The Re-Hellenization of Islam

In a recent interview with the Wynnewood Institute, author Robert Reilly discussed Islam and the West, and claims that most of the divide between the two can be attributed to the rejection of Hellenistic philosophy by the more dominant Muslim theological schools.

By rejecting Hellinization, or Greek Philosophy, fundamentalist Islam denies the validity of reason, and therefore also denies the existence of natural law. Reilly argues that without reason and natural law it is impossible to develop the sort of constitutional systems that are prevalent in the West. He further traces the problem back in history and explains that a divide arose in “9th century in Baghdad between those who wished to give primacy to reason and those who wished to give primacy to pure will and power. So you had, on one side, the first theological school in Islam that said, ‘God is rationality and justice,’ and the other side which said: ‘No, God is pure will and power. Rationality has nothing to do with Him and whatever He does is incomprehensible to us and He cannot be confined to what is thought to be reasonable or unreasonable.’”

The latter view ultimately prevailed, as Reilly points that even today the majority theological school believes “that God is the first and only cause of everything and there cannot be secondary causes (such as natural law) because that would be a challenge to God’s omnipotence. So for God to be omnipotent, nothing else can be even so much as potent. Therefore, gravity does not make the rock fall; God does. Fire doesn’t burn cotton; God does.”

Reilly drew heavily from Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Lecture, in which the Pope pointed out that many distinctions between Islam and Christianity can be traced back to the acceptance or rejection of Greek philosophy. The Pope told the story of a dialogue between Byzantine emperor Manuel II and a Persian on the topic of the truth of Islam or Christianity. The Emperor argued against the Muslim teaching that God is not “bound up” in any human categories, including rationality, by saying that “not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature.”

According to Christian doctrine, God is reason, and anything unreasonable cannot be of God. Indeed, as the Pope pointed out in his lecture, “In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us!’ (cf. Acts 16:6-10) – this vision can be interpreted as a “distillation” of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.”

In his interview, Reilly claims that the rejection of reason in fundamentalist Islam leads to the belief that “the mind is incapable of knowing good and evil from moral philosophy because there is nothing to be known, because things have no nature and are therefore neither good nor evil in themselves, [it is only because] God says so.” In contrast to this, C.S. Lewis best represents the Christian view when he pointed out that “meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, ‘God can.’ It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

There does however, remain hope for meaningful dialogue. Last year, the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs hosted a conversation on Religious Freedom between Catholic thinker Robert George and Muslim Scholar Hamza Yusuf. In discussing and contrasting the teachings of their respective faiths, Yusuf claims a lack of reasoning is the cause of so many problems in the Muslim world today. Delving into the history of the various theological schools, he said that the modern beliefs of many fundamentalists are an inheritance from a theological school that expressly forbade the use of reason and the intellect. Even today, in the Wahhabi school that is dominant in Saudi Arabia, the use of Logic is officially forbidden.

Yusuf sees the answer of many contemporary problems being solved through education in the Liberal Arts. Islam does have a rich intellectual tradition, as Yusuf noted by pointing out the interesting history behind John Locke’s views on religious toleration. Edward Pococke, Locke’s teacher at Oxford, and a strong influence on his later views, studied in Syria and was a scholar of Islam. Yusuf claims that Pococke’s belief in religious toleration can be traced to the influence of the Muslim scholars he studied while in Syria. That the West’s tradition of religious freedom can be traced to ancient Muslim scholars is an astounding thought.

Unfortunately, if such a Muslim tradition did exist it has been lost, and to recover it would require a radical re-Hellenization of Islam. Ironically, as Pope Benedict pointed out, the West is experiencing its own process of de-Hellenization, but in the opposite direction through materialism, moral relativism, and licentiousness. The Pope compared the intellectual and spiritual state of the West to the condition Socrates lamented when he said “It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being – but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss”

It is commonly acknowledged that Greek Philosophy and Roman order paved the way for Christianity in the world. In fact, it’s hard to imagine how Christianity would have engaged the world without them. Clement of Alexandria went so far as to say that, “Before the advent of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness, & now it becomes conducive to piety… Philosophy, therefore, was a preparation, paving the way for him who is perfected in Christ.”

The Church cannot expect to have any meaningful dialogue with either the secularists or the fundamentalists until both have been re-Hellenized. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD,” but such an invitation can only be accepted by a man who would say “I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can.”