» Benedict's Defense of Reason with Faith at the University
Peter Lawler at No Left Turns points out a lecture Pope Benedict gave the other day, titled "The Best of Greek Thought Is “An Integral Part of Christian Faith". Says Lawler on it:
At any rate, on another note, here is a snippet from Benedict's beginning regarding what a university used to be:
Here is a link to the speech at the Holy See's website. Evidently a more academic version, with footnotes, is forthcoming.
UPDATE: I see that Lawler's posting has prompted some very interesting comments and bed analogies....
Here is Pope Benedict XVI’s (Joseph Ratzinger’s) account of the integral place of Greek philosophy in Christian faith, including an account of the disastrous effects "the process of dehellenization" has had on that faith. His conclusion: "The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur--this is the program with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time....It is to this great ’logos,’ to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university."It looks good. If Lawler is correct, Benedict appears to be challenging people like N.T. Wright, whose project is, in part, peeling back the Hellenization of Judiasm so as to have a more Jewish understanding of Christ and Paul.
At any rate, on another note, here is a snippet from Benedict's beginning regarding what a university used to be:
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.
Here is a link to the speech at the Holy See's website. Evidently a more academic version, with footnotes, is forthcoming.
UPDATE: I see that Lawler's posting has prompted some very interesting comments and bed analogies....
» Waugh's Black Mischief
Mark Falcoff at AEI reviews ("Waugh's Postcolonial Studies") a hard-to-find Waugh novel, Black Mischief (1932). It is a fable set in the make-believe African island of Azania, concerned with the attempt of certain western idealists trying to modernize a backward country. As Falcoff says, it is a lot funnier seeing how closely recent history has followed Waugh's fable.An excerpt from its beginning:
We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of the Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford. . . .An excerpt from Falcoff's review:
Most Americans know of the British novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)--if they know him at all--from the television series based on his Brideshead Revisited, a country house fantasy which held public television viewers in the United States in deep thrall for weeks on end two decades ago. Although Waugh intended Brideshead to be a deeply serious novel with a religious theme, its film version resembled nothing so much as an opulent advertisement for the British Tourist Authority. Indeed, if the Brideshead series were all one knew of Waugh, one would never suspect that he was one of the least provincial of English writers. In fact, much of his work deals with the point at which European civilization and colonial or semi-colonial societies met head on--usually to their mutual incomprehension.ht: Scott at Powerline)
