Sunday, October 20, 2013

Theology as a scientia

"such a compromise between religious parties, as is involved in the establishment of a University which makes no religious profession, implies that those parties severally consider,—not indeed that their own respective opinions are trifles in a moral and practical point of view—of course not; but certainly as much as this, that they are not knowledge.  Did they in their hearts believe that their private views of religion, whatever they are, were absolutely and objectively true, it is inconceivable that they would so insult them as to consent to their omission in an Institution which is bound, from the nature of the case—from its very idea and its name—to make a profession of all sorts of knowledge whatever."

     John Henry Newman, The idea of a university defined and illustrated, Discourse II.1 (ed. I. T. Ker (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1976), 35).

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