The incident serves to highlight one of the most persistent items
of background noise from the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror”: the
vilification of Islam and presentation of the American military mission
in the Middle East in religious terms as a renewal of the crusades.
Bush’s own conduct is totally inconsistent. He has employed incendiary
rhetoric, likening the mission to the crusades and regularly attaching
the word “Islamic” to the “enemy.” On the other hand he has openly
acknowledged the foolishness of this perspective, visited Islamic
organizations, and called for respect for people of Muslim faith.
The
different perspectives can be explained very simply. One reflects the
nation’s strategic interests, which require close cooperation and
friendly relations with Islamic states, which have numbered among the
nation’s allies since its founding. The other reflects a cynical
domestic political calculus, namely the view that the “base”—as Karl
Rove calls the Religious Right—can be energized by stirring up anger
and resentment against Islam and giving the war on terror a mystical
religious dimension. Obama’s Chicago meeting shows exactly how viable
these perspectives are in parts of the Evangelical community which
stand closest to the Republican Party.
Reading of this encounter
made me think of another figure who stands as a strong counterpoint to
Franklin Graham and reflects a faith firmly rooted in Christian
tradition and ethic–Nicolas of Kues, or Cusanus, the fifteenth-century
theologian who made Christian ecumenism and reconciliation of faiths
the center of his own writing and speaking. Far from being a quixotic
outlier, Cusanus was the bishop of Brixen or Bressanone in
German-speaking northern Italy, a cardinal of the Catholic Church and
one of the most influential spiritual writers of his day. On the
continent, he is widely known and recognized as a key figure of the
Renaissance. Ernst Cassierer calls him the philosopher of the
Renaissance, for instance. But in the English-speaking world his name
and his writings remain largely unknown.
The son of a boat
builder in the Moselle River town of Kues, Nicolas was sent to be
educated in Deventer, in The Netherlands, and then to Heidelberg and
the University of Padua. He quickly established himself as a theologian
of brilliance and skill in the mold of Albertus Magnus. But his life
took a decisive turn in 1437-38, when he was sent as part of a church
delegation to the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. The mission was to
explore, with leaders of the Orthodox Church, the basis for a possible
reconciliation of the Christian world then split between the Orthodox
and Catholic rites. But in his private writings, Cusanus tells us that
while in Constantinople, at the crossroads of East and West, he
encountered and was fascinated by other faiths as well. First he
encountered Armenian and Chaldean Christians and learned of their
equally ancient faiths which had established ecumenical liaisons with
the Orthodox Church while standing apart from it. But then he
discovered the world of Islam and it appears likely that during his
stay in the East he had exchanges with Islamic scholars about their
faith.
The Orthodox Church was at this time under great stress
due to the encroachment of Islamic realms, most immediately the rise of
the Turkish empire which had reduced Byzantium to little more than a
shadow of its former self. In the West, hopes were high that this
pressure could lead to a softening of the Eastern rite’s religious
differences and thus to reconciliation in a process that recognized the
supremacy of Rome. For most of the Christian world, Islam was
synonymous with tales of barbarism and brutality. Christian communities
were put to the sword or forced to convert. The Islamic faith was
associated deeply with the horrors of war, and its theology was little
understood and little studied. But Cusanus was fascinated by it. He
secured a Latin translation of the Quran and spent decades studying it.
Many Christian leaders in the West spoke of Islam in tones only of
hatred and horror. But that was never the case for Cusanus.
On
his return trip from Constantinople, Cusanus says he experienced a
mystical revelation which subsequently became the focus of his writing
and teaching. Cusanus’s writings are philosophical, complex and often
not easy to summarize. But here I want to note his relationship with
Islam and it requires some context. Cusanus was throughout his life a
powerful reconciler. He worked hard to surmount the differences that
had erupted between the Pope and the council within the church, and
between the Pope and the Emperor. He clamored for reform of the church,
identifying specific abuses in a fashion and in tones that are
strikingly similar to the Protestant reformers who followed one century
later—which has caused some to call Cusanus a “proto-Protestant.” He
was also one of the strongest voices within church circles calling for
reconciliation with the Orthodox Church. Hence, one of the hallmarks of
Cusanus’s thought was an aggressive ecumenism that stressed the
importance of shared values over the distinguishing features of custom
and rite.
But Cusanus’s drive for reconciliation did not stop
with Christianity. He pushes for closer relations with Jews and Muslims
as well and worked very hard to identify the religious elements which
were common to all the Abrahamic faiths.
His key writing in this
regard is
De pace fidei (On the Peace Born of Faith) from 1453. It is
fairly clear that specific news caused him to pause, put aside other
work, and write this book. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople finally fell
to the Turks and Byzantium came to an end. The news was greeted with
horror and dread throughout the Latin world. Here is what Æneus Sylvius
Piccolomini (later Pius II) wrote as the news reached Rome in July:
- "My
hand is shaking and my soul is paralysed by shock. But my disgust
doesn’t allow me to be silent and I can’t speak because of pain. Oh,
miserable Christianity!… Along with your sorrow, I have to mourn the
downfall of Christianity. I mourn the destruction and desecration of
the temple of Hagia Sophia, whose fame reaches around the world. I
mourn for the many holy churches which were wonderful buildings: now
they are subject to destruction and the dirt of Mohammed. Shall I talk
about the books which existed in large numbers and which were unknown
to the Latin West? Oh, how many names of great men are lost forever?
This is Homer’s second death and a second dying for Plato. Where shall
we find the spirit of philosophers and poets?… I see faith and culture
go down together."
Justo da Ghent, Pius II (1455)How fear and
the threats of war distort perception, then as now. The conqueror of
Constantinople, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, certainly put many
Christians to the sword (as they did many Muslims), and forced
conversions. But he has become known to posterity as a great patron of
the arts and sciences and a man strongly committed to the preservation
of the rich legacy of Byzantium, and a man who evidenced more tolerance
for Christians and their faith than the Orthodox rulers ever did for
his. In 1463, he issued his firman for the protection of Bosnian
Catholics, which the United Nations has named one of the oldest and
most important documents of official religious tolerance.
Still,
leaders throughout Christendom clamored for war, for a new crusade to
defeat the Muslims and drive them from Constantinople. Cusanus raised a
strong voice against this, arguing the accusations against the Turks
were overblown. Where for Piccolomini the Muslims obliterated the
culture of classical antiquity, for Cusanus they were a bridge to
understanding Aristotle and the preservers of the lost texts. Cusanus
questioned the war party; he called instead for reason, restraint and
tolerance. And the vehicle for his appeal was an amazing tractate, De
pace fidei. It is an extraordinary work, beginning to end.
Here’s the beginning:
- "News
of the atrocities, which have recently been perpetrated by the Turkish
king in Constantinople and have now been divulged, has so inflamed a
man who once saw that region, with zeal for God, that among many sighs
he asked the Creator of All if in His kindness He might moderate the
persecution, which raged more than usual on account of the diverse
religious rites. Then it occurred that after several days—indeed on
account of a lengthy, continuous meditation—a vision was manifested to
the zealous man, from which he concluded that it would be possible,
through the experience of a few wise men who are well acquainted with
all the diverse practices which are observed in religions across the
world, to find a unique and propitious concordance, and through this to
constitute a perpetual peace in religion upon the appropriate and true
course.
The man, is, of course, Cusanus himself. And the vision
he presents is extraordinary. Wise men (though “in truth they are not
men, but mentalities,” he says) assemble from around the
world—Christians, Jews, Muslims, and a Hindu—and plead with God to
resolve the differences that divide them. All seek Truth and recognize
and accept one God, who must indeed be the same God. Who, they demand
to know, has charted the best course? The subtext to their argument is
religious harmony and how may it be achieved, but it springs from a
realization that religious faith has given rise not simply to war, but
to a particularly virulent and inhumane form of warfare. The wise men
do not aim to end war, which they recognize is a constant of the human
experience, but they do aim to bring an end to religiously motivated
warfare. Their conversations search the faiths they represent for their
common threads and express skepticism about the importance of the
elements of ritual and custom that divide them. Humankind can achieve
one true religion with diverse rituals (una religio in rituum
diversitate), Cusanus writes.
What Cusanus therefore proposes is
tolerance. However, it is not the insulting sort of tolerance, which
proposes official indifference. Rather it is a tolerance that has its
roots in a philosophical commitment to the search for truth and a
recognition that human frailties and imperfections will always lead to
mistakes. “For it is a condition of the earthly human estate to mistake
for truth that which is merely long-adhered-to custom, indeed, even to
mistake this for a part of nature,” Cusanus writes (habet autem hoc
humana terrena condicio quod longa consuetudo, quæ in naturam transisse
accipitur, pro veritate defenditur.)
But how to reconcile faiths
so disparate? For Muslims, polygamy is an accepted practice; for
Christians, it is a crime. Christians embrace the notion of a trinity,
which Jews and Muslims deride as a vestige of a primitive polytheistic
past. For Muslims, paradise is unfolded as a place for carnal pleasures
with dark-skinned maidens granted to soldiers who have died in battle,
a prospect he says would be unappealing to the sober Christian who
aspires to leave behind the life of the flesh. Cusanus gives the answer
through the Apostle Paul: man achieves salvation on the basis of faith,
not works; these faiths are united in the tradition of Abraham, and
their common grounding provides a basis to surmount their differences.
The just spirit will achieve eternal life (anima justi hæreditabit
vitam æternam). He also adopts an anthropological perspective with
regards to customs and rites. They are instituted for important
purposes, perhaps, but their ultimate spiritual significance can well
be doubted, and their importance can become outlived. Thus a diversity
of rites presents no obstacle to the recognition of a common
fundamentally shared religion, particularly among the Abrahamic faiths.
Surely,
however, the author, a prince of the Roman Catholic church and arguably
the greatest theologian it produced in his era, does not distance
himself from the sacraments and their importance, and advocates Jesus
Christ as a personal intermediator and savior. But with equal clarity,
he has answered Rev. Graham’s question to Barack Obama, and the answer
he gives is identical to the one that Obama gave Graham (”Jesus is the
only way for me. I’m not in a position to judge other people.”)
Cusanus’s
vision may be the wild musings of a prelate at the end of an era; they
may even be driven by political practicalities—a recognition of the
rise of the Ottoman Empire and the short-term futility of efforts to
roll it back. But they seem filled with wisdom of immediate relevance
to our difficult times. They teach that humanity will always have
differing visions of the divine, because the visions will reflect the
position and perspective of the human communities that shape them.
Cusanus teaches that those who would live their lives with genuine
commitment to religious truth must never make religious differences the
pretext for war and human suffering. Moreover, the cardinal admonishes
us that the very diversity of faith, properly studied and understood,
can lead us to better know ourselves and the Divine, and thus lay the
foundation for a more lasting peace. This is the meaning of de pace
fidei.
Writings 
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