*6.1. Absolute Truth and Fundamentalism*

Political and religious reality advocates caution, however, in unquestioningly accepting the above hypothesis. Certainly, absolutist claims to the truth and a strict order of power may be conducive to fundamentalist attitudes. Nevertheless, the religion which most explicitly carries absolutist claims—Catholicism—is not a particularly fertile soil for fundamentalism in the political sense of the term, despite the strict Catholic dogmatics, its monotheism, a single leader who provides the ultimate and binding interpretation of the truths of faith (see the dogma of papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals), as well as the hierarchical structure of power and subordination. Meanwhile, in the soil of Islam of Hinduism the phenomenon of fundamentalism thrives and prospers, even though they are religions without single dogmatics (in the case of Hinduism, it is even problematic to use the term orthodoxy), lacking a leader or even a single body to interpret the faith, with a scattered organisation of the faithful, and thus—as is sometimes said—much more democratic (Zenderowski and Wysocki 2014; Harrison 2008). One must thus conclude that the existence of absolute truth, or, to be more precise, belief in the universal validity and applicability of particular truths does not necessarily result in a kind of political fundamentalism.

The logic that identifies belief in the truth with fundamentalism is open to considerable theoretical doubt. If it were to be accepted, the term fundamentalist would have to be applied to all those who claim that their convictions are universally applicable—for example, the advocates of human rights, or scientists. The obvious absurdity of such a solution shows that linking fundamentalism only to the recognition of truth is problematic to say the least. It would mean that scientists—who are particularly committed to rationally substantiating their opinions and developing the understanding of the truth they discover—would be a model example of a fundamentalist mindset characterised by limited openness to discussion.

The above findings sugges<sup>t</sup> that we should reject the thesis that belief in universal truths present in a religious message represents in itself grounds for fundamentalism in the political sense. They also reveal another factor which may a ffect the fundamentalist potential of religion. Instead of faith in absolute truth, the criterion might be the relationship between faith and reason. A hypothesis may be proposed that fertile soil for fundamentalism may be provided by religions which not only claim to carry a universal truth (which is a constitutive element of nearly all religions as well as secular convictions concerning outlook), but which do not necessarily link it with the order of reason, or which are irrational by their very nature, and so, as pointed out by Gilles Kepel (1994), eluding the logic of reason. A doctrine more open to the *ratio*, in light of this hypothesis, would be less susceptible to becoming a soil for the "fundamentalist mindset" than a doctrine which says that the will of God or gods is not related to the category of rationality.

The above hypothesis may explain why so few fundamentalists are bred by Catholicism, while they thrive in the world of Islam and Hinduism, for example. This issue was mentioned by Benedict XVI during his well-known address in Regensburg. Citing the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, he pointed out that it was obvious for the Christian emperor that violence was incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. He stressed that "[t]he decisive statement in this argumen<sup>t</sup> against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature" (Benedict XVI 2006). Referring to the comment of Theodore Khoury, who pointed out that "[f]or the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident," he showed what he believed to be a fundamental di fference between the Christian tradition, where God is presented as *Logos* (word, reason), and the Muslim tradition, where God is not bound by the norms of human rationality. Only in this latter perspective it is possible to go so far as to state, as did Ibn Hazn, that "God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry" (Benedict XVI 2006).

Christianity, as a religion of *Logos* (cf. J 1), did not encounter the Greek thought by chance, as pointed out by Benedict XVI who says: "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" (Benedict XVI 2006). The originality of the work of Church Fathers consisted in the fact that they "fully welcomed reason which was open to the absolute, and they infused it with the richness drawn from Revelation" (John Paul II 1997, no. 41). From the perspective of the Catholic Church, this was not merely a meeting of cultures, but a metaphysical encounter; as John Paul II put it: a meeting "of creature and Creator." In its result, both faith and reason could rise, so to say, to a higher level: faith could build on reason, in which it found "a solid foundation for the perception of being, of the transcendent and of the absolute," as reason illuminated by faith is "set free from the fragility and limitations ... and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God" (John Paul II 1997, no. 41 and 43). As a consequence of this encounter, it is not possible in the light of the Catholic doctrine to e ffectively separate faith from reason. This was most emphatically stated already by Saint Anselm, who wrote, "as the right order requires us to believe the deep things of Christian faith before we undertake to discuss them by reason; so to my mind it appears a neglect if, after we are established in the faith, we do not seek to understand what we believe" (Anselm of Canterbury 2005).

This opening of faith to reason or, in fact, this fusion of faith and reason in the Catholic tradition also leads to a particular understanding of truth itself. Recognising the immutability of truth, the Catholic Church believes that truth is not static, it is not something that "we hold in our hands." Rather, it is seen as a gift from God, who keeps revealing himself to us. Consequently, its understanding is subject to continuous development, even though it is not subject to change. This conviction, present already in the first centuries of Christianity, is reflected well in a statement made by Saint Vincent, who explained, in the 5th century A.D., that "progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else" (Vincent of Lerins 1894, no. 54). He therefore compared faithfulness to the truth of Revelation to a living organism, "which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, ye<sup>t</sup> remains still the same" (Vincent of Lerins 1894, no. 55). A similar statement was made by Vladimir Solovyov, who emphasised on the grounds of the Orthodox tradition: "Just at it would be foolish, not seeing the trunk or branches, leaves or flowers in the seed, to conclude that all of this is an artificial, external addition rather than a growth from the seed itself, and therefore to reject the entire future tree in order to only keep the seed; so it would be equally foolish to reject more sophisticated, that is to say, more developed forms of God's grace in the Church and to stubbornly seek to return to the form of the early Christian communities" (Solovyov 1988, p. 96).

It is worth stressing here that the synthesis of Biblical faith and Hellenic rationality, characteristic of Christianity, is manifested in di fferent ways in its various currents. On the grounds of Christianity—together with Duns Scotus—the concept of voluntarism appeared and was later developed by Wilhelm Ockham, among others. It finally led to the claim that "we can only know God's *voluntas ordinata*. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done ... God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions" (Benedict XVI 2006). In Catholicism, this stance has never been accepted (Ockham himself was excommunicated by John XXII), and the Church has upheld its unequivocal belief in the "rationality" of God—the Logos. Ockham's logic has, however, left a significant mark on the Protestant tradition, which—through Martin Luther—embraces to a large extent the voluntarist view of God.

Educated in the spirit of nominalism, Luther radically dissented from Aristotle's philosophy, claiming that "he is to theology what darkness is to light. His ethics is the worst enemy of grace" (Maritain 1928, p. 15). In fact, he dissented from philosophy at large, claiming that reason was incompatible with faith (Maritain 1928, p. 16). Consequently, in practically all of its currents, Protestantism has criticised "philosophised theology" and—to a large extent deliberately—began the process of de-Hellenising Christianity (Szulakiewicz 2005, p. 184). As pointed out by Sławomir Springer, "Barth's battle against natural theology was a closure of the criticism, mounting since the times of F. Schleiermacher and Ritschl, which Evangelical theologians had raised against the traditional philosophical doctrine of God and against its use in the sphere of theology" (Springer 2010, p. 43). Worth mentioning is also the work of Adolf von Harnack, whose theology undermined the idea of dogma, seeing in it "the Greek spirit adopted by Christianity" (Szulakiewicz 2005, p. 186). Such an approach is a direct legacy of Luther, who, according to Maritain, claimed that "the use of reason in matters of faith, the claim to establish a coherent science of dogma ... by reasoning and the use of philosophy, in short, theology ... is an abominable scandal" (Maritain 1928, p. 16). We might add that even in those currents which do not advocate a liberal interpretation of the Scripture, Protestantism is marked by a "de-Hellenised" understanding of God. Let us take Søren Kierkegaard, for example, for whom "God is above morality" (Iwaszkiewicz 1972, p. XXXI) or, to refer to a less intellectually sophisticated interpretation of Protestantism, some of its American denominations marked by "an extremely anti-intellectual approach, only looking for an excuse to ... create a front between theology and science" (Zyci ´ ˙ nski 1998, p. 24).

Once we recognise the diversity in approaches to rationality within Christianity, we can better understand the radical di fference in the understanding of God we encounter in the context of Islam. The di fference is already manifest in the fact that the Quran—as pointed out by Norman Daniel—a book believed to be dictated by Allah, has a status similar not so much to that of the Bible in Christianity, but to that of Jesus himself (Weigel 2009, p. 183). While in Christian tradition understanding of Revelation does not end with the letter of the Scripture (though, obviously, it may not contradict it), the Quran is more of a final and definitive decree of God's truth. This significantly contributes to the development of a belief in "possessing the truth," and—ultimately—the usurpation of "God's prerogatives" since its full and literal message has been placed "in our hands."

It seems of key importance, however, that in the Quran the (early) surahs which talk about mercy, peace, and tolerance, are found directly alongside the (later) ones which "advocate violence—violence directed against those who do not share the Muslim faith" (Kłodkowski 2006, p. 105). Consequently, although it is possible to claim that the Quran "accepts with approval both religious pluralism and diversity" (Ayoub 2007), according to the rule of abrogation (Sulkowski 2018) and in view of the status enjoyed by the Quran, the logic of Islam enables the adoption of a voluntarist view of God. In the Muslim context, today's jihadists or the ISIS fighters seem to be the faithful heirs of Ibn Hazn. As pointed out by George Weigel, the essence of their logic lies precisely in the identification of God as Absolute Will. Consequently, "jihadists are, within their own frame of reference, justified in believing that God can command anything—even the irrational. And so ... they believe that the murder of innocents is not simply morally acceptable, but morally required, if such murders advance the cause of Islam" (Weigel 2009, p. 59). In fact, the problem runs deeper, although it would be hard to challenge their interpretation of Islam based on the revelation of the Quran since it does not necessarily link God's will with the categories of human rationality.

A di fferent kind of source for a voluntarist view of God is to be found in Hindu tradition. As it is well known, Hinduism is a religion of rich mythology, without consistent doctrine or even scriptural canon (Chiriyankadath 2010), which also means that is "paradoxical—often self-contradicting—in a number of ways on its foundational concept of God" (Zenderowski and Wysocki 2014, p. 8). Hindu mythology is understood "to have developed the idea of a divine triad in the earliest times that governs over everything. The triad emerged as an influence of the solar cults of India and had di fferent deities in it during the Vedic Age. However, in the last thousand years of the Indian religious tradition, the universally governing triad has consisted of Brahma, Vi´snu, and ¯ Siva—'the creator', 'the cherisher,' ´ and 'the destroyer.' These three persons of the Godhead are coequal and are therefore worshipped as three faces of the same God. The Sanskrit expression for the Hindu triad is Tri Murt ¯ ¯ı Eko Deva, 'three faces, one God'" (Waqas 2015, pp. 9–10). The very fact that God could be at the same time a creator and a destroyer shows the challenge present in Hindu tradition to link God's will with the categories of human rationality, which *inter alia* refers to the law of no contradiction.

Even without going into detailed analysis of every religious tradition, the remarks above prove a need for critical reflection on the relation between belief in the absolute truth and fundamentalism in the political sense of that term. It seems that fertile soil for fundamentalism tends to be provided by religions which do not necessarily link their truths with the order of reason, grounding, in di fferent ways, a voluntarist view of God rather than by belief in universal truth. Theory focused on relation between *credo* and *ratio* much better explains empirical observations, which suggests that the fundamentalist potential of Islam or Hinduism is profoundly higher than that of Christianity, and of Catholicism in particular.
