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Holiness and the Times

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

Extract

The function of the philosopher, or part of it, is to explain in terms of his system, the mysteries of time and space. The function of the scientist, or part of it, is to explore increasingly efficient techniques for manipulating time and space. The function of the theologian is to transmit a reasonable account of revealed religious doctrine and practice to all men, irrespective of time and space. As Karl Adam particularizes it for our own times the aim of theology is to ‘render the spirit of Catholicism intelligible to the contemporary mind'. (Sidelights, Sheed & Ward, p. 2.) Sometimes the theologian is distracted, sometimes disquieted by what is happening about him in the schools of the philosophers and in the laboratories of the scientists. Considering amplitude of his task, it ought not to cause undue surprise if, occasionally, he seems neglectful of spatio-temporal affairs which loom so large in the minds of everybody else. Yet to him also, time and space are amongst the mysteries of human existence, though not what calls ‘entitatively supernatural’ mysteries.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1955 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

A paper read at the Life of the Spirit Conference, 'Science and Sanctity', September' 1954.

'Crescat igitur oportet et multum vehementerque proficiat tam singulorum quam omnium, tam unius hominis quam totius ecclesiae, aetatum et saeculorum gradibus, intelligentia, scientia, sapientia, sed in uno durataxat genere, in eodem sensu, eademque sententia'. (Vincent of Lerins, Commonit. an. 434, ch. 23 Rj 2174.)