you call them, or those of other faiths, as they should more justly be called. It is the voice of the devil that you hear within yourselves. How can the most sacred bond of love, which God has placed between a mother and her child, be more gravely violated than by persuading her to be proud of her young son who, with an explosive belt around his body, has dragged himself and others into death and ruin? True martyrs, through their life and death, their suffering and self-giving for others, have become witnesses to God’s love and truth.
In the declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions, Nostra aetate (1965), the Council, while fully convinced of God’s definitive self-revelation in Christ, recognises all that is “true and holy” in non-Christian religions (Nostra aetate, 2). With specific reference to Islam, it states: “The Church also regards with esteem the Muslims, who worship the one God, living and subsisting in himself, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men. They also strive to submit themselves wholeheartedly to his hidden decrees, just as Abraham submitted himself to God, to whom the Islamic faith readily appeals” (Nostra aetate, 3). Instead of conjuring up old enmities again and deriving from them new crimes against human fraternity, what is needed is “to make a sincere effort to achieve mutual understanding and to work together for the protection and promotion of social justice, moral goods, and not least peace and freedom for all people” (Nostra aetate, 3).
In the worldview of post-Christian secularism in Europe and North America, there exists the utopia of a “humanism without God” (Henri de Lubac). All the questions that religions could not solve would now be solved by natural science and technology in the spirit of reason and Enlightenment. A world without violence and suffering would then emerge, a paradise of tolerance. Important representatives of the Enlightenment regarded “religion” — by which, of course, they meant Christianity — with its unequivocal claim to truth, as the source of fanaticism and superstition. At most, a Christianity restricted to morality and culture, without any dogmatic claim to truth, could withstand enlightened reason and modern science. This explanatory pattern is still found today in the assessment of terrorism by the so-called Islamists. This religion, it is said, must free itself through the power of enlightened reason from the potential for violence which lies in the nature of every revealed religion and of belief in the one God of truth. Only a consistent relativism regarding the question of truth, it is claimed, can tame and bring under control the latent propensity to violence of monotheism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The price of relativism, however, is very high. It leads inexorably to a dictatorship of opinion. If all people were no longer united in the search for truth and in love for it, then the ideology of a totalitarian explanation of the world and of the social order of the New Man would have to take the vacant place once occupied by the conscience of truth. But how can the finite reason of a mortal Hegel or Marx — not to mention the lesser “saviours of the world”, from Gnosis to New Age — arrive at absolute truths to which they compel their mortal fellow human beings to submit through brainwashing and violence? The finite understanding of man will never unite truth and freedom without violence.
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). We must leave judgement over others, now and on the Last Day, to God, who alone is the just judge. Wherever people, motivated by ideology and politics, have sought to anticipate the Last Judgement and build a paradise by human hands, they have opened only Pandora’s box or the gates of hell.
In any case, the modern phenomenon of international terrorism, in its political-ideological or political-pseudo-religious form, cannot simply be met, in a progressivist faith, with appeals to reason and tolerance. Trust in the all-redeeming power of reason and progress has long since lost its innocence. The Dialectic of Enlightenment, analysed in 1944 by the representatives of the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, shows that only an authority standing above limited human reason can prevent the barbarism of inhumanity in the totalitarian systems of the twentieth century and down to the present day. It was no coincidence that terror as a means of ideological Gleichschaltung was born as a child of the French Revolution. Under the Jacobin Reign of Terror, terror against hundreds of thousands of innocent people was justified as virtue and glorified as the rule of reason and the will of the people. Combined with the Social Darwinist thesis of the right of the stronger as the law of all life, terror as a form of rule entered into the totalitarian systems that understood themselves as scientific and that are responsible for the greatest crimes in human history. Instead of using, out of anti-Christian hostility, terrorism disguised in pseudo-religious garb in order to discredit religion, and Christianity in particular, in the antiquated pathos of the Enlightenment, all people of good will should agree on a moral and social-ethical foundation for the coexistence of people with different religious and philosophical convictions. This can only be the recognition of the natural moral law and of universal human rights, grounded in the inviolable dignity of each individual human being. States whose populations are majority adherents of a particular faith must also recognise the religious freedom of minorities and of all citizens, and refrain from any interference in the conscience of truth and the moral conscience of the person and of faith communities. For the state exists for human beings, not human beings for the state. How learned Muslims interpret, in their historical context, individual surahs of the Qur’an that speak of violence and war in matters of faith and conscience is not our subject here. In a systematic interpretation, however, it seems to me that the first surah is the hermeneutical key to all the verses that follow. For “in the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful” (Surah 1), no crime against humanity can be justified. Both the knowledge of God in the revelation of the Qur’an, as it is valid only for the Muslim believer, and the common knowledge of the existence of God and of the moral law inscribed by God in our spiritual nature make it impossible to invoke God’s will in order to kill, rape, humiliate men, women and children, and deprive them of their religious and civil freedom. Certainly, we human beings are not capable of giving ourselves peace as only God gives it. But we are called to cooperate in building a society whose supporting foundation is the dignity of the human person and the good of all in community. Jews and Christians, Muslims and people of other religions recognise God as the Lord and Creator who made us. Nothing glorifies God more than love of neighbour, and nothing offends him more than hatred of one’s brother. True religion is found where love triumphs. Love is the true worship of God. The Christian professes: “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him” (1 John 4:16). This has ethical consequences. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we have known love, that He laid down his life for us. So we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. If someone has worldly goods and closes his heart against his brother whom he sees in need, how can the love of God remain in him?” (1 John 3:15ff). Knowledge of the inseparable unity of faith and reason, of love of God and love of neighbour, is the core of the Christian contribution to intercultural dialogue and to peace in the world. To have pointed this out remains the lasting merit of the world-famous Regensburg lecture given to us by Benedict XVI.