SAPessi

As you’ve probably understood from the title I’ll use this post to talk about the Pope’s lecture at the University of Regensburg.

This title is, however, misleading. I have no intention of babbling about the complaints and protests that followed the Pope’s declarations. I find them an instrumental and political use of a much broader concept that the Pope was expressing with his speech.
Furthermore I don’t want to comment on the rather foolish way of replying to a supposed accusation of being evil/violent with violence.

The point I want to make here is completely futile and purely conceptual, or morphological, if you prefer.

First of all let me say that the opinion here expressed comes from me, an hopeless unbeliever. Additionally I like to say that I’m trying to make a point far beyond my depth and it’s probably the arrogance of my ignorance speaking here.

The Pope in his lecture talks about the process of de-hellenization of christianity that has taken place during the last 500 years. He also claims that christianity, as a religion, takes advantage and its bound by the reason (Logos), thanks to the influence of Hellenic culture. on the other hand other monotheistic religions are not.
To sum things up we can say that our (christian) God is bound by reason in his actions whereas for other religions everything God does is just.
Hence we must not take for granted the presence of reason and logic when trying to understand and come to terms with other faiths.

The lecture starts with the infamous quote of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus who said that God “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably…”, Manuel II was profoundly influenced by hellenic culture. This assertion was apparently made in 1391 and afterwards written by the emperor himself during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402.

To sustain his claim the Byzantine emperor quotes the first verse of the Genesis.
“In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word [Logos] was with God, and the Word [Logos] was God.”

The word Logos is a greek word oft translated as “word”, however it can also mean thought, speech, meaning, reason, proportion, principle, standard, or logic.

The lecture continues making the above mentioned connection between reason and Christianity.
A relation that I find a bit far-fetched, in my opinion faith has never been bound by reason.
While I broadly agree with the Pope’s conclusions I have to try and confute the interpretation of the word Logos with reason, logic (in the Genesis).
The Pope also mentions the Septuagint, the first greek translation of the old testament which was produced at Alexandria. Bear in mind that this translation can be dated between the 3rd and the 1st century BC, this date is particularly important for the point I’m trying to make.

My viewpoint is that the word Logos in the Genesis is used with its literal sense and philosophical implication: Word, signifying God’s entity, God’s thought, the order.

According to numerous researches, the genesis, as we know it today, was put together in 440BC, roughly 30 years after Heraclitus death.

Heraclitus was the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who introduced the word Logos as order to philosophy. Heraclitus with his famous aphorism “Panta rhei” (Everything flows) tells us that the world is animated and kept in order by fire: this fire is the Logos; it is the power of order in the world and the order itself.
“God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.” In this quote Heraclitus tells us what he believed God to be, nothing about logic or reason, God is everything, God is both war and peace.

Heraclitus’ notion of Logos was afterwards further “expanded” by the Stoics who were influenced in part by Platonism and Aristotelianism in their conception of Logos. To them God was immanent in the world, its vitalizing force, and God as the law guiding the universe they called Logos; with the additional idea that all things develop from this force, it is called the Spermaticos Logos.
Still no reference to the reason. Nobody said God operates between the bounds of reason and being God good nothing not good can come from God. God is simply everything.

Wasn’t God himself who right before dictating his laws to Moses on mount Sinai destroyed the pharaoh armies crushing them under the waters of the Reed Sea? I’m confused, where’s violence abhorred here?

As I said, I broadly agree with the Pope’s conclusions, however, I find his connection between the oldest principles of christianity and reason/logic a bit anachronistic.
I would have find it much more appropriate in the section about the de-hellenization progress, intended as the integration of christian faith with today’s moral values.

Again, this is just one man’s opinion. I have neither the knowledge nor the judiciousness to sustain what I said any further.
Take it easy,
Stefano

P.S. The image has nothing to do with the article itself, I just find it hysterical!

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Optimism, hope, is one of the factors that, in my opinion, kept Italy’s economy together during the last years.

Lately I’ve spent a much yearned week of holiday in Italy. I wasn’t entirely prepared for what I’ve encountered there after more than one year away.

I’ve never been a big fan of Berlusconi, and that’s putting it mildly. And I knew, as well as anybody else, that Italy’s economy was stumbling toward an inevitable demise. However, I was expecting a change for the better, I was expecting this gust of fresh wind in politics to sweep away single-handedly the remains of a decadent past. I was wrong.

Not because of our politician’s decisions but because of the people’s attitude. It seems we have spent so much time pulling through our days without never really trusting a hope in the growth and solidity of our economic system that we’ve forgotten how it used to work. What entrepreneurs used to be.

Nevertheless youngsters, students, graduates, I remember, used to be optimistic, buoyant and full of hopes and dreams for their future. That was Italy how I left it.

I happened to talk with many friends and acquaintances during my vacation and they all appeared to be somewhat dejected, dispirited. The optimism was gone.

Nowadays, it seems to me, all they do is try to escape the brutish reality of this year of our lord 2006 (an expression that I couldn’t wait to use for I dearly enjoy its mere hubbub). Their hopes were apparently crushed under the so much deemed collapse.

As it were, I also happened to talk with some ex colleagues and businessman, they were all confident. This was, in all its feebleness, an encouraging sign for they are closer to the business world than all of my school friends. Their words were, however, betraying their true feelings. They were, in fact, not talking about investing in new ventures, but of believing in the long term investment. Really long, a lifetime, or two.

A pity, during this year abroad, and for many months before, I’ve been a mute onlooker on this brains-flee which has been repeating itself for countless years now.
An apparently inexorable and uncontrollable process.

Without substantial reforms our (Italy’s) economic system is roaring toward its quietus.
Unfortunately, it appears that no progress is possible unless the disposition of the people changes.
The easiest example I can give you is this: What is the inland revenue in most Anglo-Saxon countries, considers every italian a tax evader. And every italian considers the government a robber.

Don’t get me wrong, I love life in Italy, I have an english friend who’s currently living in Italy and is married to an Italian, and I cannot contradict his thought: The quality of life in Italy is superior to most of its english-speaking allies.

I am, in fact, a big fan of Jigme Singye Wangchuck. Who said that gross national happiness is more important that gross nation product. Very true indeed, but this doesn’t seem to be longer valid according to the basic values of the new westerner culture. A hard balance to hit, almost impossible. Keep our current lifestyle without sacrificing anything in the rites of economy.

This is nothing but general babbling, flapping my mouth for the sake of it. Nevertheless I’ve never found an holiday less pleasant. The disheartened faces were disconsolate and the hopelessness/helplessness in people’s eyes was impossible not to notice, and often unbearable for me.

I’m certainly not planning to move back any time soon, not now that I’ve built my life in another country. But I’ll go on pulling, as a mule, my little cart towards the carrot of hope. confident that some day, all these brains that I’ve seen make a break for it will go back to Italy and bury this grandpas of politics under a big laugh and an hoard of inventiveness.

Stefano,
Calm as a dog on the M1

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