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.
Note: The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional
- the fundamental postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, countering what they perfecived to be a philosophically-conditioned and corrupted Christianity with a wholesale reliance upon sola scriptura — “faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word”;
- the “liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. — Harnack positing a “return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message underneath the accretions of theology,” thereby bringing Christianity back into harmony with modern reason through the purging of its theological elements (the divinity of Christ and the Trinity). This is in accord with what Benedict describes as the “modern self-limitation of reason,” which confines itself to that which is scientifically (mathematically and emperically) verifiable — thereby dismissing as irrelevant (subjective) “the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics.”
- the proposition of “inculturation” — that, in light of experience with cultural pluralism, “the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures . . . [who] have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux.” To this Benedict responds:
The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.
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.
