WITHIN a tradition of teaching and learning, the wisdom of former generations all too easily becomes absolutised. When young people are taught ‘what Plato said’ or ‘what Aristotle said’ rather than learning to enter into a Socratic or a Platonic or an Aristotelian style of questioning, this is a huge loss. They have not learned the most important lesson they could take from the great thinkers: how to ask questions, how to enter into dialogue. This is hugely disabling for the practice of any discipline, but the focus in this chapter will be specifically on theology. I shall be contending that the Western tradition of theological learning, as taught at Liverpool Hope, is a tradition in which the dialogical questioning of Scripture and the dialogical questioning of Greek philosophy were brought together. It is an open tradition of dialogical wisdom, and in an age when the opinions of ‘the experts’ all too easily pass unchallenged, one key task of theology as practised within this tradition is to draw on that ancient wisdom to foster the critical questioning which needs to be addressed to the issues of today.

THE UNIVERSITY AS A PLACE OF DIALOGUE

The place, above all, where the practice of such critical questioning has, in the Western tradition, been developed is the university. The university has a dual role. It is, of course, a place where up-to-date knowledge is transmitted: young people have to become competent in the knowledge that is conveyed by the study of mathematics, or business studies, or information technology, or whatever may be their chosen discipline. This is a huge task, which can all too easily consume the entire energies of teachers and learners. However, if the body of knowledge is to grow and change to meet the needs of new generations, it has constantly to be relativised, questioned and reassessed. The point about this taking place within a university is that, traditionally, the university is a place which reflects in its identity a belief in the unity of knowing and the unity of what there is to know.