The critique of religion as myth of the Greeks and Israel

To consider religion as something irrational, according to Benedict XVI, is entirely inconsistent with our whole Western and Christian history. In fact, both Greek thought and the Jewish religion, as well as Christianity, of course, rejected the vision of religion as myth and conceived religion as knowledge and God as Logos.[8]

Let us take a brief look at Greek thought. If we examine the Greek religions of "the mysteries" and even the Olympic religion, we find the characteristic features of the pre-rational myth: mysterious and unfathomable forces, arcane, obscure, underground impulses, the arbitrariness of the gods where the same human action can be either good or bad depending on the deity, man's struggle to placate divine wrath and exorcize these unforeseeable forces.

Nevertheless, Ionian Physics search for the "Arché," which is the nomos that transforms a chaos into a cosmos, the Pythagoreans say that everything is measure and for Anaxagoras a distinct and highly noble pure Mind rules all things. In Plato's Euthyphro, Socrates asks Euthyphro what holiness is and when an action can be said to be holy. Euthyphro answers that holiness is that which is dear to the gods. However, Socrates notes that different things are dear to different gods and then asks the crucial question: "The holy is holy because it is dear to the gods or is dear to the gods because it is holy?"

In the first case, the gods are arbitrary, in the second case they are connected with truth and good. As we can see, the issue raised by Benedict XVI in Regensburg, using a quotation from Manuel II Paleologus, emperor of Constantinople -- "not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature"[9] -- has deep and ancient roots. Socrates' question raises the issue of whether the gods are capricious and arbitrary like acrobats and jugglers or whether they follow the good and the truth.

Euthyphro does not answer, but the path had been opened by Socrates and will be ratified by Plato: "The gods are not magicians who transform themselves, neither do they deceive mankind in any way" ("The Republic," II, 376 c). Therefore Greek philosophy detaches itself from myth and definitely turns to God as Logos. For Aristotle, the supersensible Substance is Intelligence that eternally grasps itself. The world has an order that is transparent to reason and reason can know it because the gods are rational and act according to truth, as Plato's Demiurge, who does not mould and shape things at random, but drawing inspiration from the truth of eternal forms.

If we look at the Jewish religion, we find the same path.[10] The "God of the Fathers" Israel looks to is not a local or a political god, he is not Baal nor Moloch. He is "he who is," he who existed before all powers and will continue to exist even after them. The God of Abraham is not fixed in one place but is everywhere. He is not linked to any specificity, he does not depend from a people, he does not even depend from the Temple, he does not need sacrifices. He is the Spirit of which the world is a reflection, he is the Spirit that is capable of creating matter.[11] Just as Greek philosophy surpasses itself and goes beyond its own religion of myth, the faith of Israel saves him from belonging to a people.

For all these reasons, Benedict XVI said at Regensburg that there is a profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God.

Christianity was the ultimate synthesis of all this: For the Gospel of St. John, Jesus is the Logos, he is the spirit of God that created all things. Christianity does not borrow from the many religions of the time, the religions of the myth, but presents us with God-truth reconnecting directly with Greek thought and developing the experience of Israel. It relates "to that divine presence which can be perceived by the rational analysis of reality … In Christianity, rationality became religion."[12]