REMARKS TO TUEBINGEN THEOLOGIANS, 3/21/07
My dear Bishop,
Respected Dean,
My honorable colleagues, if I may call you that!
I thank you all for this visit and I must say that I truly rejoice in my heart. An encounter with one's own past is always beautiful because there is something youthening about it. But this is more than just a nostalgic encounter.
You, dear Bishop, said yourself that it is also a sign of how much theology means to me - how can it be otherwise, when I truly saw it my calling to be a professor, although the dear Lord then suddenly willed something else for me.
But likewise, it is a sign on your part that you see the inner unity between theological research, theological learning and work, with pastoral service in the Church, and thereby the entirety of the Church's efforts in behalf of mankind, the world and our future.
Naturally, I began yesterday to rummage through my memories in preparation for this meeting. And something came to mind that goes well with what you, Dear Dean, have expressed, namely, remembering the Great Senate. I don't know if today, all academic nominations still go through the Great Senate.
It was very interesting then when, let us say, a chair for mathematics had to be filled, or for Assyriology or Solid-State Physics, or whatever, other faculties had little to say about it, and everything was resolved fast because hardly anyone dared to speak out.
But it was different with the the spiritual sciences. And in the theological chairs in both faculties, everyone had a say and one could see that every professor in the University considered himself to have some competence about theology, so they felt they could and should participate in the decision-making; that theology was really so close to their own heart that you would think, on the one hand, that our colleagues from the other faculties considered theology the centerpiece of the University, and on the other, that theology was something that seemed to concern and involve everyone and for which they all believed they had some competence.
In other words, when I think about it, the very dispute over a professorial chair in theology was in itself an experience of the university as university. I am happy to note that these cooptations [
in this sense, it means 'election of new members into a body by the members of that body itself'] still exist, stronger than ever, although Tuebingen has always been very good at this.
I don't know whether Leibniz College to which I belonged still exists, but in any case, there is a risk that the modern university becomes just a collection of faculties, which are bound more by external institutional ties, than by that inner unity of which a
universitas should build on.
Theology was obviously a subject in which
universitas was present, which demonstrated that everything belongs together, with an underlying common question, common task, and common purpose. One can see in this, I think, a high respect for theology.
In these days - when in some Latin states, the secularism of the State and state institutions is emphasized to the extreme, excluding everything that has to do with Church, Christianity and faith - I think it is obvious that there is a nexus from which the complex we call theology (which fundamentally has to do with church and faith and Christianity) cannot be separated, and that Christian questions, Christian thought and Christian answers must be made clear in the context of our present realities in Europe, as secular as they may and should be, in certain aspects.
And so, while on the one hand, theology must continue to contribute to what
universitas really means, it also has the enormous task of satisfying expectations, of being up to fulfilling the task that it is entrusted with.
I am happy to learn that meanwhile, the cooptation system makes concrete - much more than before - how intra-university discussion lets the university be what it should be, held together by a process of questioning and answering together.
But it is also an occasion to consider how capable we theologians are, not only in Tuebingen but elsewhere, to do what is expected of us. Because the university, society, mankind need to ask questions but they also require answers.
And I believe that, not only for theology, there must be a certain dialectic between the strictly scientific and the always insistent and transcendent larger questions about truth.
I would like to make this clear with an example. An exegete who interprets Sacred Scripture must look at it as a historical work 'secumdum artem', that is according to the strict science that we know, according to its historical components as required, and with all the methodology necessary. But all that together still does not make him a theologian.
If that was all there was to it, then theology, or at least, Bible interpretation, would be similar to Egyptology or Assyriology or similar specialization.
In order to be a theologian and render the service to the university - and I daresay, to mankind - that is expected of a theologian, he must also ask: Is that really true, what it says? And if it is, does it concern us? How does it concern us? And how can we know that it is true and that it concerns us?
I think that in this sense, theology, while remaining a science, is answerable for things over and beyond the concerns of science. The university, humanity, needs questions.
If there are no questions asked - those that touch on the essential and transcend any specialization - then we will not come up with answers. Only when we ask questions and in a radical way - as radical as theology should be, beyond specialization - can we hope to get answers to the fundamental questions that concern us all. But first we must ask. He who does not ask will not get annswers.
But I must add that
in theology, the courage to ask must be accompanied by the humility to listen to the answers that our Christian faith gives us, the humility to understand the reason in these answers, so that we in turn can make these answers accessible to others for our time. And so, not only do we help constitute the university, we also help others to live. And in this task, I wish you all God's blessings.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/04/2007 1.09]