Faith and reason in Christianity and Islam
Some people who take to violence do so because they have no mental energy to ask why. My mother Veronica once told me a story of a man who was running just because he saw the sheep running (Igiema na, no khe eme ekhue ema lo khu lo). Through natural events and wonders of the […]
Some people who take to violence do so because they have no mental energy to ask why. My mother Veronica once told me a story of a man who was running just because he saw the sheep running (Igiema na, no khe eme ekhue ema lo khu lo).
Through natural events and wonders of the world, African ancestors were able to arrive at a divine transcendence that is responsible for the creation, design and sustenance of the world and the physical realities. Morality was learnt by a critical observation and experience of cause and effects. This was imparted to the children and youths in stories, proverbs and riddles.
The life of our ancestors can be compared to the ancient sages of Athens. The Ionian and natural philosophers attempted to discover reality through a thorough examination of natural processes before Socrates. According to James Mannion “The ancient world had become an ethically arbitrary place, rife with moral relativism and a lack of regard for the Eternal Truths when Socrates (469–399 B.C.) came on to the scene. This dynamic and controversial Athenian figure spent a lifetime in the public square, engaging in dialogues with the young men of Athens”.
Socrates was eager to engage in a philosophical debate anytime, anywhere, akin to a gadfly chasing a cow or a horse. Socrates must have studied the naturalist philosophers like Empedocles and other philosophers before him. He arrived at the fact that truth did not lie in the natural world by posing questions and drawing responses, which made people think. He thus developed a philosophy called Socratic dialogue or dialectic. Socrates was in search of truth by means of Socratic disavowal as indicated in the story of his encounter with the Oracle of Delphi where he claimed to know nothing.
His credo was: “Man know thyself!” “Doing what is right is the only path to goodness, and introspection and self-awareness are the ways to learn what is right.” He was ready and willing to die for his convictions. He actually taught people to study the signs of the times and question all that were going on around them.
Revelation cannot be separated from reason which is the intellectual faculty given by God to humanity for the contemplation of the wonder of creation (FR. 4). God reveals himself to man/woman in the context of the natural environment. The prophets used the parables, stories, events of their immediate environments to communicate divine revelations. The Bible was born out of the tradition of the church. Therefore, the churches labeled, Bible Church should know that faith and salvation is not determined by the Bible alone. John concluded his gospel by affirming that there were so many things that Jesus said and did. If they were written down in detail, the whole world would not hold all the books that would be written (John 21, 25).
Al-Ghazali believed in intuition (dzawq) in the pursuit of religious knowledge and Ibn Rusyd, a rationalist thought that reason was crucial to religious understanding. Islahi, Amin Ahsan in his book (Mabadi Tadabbur-i-Hadith) identified the Arabic word iman ) as the inner aspect of the religion that denotes a believer’s faith in the metaphysical realities of Islam. According to the Quran, Iman must be accompanied by evidence of righteous deeds, and the two together are necessary for entry into Paradise (Qur’an 95:6).
Therefore a contextual study of the scriptures is indispensable. Some verses in the Qur’an and the Bible that were revealed in war context may not necessarily apply in the context of peace in the modern age. The verses that promote life and human dignity can apply in all ages. For instance the teaching of the Holy Qur’an that: “If any one slew a person – unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he slew the whole humanity: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the whole humanity” (Qur’an 5:32) is forever valid and logical. Similarly, if the Bible is interpreted literally and out of context, the result can be very terrible because there are passages in the bible where God commanded killing like in the case of Saul and the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15, 1-35).
Just imagine the last words of Socrates: “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” For this moral probity, Shakespeare said in a dirge on Socrates: “now cracked a noble heart”. In 1970, at the burial ceremony of my maternal grandfather, Ekhaisomhi, I heard it announced (for the first time) by an Imam that if any person owed him any debt, the person should pay and if he owed anybody, the person should let the children know for immediate payment because in Islam a debt can be an obstacle to eternal life.
This ancient wisdom preached by Socrates remains valid even in Islam for all ages. If it is reasonable that a debt can lead a person to hell, then it becomes more reasonable in the context of faith that killing a human being is detestable by God. Let us therefore apply reason to the word of God such that we can make our faith relevant to those around us.
Fr (Prof) Omonokhua is the Director of Mission and Dialogue of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, Abuja and Consultor for the Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims (CRRM), Vatican City, Rome