In 2006, Pope Benedict came under intense criticism for citing the harsh words of a fourteenth-century Byzantine emperor about Islam.  The Pope’s point was to highlight the importance of Greek philosophy in the Christian tradition.  He cited the following passage from the emperor’s dialog with a Persian Muslim: “‘God,’ he says, ‘is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably ( sun logo ) is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats . . . To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death.’”

He observed: “The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state 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.”  He asked, “Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God.”  He elaborated by citing John 1.

I don’t think there is “profound harmony” here.

There is certainly a terminological overlap, and there is harmony in the sense that both the Greek philosophers and John believe that the world is ordered by logos and that human life should be so ordered.  But the substance of that logos is quite different.  The deeper you go the less harmony there is.

For John, logos is word, the creative word of the Almighty Creator, that orders the world, and for John that creative Word is the God-with-God who has become flesh in Jesus Christ.  The reason why acting kata logou is contrary to God’s nature is that Father has an eternal Word that is consubstantial with Him and proper to His being.  The response to the Islamic idea that God is not bound by His own word is that God is His word, and His word is God.  The assurance that God will not command idolatry is that God’s will is exhaustively expressed in the Word that is God-with-God.

That is to say, “It is wrong not to act sun logo ” is a Christological statement.