In A Lecture On Islam, Küng Proclaims The True Faith: The Enlightenment
Hans Küng is an interesting figure. Early on in his career, he produced some fine theological works – his study on Karl Barth was recognized as an important Catholic work on Barth. However, as has become apparent throughout his life, his theological problem is the same as many others: he over-idealizes the advances of the Enlightenment, and uses its ideals to judge and criticize religious tradition. He doesn’t use it to only become self-critical within Catholicism, but he also uses it to engage and criticize any and all world religions. Obviously, elements of the Enlightenment helped provide important correctives in society, but, if the Enlightenment project is followed through to the end, not only does the positive value of religious difference vanish, but also the kinds of things the Enlightenment wanted to remove, such as the intolerance which leads to violence, return. But now they are far worse than before, because they have been entirely secularized. After all, once grace and the supernatural underpinnings of society have been removed, then what happens in the world, such as the rise of violent nationalism leading to world wars, is difficult if not impossible to overcome.
It is because of this that one needs to pay careful attention of Küng’s criticism of Islam in a recent speech in London. His criticism of Islam is simple: it’s “stuck in the Middle Ages,” and it has not gone through the reforms of the Enlightenment. Apparently, he is not sure whether or not Islam could last through such reforms (despite the fact that many Muslim scholars are already pushing for it, as I previously reported). Of course, one could wonder if any religion could last a complete embrace of the Enlightenment (just look at the United States: the secular philosophy of the Enlightenment, replacing religious sensibilities with politics, has crippled Christianity from within, turning Christians to political partisanship as the means to live out their faith). Indeed, one can say, if one completely takes on and agrees with the Enlightenment project, revelation ends, and dogma ends up being jettisoned. It’s no wonder that those who follow the Enlightenment, in whatever religious tradition they come from, sound more like one another than they do as members of a particular religious faith.
Nonetheless, I found much of what Küng said, according to the TimesOnline article on the lecture, to be interesting and worthy of note. Not because I agree with him (although, I think there are elements of what he said anyone could agree with), but because I think he presents and shows us what the end product of a Catholic engagement with the Enlightenment is like. The outcome of his theological work should become a warning: something is wrong with the Enlightenment, and a careless, uncritical embrace of its doctrines can only destroy religion, not build it up.
Küng tries to make links between traditional Catholicism with Islam. In doing this, I think we can find his true target in this speech, and it is not Islam. It’s about Western society and his fight with traditional Catholic theology because it has rejected his own theological project. He is using Islam as a tool to criticize the Catholic hierarchy and its embrace of tradition. Thus, he wants people to believe that an embrace of tradition makes one ”trapped in the Middle Ages.” Now look at Islam. It’s also trapped in the Middle Ages. We don’t like what we see in Islam, so why should we follow their example and look to the past and be trapped by its ways of thought? The best thing to do is become “liberal” and follow the Enlightenment. Just look at what good it has done for Christianity and Judaism:
“After the Reformation, Christianity had to undergo another paradigm shift, that of the Enlightenment. Judaism, after the French Revolution and Napoleon, experienced the Enlightenment first, and as a consequence, at least in Reform Judaism, it experienced also a religious reformation. Islam, however, has not undergone a serious religious reformation and so to the present day has quite special problems also with modernity and its core components, freedom of conscience and religion, human rights, tolerance, democracy.” (TimesOnline)
Of course, freedom of conscience and religion, human rights, and tolerance at least were also Catholic ideals in the “Middle Ages.” They might not have always been lived out, but are they really lived out today? And if one reads the writings of Bl. Raymund Lull or Nicholas of Cusa, for example, one will find out how such values come from Catholic tradition, and not the Enlightenment. And, I must say, the Enlightenment with its criticism of religion demonstrates that its so-called “tolerance” goes only so far.
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Kung is at times guilty of a crudely Kuhnian approach: one minute everyone is one thing, and then, Whoops!, it;s a paradigm shift, and now everyone is, or ought to be, something else! I find the whole approach dreadfully simplistic, no matter how much learning and detail he may use to fill it out, such stuff is vitiated by a flawed framework.
One should also point out, and I hope this is not a cheap shot, Kung’s friendship with war criminal Tony Blair. Here, in a very amusing irony, Kung is on the right, and Ratzinger is on the left. You just couldn’t make it up.
Stuart
You are right here: the Enlightenment approach, as a whole, I think tends to follow this format and this kind of over-simplification. It’s why it is amazing that so many “neo-conservative” authors or influences on the movement in Catholic circles are engaging the Enlightenment and obeying its dictates without any significant critical work to limit the dark underbelly of the Enlightenment. Just look at how many of them love contemporary “apologetics”– it’s very much in the style and approach developed by the Enlightenment, and like as you said about Kung, it simplifies things way too much because of it. Nonetheless, I would also point out that many of those who mock and ridicule Kung are just starting on the path he his been taking for decades, and I would expect their end, unless they become more critical, will be the same.
After I wrote my post, I thought I could have — and probably should have — mentioned that extreme “fundamentalist” Muslims have, in my mind, taken on elements of the Enlightenment, something which is often neglected in these debates; but these elements are those which were learned from the colonial powers such as nationalism. I even think their own “apologetics,” like so many Catholic kinds, is employing an Enlightenment methodology, and it explains why the fundamentalists love apologetics. It creates an easy truth and an easy, reductionistic, approach towards others in order to criticize them. Such of course is common with their debates with the West. The West is reduced to all that is bad and amoral, therefore, all that is within is to be rejected outright.
As a side note, what I said must not be seen as a complete rejection of what has come out of the Enlightenment. There was much which was said which was needed. But like all such developments, one must adapt with care, learn with care, because within its core, are problems which manifest themselves in the world today and will not be rid of until these aspects of the Enlightenment are overcome.
“It is amazing that so many “neo-conservative” authors or influences on the movement in Catholic circles are engaging the Enlightenment and obeying its dictates without any significant critical work to limit the dark underbelly of the Enlightenment”
When I read this blog post, I was thinking how Kung sounds a lot like George Weigel:
http://kevinjjones.blogspot.com/2008/02/weigel-summarizes-benedict-on-islam.html
One can argue that even the beneficient aspects of the Enlightement spirit have demoralized Europe and rendered it more vulnerable to Islamic radicalism. If “Enlightenment values” really end in decadence after only a few centuries of influence, a culture would have to be suicidal to embrace them willingly.
Kung, please note, wrote a very long book on Islam last year, so his words should carry some weight. And of course he is right to uphold Enlightenment values, which are being reneged on by fundamentalists and conservative Catholics and Anglicans. It is refreshing to find a theologian who does not get a thrill of intellectual snobbery out of dissing the Enlightenment. Sapere aude!
I’ve met Kung in person. I don’t agree with everything he says, and I think he has embraced a “rationalism” which closes itself off from revelation, from grace. However, I also think he has some important things to say; I’ve not denied that.
I even think the Enlightenment has important things to say. But we must not look or examine it uncritically, just like we shouldn’t look or examine other traditions uncritically. The rise of nationalism, the rise of capitalism, the rise of industrialization and the idea of humanity over nature instead of as steward of creation I think are examples of problems which came out of the Enlightenment.
Kevin
Right. I thought the same thing when I read what he had to say. You caught on with one of the important parts of my post.
I think there is a lot of uncritical acceptance of assumptions from the Enlightenment in our society, especially by Christians who should know better. In part, I think, it is because of the assumption that the “American way” is founded upon Christian principles. Elements of it are, even as elements of the Enlightenment come out of Christian philosophy. But this should not blind us to its problems. We should be willing to criticize the errors of America and its foundations, instead of looking at its origin as some sort of utopia which must be imitated today. But I think this explains why people, like Michael Novak, who look to America as the ultimate representation of a Christian political state, are quick to accept the Enlightenment without sufficient pause.
Of course, I am not saying we need to reject all of the Enlightenment, but to look at it with eyes of faith, to see how it can help the faith, but also to see how it is deficient and why it must not be embraced without a critical adaptation (the kind St Thomas Aquinas was able to do with Aristotle).
“The rise of nationalism, the rise of capitalism, the rise of industrialization and the idea of humanity over nature instead of as steward of creation I think are examples of problems which came out of the Enlightenment.”
By promoting freedom of opinion and freedom of expression as human rights the Enlightenment put us in a better position to address these problems, as Kung in fact does.