The temptation of Pope Benedict

The phrase “dictatorship of relativism” is only four years old, yet it has already become part of ordinary discourse. Why? I can think of two main reasons. The first is that the occasion on which it was first uttered was highly significant: the last Mass before the cardinals went into conclave to elect a new pope after the death of John Paul II in 2005. The dean of the College of Cardinals, Joseph Ratzinger, delivered the homily. And as George Weigel observed at the time, it was anything but a “campaign speech.” As the best known and—at least by the media—best hated of the papabile, Cardinal Ratzinger’s chances of being elected would have been better served by eschewing controversy and playing down his reputation for unbending orthodoxy. Instead, the phrase was a ready-made sound bite that enabled a hostile press to cast him as the Grand Inquisitor, the ultra-conservative enemy of the secular world. But Cardinal Ratzinger did not mind what the world thought: He wanted his brother cardinals to know that, if they were minded to elect him, they would do so in full knowledge that, for him, this dictatorship was the greatest intellectual problem facing the Church; its overthrow was his own personal mission. That he was indeed elected naturally lent additional weight to these famous last words before the conclave.

The second reason why the “dictatorship of relativism” has caught on as a catchphrase is that it captured—with the utmost brevity—a threat or a temptation or a predicament that is perceived not only by cardinals, not only by Catholics, but also by countless other people of all faiths and none. For them, Western civilization seemed to have arrived at a point in history when its prosperity was developing at the same pace as the dissolution of the values that underlie that prosperity. With his reference to relativism, the future pope indicated that he had a distinctive diagnosis of the West’s intellectual malaise and had every intention of curing it, just as his predecessor had taken on the challenge of Marxism and emerged victorious.

What did Pope Benedict, then still Cardinal Ratzinger, say in that momentous sermon? “Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine [Ephesians 4:14], seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s ego and desires.”

By relativism, Benedict means not merely a philosophical theory, but a world view that embraces several elements: skepticism about the possibility of objective truth, or epistemological relativism; the denial of ethical norms, or moral relativism; the denial that Western, that is Judeo-Christian, civilization has any special status. More generally, he has in mind a very widespread attitude, even among Christians, that regards freedom and democracy as incompatible with the “fundamentalism” embodied in the Catholic Church. Biblical morality, even as interpreted to accord with the present-day limits of tolerance, is beyond the pale for the ultra-secularists.

But why does the Pope speak of a “dictatorship”? He has a good reason for alluding to the totalitarian systems of the twentieth century. For liberalism that is not anchored in natural law, that has no framework of values by which to identify the true and the good—a liberalism at the mercy of relativism—is bound to become illiberal.

Benedict’s critique of relativism emerged gradually over the period of nearly a quarter-century that he spent as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1981–2005). Relativism, he told Asian bishops in 1993, is “the gravest problem of our time” because it denies the very possibility of universal truth, above all the central tenets of Christianity: that “Jesus of Nazareth is … the incarnate meaning of history, the Logos, the self-manifestation of truth itself.” Relativism is thus the most insidious and plausible of heresies, because “it is presented as a position defined positively by the concepts of tolerance and knowledge through dialogue and freedom, concepts which would be limited if the existence of one valid truth for all were affirmed.”

Of course, relativism thus broadly defined has far-reaching intellectual consequences. It appears in the guise of “pluralist theology,” which treats Jesus merely as one religious genius among others and thereby abandons the entire basis of Christology and ecclesiology. “Dialogue” becomes “integral to the relativist credo and the antithesis of ‘conversion’ and mission.” Benedict observes that religious relativism embraces both the post-metaphysical philosophy of Europe and the negative theology of Asia, especially India:

The areligious and pragmatic relativism of Europe and America can borrow a kind of religious solemnity from India, which appears to give their renunciation of dogma the dignity of a higher respect for the mystery of God and man.

Relativist theology abandons orthodoxy in favor of “orthopraxis,” which in turn derives from the liberation theology of the 1980s. But the theology of relativism proves to be so empty that many Christians have turned to the modern mysticism known as New Age, a form of irrationalist escapism and yet another epiphenomenon of the relativist culture of the West.

Alongside his critique of relativism in theology, Cardinal Ratzinger also ventured into the political realm. In an article of 1992, Ratzinger contrasted two political theories. The first is radical relativism,

which excludes the concept of the good (and even more so that of truth) from politics as a danger to freedom. “Natural law” is rejected as suspiciously metaphysical, in order to apply relativism consistently. There is ultimately no other political principle apart from the decision of the majority, which takes the place of truth in the political realm.

Law and democracy are understood purely formally, with no content. The other political theory, the one that Ratzinger espouses, argues that truth is not a product of majorities, or even of politics:

It is not practice that creates truth, but truth that makes good practice possible. Politics only promotes justice and freedom when it serves a framework of values and rights that we derive from reason.

This confidence in the power of reason distinguishes the Christian position from the relativist or positivist one.

Ratzinger uses the confrontation of Jesus and Pilate to point up the difference between objective truth and relativism. This example acquires added gravitas from Pilate’s notorious question—“What is truth?” —which sums up the skeptical philosophy first elaborated in the ancient world by the sophists. Citing the interpretation of the Austrian jurist Hans Kelsen, Benedict shows how Pilate acts from a relativist point of view as a good democrat, refusing to decide the question of Jesus’s culpability except by putting it to the people. For Kelsen, the fact that an innocent man is thereby condemned to death is irrelevant: The majority embodies the only truth that matters in politics.

Ratzinger, however, prefers another interpretation of the Pilate scene, dating from 1932. Heinrich Schlier, a great Biblical scholar and an anti-Nazi, pointed out that Jesus acknowledges Pilate’s authority, but adds that this authority comes from God. The Roman governor ceases to act as custodian of his God-given authority by condemning the innocent Jesus for political—that is, selfish—reasons. Benedict then develops an entire critique of the relativist theory of politics from this act of judicial murder. He argues that the state must never attempt to create a paradise on earth, because this inevitably leads to the deification of the state. Only the dualisms of church and state, of God and man, make true freedom possible. The state must derive its values from beyond the political realm, and the relativist theory of democracy must for this reason ultimately break down.

In the course of this critique Ratzinger singles out the late Richard Rorty as the apologist for relativism par excellence. The Cardinal observes drily that Rorty’s relativism is inconsistent: Rorty claims that certain intuitive ideas, such as the rejection of slavery, are integral to democracy—despite the fact that for thousands of years slavery was taken for granted in all kinds of polities. For Ratzinger, it is the eschatological nature of the Church that ensures its respect for the secular state, but which also sets limits to the power of the state. If man must obey God first, and if his morality is not dictated by the state, then he is capable of resisting evil even when it is sanctioned by the state. “If we do not want to fall into the trap of totalitarianism again,” Ratzinger argues, “we must look beyond the state, which is only a part and not the whole.”

In 1999, in a lecture in Rome, Ratzinger developed this critique of the political consequences of relativism further, this time focusing on law. In a relativist culture, “law is exposed to the whim of the majority,” and laws that are inspired by the Christian tradition are progressively abolished: matrimony and the family are downgraded; relations between men and women or between old and young deteriorate; freedom of speech renders blasphemy routine; and life itself becomes disposable. Law itself loses its essential character if it is no longer rooted in a transcendent order. As an example of what can happen when Judeo-Christian values become detached from jurisprudence, Ratzinger recalls Nazi Germany, where law

was constantly castigated and placed in opposition to so-called healthy popular feeling. The Führer was successively declared the only source of law and, as a result, absolute power replaced law. The denigration of law never serves the cause of liberty, but is always an instrument of dictatorship.

For Cardinal Ratzinger, who was born into the Weimar Republic and grew to manhood under Hitler’s Reich, the dictatorship of relativism is not just a metaphor, but the basis for a real dictatorship, too—though he is always careful to acknowledge that the causal connections between politics and ideas are never simple.

At the time of his election in 2005, the “dictatorship of relativism” homily was seen as a declaration of intent, if not war. Since then, Benedict has returned to the subject regularly. “By its nature,” the Pope said, “relativism fails to see the whole picture. It ignores the very principles which enable us to live and flourish in unity, order, and harmony.” Relativism does not merely transform eternal values, such as truth, beauty, and goodness, into fleeting ephemera that pass as swiftly as man himself. Worse still, it leaves no room for God, and in particular for God incarnate. If Jesus Christ is Lord, then the relativist must deny his divinity: for consistent relativism entails agnosticism, if not atheism.

Thus, it is not surprising that Benedict’s most extended treatment of the problem of relativism since he became Pope is to be found in the multi-volume biography Jesus of Nazareth. It is possible to read the first—and so far only—published volume, which deals with Jesus’s ministry, as an extended dialogue with the Pope’s relativist adversary. Indeed, the word “adversary” is apposite: for Benedict sees the temptation to relativize the uniqueness of Jesus and his teaching, in the manner of many liberal scholars, as analogous to the tempting of Jesus himself during the forty days and nights in the wilderness.

For Benedict, the temptations of Jesus comes down to “the God question”: “Is he real, reality itself, or isn’t he? Is he good, or do we have to invent the good ourselves?” This is the question that relativism poses to the Christian—and hence also to Christ. The Devil, then, is a relativist. He first tempts the hungry Jesus to turn stones into bread, which evokes the rebuke: “Man does not live by bread alone.” This implies the rejection not only of Marxism, with its materialist promises, but also of Western aid programs and “the delusions of false philosophies.”

The second temptation, on top of the Temple, “takes the form of a dispute between two bible scholars,” with the Devil as the representative of

the modern world view, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history—that everything to do with God is to be relegated to the domain of subjectivity.

Once again, the relativist claim to replace God by making man the measure of all things is rejected: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”

The third temptation, on a high mountain, leads Benedict to a discussion of political versus spiritual power. He comes back to the scene with Pilate, when the mob chooses Barabbas, “a Messiah who leads an armed struggle, promises freedom and a kingdom of one’s own,” over Jesus, “who proclaims that losing oneself is the way to life. Is it any wonder that the crowds prefer Barabbas?” The diabolical relativist

is not so crude as to suggest to us directly that we should worship the Devil. He merely suggests that we opt for the reasonable decision, that we choose to give priority to a planned and thoroughly organized world, where God may have his place as a private concern but must not interfere in our essential purposes.

Jesus replies with another Biblical passage: “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” Benedict comments: “To the lying tempter’s divinization of power and prosperity … he responds with the fact that God is God, that God is man’s true Good.” The victory of Jesus over the Devil is also the victory of the absolute values of his “universalized Israel” over the culture of relativism.

Later in the book, Benedict returns again to the question that underlies the problem of relativism for the Christian: who is Jesus, and by whose authority does he teach? He asks: “Was Jesus in reality a liberal rabbi—a forerunner of Christian liberalism? Is the Christ of faith, and therefore the faith of the Church, just one big mistake?” His answer is that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus “stands before us as neither a rebel nor as a liberal, but as the prophetic interpreter of the Torah.” By fulfilling, not abolishing, the law, Jesus also rejects the possibility that God’s commandments may ever be relativized. The risen Lord is the living refutation of relativism.

As a case in point, Benedict takes one of the greatest parables, the Prodigal Son. This prodigal is not only a relativist—he is a libertarian too: “He seeks radical freedom. He wants to live only for himself, free of any other claim.” That quest ends in its opposite: The youth finds himself a swineherd: “The totally free man has become a wretched slave.” His conversion—for that is what it amounts to—leads him back to the father, to the objective truth and goodness that the relativist has rejected in favor of a false autonomy.

Let us turn finally to Benedict’s interpretation of the Transfiguration, the moment when the disciples are granted a glimpse of Jesus in all his glory on Mount Tabor. The Pope grasps the opportunity to confront the relativist argument, first advanced in the nineteenth century and now a commonplace of the bestseller list, that Jesus was just a great religious genius whose experience of God enables the rest of us to come closer to the numinous: “Ultimately, though, this notion of Jesus’ ‘experience of God’ remains purely relative and needs to be supplemented by the fragments of reality perceived by other great men.” Benedict rejects this subjective, relativistic view of Jesus’ identity as inadequate. Throughout his book and more generally in his pontificate, he seeks to rediscover what is unique about Christ, what brought his disciples—then and now—to recognize him, like doubting Thomas, as “My Lord and my God.” For Benedict, the only definitive response to the dictatorship of relativism is—Jesus Christ.

In 2004 Joseph Ratzinger held a public dialogue with Jürgen Habermas. To take on Habermas, the most celebrated philosopher in Europe, was a courageous decision; some even thought it foolhardy. Habermas had long seen himself as the champion of “methodological atheism,” following Marx and the Frankfurt School in claiming that modernity was inherently post-religious. Habermas is, as it were, the pope of secularism, but he had no answer to the question of how to justify the core values of the West, which derive from Christian roots, because his “methodological atheism” treats all values as merely relative, contingent, and negotiable. For Ratzinger, Judeo-Christian morality was not an arbitrary or disposable piece of theological scaffolding, but the sine qua non of our fundamental human rights and liberties. In its absence, Europe loses its defense against totalitarian ideologies of all kinds, whether atheist or Islamist, socialist or nationalist.

Habermas and Ratzinger both belong to the Flakhelfer generation: Germans who as teenagers were drafted into the auxiliary battalions of anti-aircraft gunners at the end of the Second World War. Neither man was old enough to warrant personal culpability for the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes against humanity, but both were exposed to their consequences at an impressionable age. There was, however, a difference. Jürgen Habermas’s father was head of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce, and was thus able to prevent his son, who was born with a cleft palate, from suffering the usual fate of children born with minor birth defects in the Third Reich. Joseph Ratzinger was born into a much humbler family—his father was a police officer—but they were anti-Nazi Catholics.

While Habermas has spent his whole life compensating for his Nazi background, Ratzinger’s life has unfolded as a harmonious whole. Habermas is a man who finds it almost impossible to overcome relativism because he is terrified of absolutes and so has nothing on which to ground his liberal values. For Benedict, the eternal, immutable values that we inherit from the Judeo-Christian tradition ultimately derive from God. These values are not only no threat to Western civilization; they are essential to its survival. The threat comes from those who pursue secularization at any price. The dictatorship of relativism is the essential prerequisite for the dictatorship of the race, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the dictatorship of Islam. That is why Western civilization, while it may not accept Pope Benedict’s invitation to return to its Judeo-Christian roots, needs to take seriously his diagnosis of the problem.

This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 27 Number 5, on page 23
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