Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
‘The Pope And the Koran’
Re: Daniel Pipes’ questioning of Pope Benedict’s analysis [“The Pope and the Interpretation of the Koran,” Foreign, January 17,2006]
The Pope’s statement that in Judaism and Christianity, it’s “not just the word of God, it’s the word of Isaiah,” and therefore these beliefs are more adaptable than Islam, does not account for beliefs such as biblical inerrancy, which holds the Bible to be divinely inspired, word for word (e.g., Franciscus Gomarus and Gijsbert Voetius, and a thriving Calvinist and post-Calvinist tradition).
Pope Benedict’s theology here is more particularly Roman Catholic than generically Christian. A fair part of Rabbinic tradition, I believe, also holds the Torah to be inerrant, down to the letters.
Even within the Catholic tradition, one may note the medieval and early modern iconography of St. Jerome translating the Bible into Latin, with his eyes to heaven as his hand writes – the implication being that he acted, as translator, solely as an instrument of God, not as a thinking, fallible human being.
Pope Benedict speaks for a powerful strain of Judaeo-Christian theology, but by no means for the totality of Judaeo-Christian belief.
DAVID RANDALL
Brooklyn
Please address letters intended for publication to the Editor of The New York Sun. Letters may be sent by e-mail to editor@nysun.com, facsimile to 212-608-7348, or post to 105 Chambers Street, New York City 10007. Please include a return address and daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited.
