Theology of Pope Benedict XVI - Theology, Science and The Dialogue With Other Cultures

Theology, Science and The Dialogue With Other Cultures

See also: Regensburg Lecture

In an address to the faculty at the University of Regensburg, Germany, Benedict discussed the preconditions for an effective dialogue with Islam and other cultures. This requires a review of theology and science. The Pope considers the modern concept of science too narrow in the long run, because it allows the determination of "certainty" only from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements. "Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of science".

This limited view of scientific method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. 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.

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby —Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg Lecture

Benedict acknowledges "unreservedly" the many positive aspects of modern science, and considers the quest for truth as essential to the Christian spirit, but he favours a broadening our narrow concept of reason and its application to include philosophical and theological experiences, not only as an aim in itself but so we may enter as a culture the dialogue with the other religions and cultures from a broader perspective:

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. —Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg Lecture

This objective of Pope Benedict XVI has so far not been widely reviewed.