QUESTIONS

Questions

Questions

Question 1: How did civilizations in the European West [AD 200-1600] develop the Catholic intellectual tradition?

The Catholic intellectual view of the universe, then, presupposed an underlying unity to the enquiries of each discipline into the various aspects of the material, natural, and social world. Because the Catholic intellectual tradition presupposes an underlying unity of the universe, it presupposes (in principle, if not always in fact) an underlying unity of the various disciplines, each of which contributes to an overall understanding of the nature of things (Sailen, 2010).

Over the centuries belief in God and in Jesus Christ has stimulated and sustained debate, discussion, and the construction of various intellectual positions on God and God's relation to the universe, and continuous inquiry into the meaning of human life. The disciplines in the modern Catholic university, in all their variety of sources, principles, and methods, are not, at least in principle, unrelated to one another because they all deal with a reality that has its foundation and destiny in God.

The Catholic intellectual tradition at the heart of a Catholic university presupposes a dialectical harmony between faith and reason. The relationship between faith and reason is dynamic (not static) because both faith and reason are involved in a mutual search for and reception of meaning and truth (Jones & Pennick, 1995). The inherited intellectual tradition grows at its edges by incorporating new questions and devising new answers. In this process, the tradition develops its understanding of itself without rejecting what previous generations have discovered to be true, just, beautiful, and holy. By saying that the relationship between faith and reason is dynamic and dialectical I am not describing, as an historian might, what actually takes place currently in Catholic higher education. I am saying that this is what motivates the creation and maintenance of these schools and what they take to be their specific or distinctive mission in higher education. Catholic universities do not always live up to this dialectical harmony of faith and reason, and the relationship is not always evident in their mission statements or in the universities' daily operations, but the ideal is real in the intentions of Catholic higher education and should be a guide to all intellectual activities and a goal to be achieved.

Question 2: How did Christian thinkers balance the wisdom from Greco-Roman thought with Christian theology, and what balance was developed between faith and reason?

Christian thought is rooted in the teachings of Jesus, and in the central documents of the Church: the (Hebrew) Old Testament and the (Greek) New Testament. These documents present a sacred history, proclaim the Christian “good news” of salvation, and give counsel and admonition on how a Christian ought to live. In character, they are decidedly not theoretical in tone - that is, they do not set out a systematic philosophy or theology or political theory - and were viewed both by the early church and by the surrounding society as sacred texts specific to the Christian sect (sometimes regarded as ...