It’s pretty obvious who said this, but one thinks better of him for it anyway:<\/p>\n\n
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,<\/em> 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
Even the Pope, you see, knows that he should preface his speeches<\/a> with a joke. This is the one which is aerating Muslims all across the Middle East. It’s well worth reading, actually, both to get a flavour of the way that he actually thinks — and, boy, is he easier to read than the last one — and because it is a very clear statement of his beliefs about the relationship between science and faith. In particular, this …<\/p>\n\n
This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature’s capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
leading towards this<\/p>\n\n
modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought – to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: ‘It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being – but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss’. The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s pretty obvious who said this, but one thinks better of him for it anyway: 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 … Continue reading