Etter pave Benedikts mye omtalte foredrag i Tyskland om fornuftens plass i Gudsforholdet – der han også kort nevnte islams gudsbilde og profeten Muhammed – ser vi nå spirene til en samtale mellom muslimske og katolske teologer.
De to som så langt har samtalt om dette er katolikken Alessandro Martinetti og muslimen Aref Ali Nayed. Forskjellen i Gudsbildet er at muslimer hevder at Gud ikke er bundet av noe, heller ikke av fornuften, men slik kan aldri en kristen uttrykke seg.
Nayed skriver bl.a.: The Pontiff is striving to convince a secular university that theology has a place in that reason-based setting. However, this should not go so far as to make God subject to an externally-binding reason. Most major Christian theologians, even the reason-loving [Thomas] Aquinas never put reason above God.»
Martinetti svarer så: In Nayed’s view, then, saint Thomas “never put reason above God.” But not placing reason above God is not the same thing as asserting, as Nayed does, that “God is not externally bound by anything, including reason,” and that reason “can be a grace of God that is normative because of God’s own free commitment to acting consistently with it.”