Faith, Reason, the University, and Dehellenization
20 / 02 / 2009
In light of the growing experience of “cultural pluralism, the synthesis with Hellenism was a preliminary enculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures.
- At the heart of Pope Benedict XVI’s on the world’s need for a renewed dialogue between faith and reason (see CNA article here) was an attack on the “theology” of jihad as well as a look at the destructive role that liberal theology and the theology of Reformation have had on Christian thought.
Pope Benedict XVI told professors and students at the University of Regensburg that, “only if reason and faith come together in a new way” can mankind face the dangerous possibilities now facing it.
Following a series of musical performances, by the university’s choirs and orchestra, the Pope began what he described as a “moving experience” by reflecting on his life in the academy. The Pope mentioned his time at the University of Bonn in 1959, when, he said, the university as a whole was open to raising the question of God through the use of reason, in the context of the Christian tradition. The Pope said such an open interplay between the various faculties is necessary.
Here is Pope Benedict XVI’s address to the University:
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to stand and give a lecture at this university podium once again. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. This was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas: the reality that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason – this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the “whole” of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on – perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara – by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur’an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship of the “three Laws”: the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur’an. In this lecture I would like to discuss only one point – itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself – which, in the context of the issue of “faith and reason”, I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
Source: Faith, Reason, the University, and Dehellenization
20 / 02 / 2009 | Tags: Christianity, DEHELLENIZATION, Europe, Faith, Hellenism, question of god |
Ανεξάρτητο κίνημα ελεύθερα σκεπτόμενων πολιτών με ένα κοινό όνειρο: ένα καλύτερο κόσμο εμπνευσμένο από τα Ελληνικά ιδεώδη που γέννησαν πολιτισμούς: την Ελευθερία, την Άμεση Δημοκρατία, την Δικαιοσύνη, τον Ανθρωπισμό, την Λογική και την συνεχή Επιδίωξη της Αριστείας.
