Thomas K. Carr is Junior Dean of Oriel College, Oxford, and is presently an Adjunct Lecturer in
Philosophy and Theology at Westminster College, Oxford.
By regarding the differences between
philosophy and theology as a matter not of method but of institutional structure, Buridan helped make philosophy a secular discipline completely independent from theology and its guidance.
His impact — not only
on philosophy and theology but on a wide variety of disciplines — has been so great that one can not understand the current intellectual climate without at least some understanding of him.
That's in addition to his three degrees in
philosophy and theology from Pontifical Gregorian University and his D.Phil in high energy physics from Merton College.
Again our editorial argues that a developed
natural philosophy and theology, which are open to mutual synthesis and to real contact with the transcendent, as envisaged for instance by Vatican One in Dei Filius, can help to free our intellectual vision from the smothering effects of a too Platonic conception of the absoluteand infinite.
Being a Catholic university adds another major goal, that of being faithful to the spirit and philosophy of the church and its institutions, and all undergraduates are required to enroll in ethics,
philosophy and theology units.
After I transferred to Heidelberg to complete my studies, my inclination to
combine philosophy and theology was greatly encouraged by closer acquaintance with patristic thought.
That exercise is absurd given Platonic metaphysics, but then again, modern
philosophy and theology alike have been one long attempt to overcome some of the limits of Platonism.
Rather than leaving this as an uninvestigated discovery, as scientific reductionism and materialism would have us leave it, the Holy Father invites us to remit the question to those areas of study which have the appropriate competence, which comprise human subjectivity and creativity within their appropriate object:
namely philosophy and theology.
The author considers apocaplypticism as it appears in Hegel's system and in
current philosophy and theology, particularly that of D.G. Leahy who poses an ultimate challenge to both Catholicism and to Christianity itself.