God, the University, and the Missing Link—Wisdom: Reflections on Two Untimely Books

The Thomist 73 (2009): 241-77 GOD, THE UNIVERSITY, AND THE MISSING LINKWISDOM : REFLECTIONS ON TWO UNTIMELY BOOKS REINHARD HUTIER Duke University Durham, North Carolina Without the Creator the creature would disappear.... But when God is forgotten the creature itself grows unintelligible.1 POPE BENEDICT XVI, in his famous lecture at the University of Regensburg on 12 September 2006, "Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections," makes this programmatic statement about reason and the modern university: The scientific ethos, moreover, is ... the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically falsifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.2 1 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes, no. 36, as cited in Pope John Paul H's encyclical letter Evangelium vitae, no. 22. 2 Available on the Vatican web site (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/ spe eches/2 006/sep ternbe rIdocuments/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20 060912_universityregensburg_en .html). 241 242 REINHARD HUTTER Quite obviously, and not unlike his predecessor Pope John Paul II,3 Pope Benedict has a keen interest in the modern university. In an equally important speech composed for the university "La Sapienza"-once the pope's own university in Rome, today a secular Roman university-a speech that was, however, never to be delivered, because the invitation to the Holy Father was withdrawn at the last moment, the pope points even more explicitly to a danger facing reason and consequently also the university in the Western world: The danger for the Western world-to speak only of this-is that today, precisely because of the greatness of his knowledge and power, man will fail to face up to the question of the truth. This would mean at the same time that reason would ultimately bow to the pressure of interests and the attraction of utility, constrained to recognize this as the ultimate criterion. To put it from the point of view of the structure ofthe university: there is a danger that philosophy, no longer considering itself capable of its true task, will degenerate into positivism; and that theology, with its message addressed to reason, will be limited to the private sphere of a more or less numerous group. Yet if reason, out of concern for its alleged purity, becomes deaf to the great message that comes to it from Christian faith and wisdom, then it withers like a tree whose roots can no longer reach the waters that give it life. It loses the courage for truth and thus becomes not greater but smaller.4 In his Regensburg lecture, Pope Benedict makes a case for theology belonging to the very heart of what a university is about; in his lecture for "La Sapenzia" he makes a similar case for philosophy. Only if theology and philosophy occupy an indispensable central role in the structure of the university will the 3 See The Whole Truth about Man: John Paul II to University Faculties and Students, ed. James V. Schall, S.J. (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1981). 4 Available on the Vatican web site: (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/ speeches/2008/january/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080117_la-sapienza_en.html). Itis not just popes who come to rather drastic judgments of this kind. The president of Viadrina European University in Frankfurt (Oder), Prof. Dr. Gesine Schwan, a political scientist and highly respected public figure of German cultural and political...