To set up this article, I want to recount a story about an experience I had that has stuck with me over the last couple of decades. I want to make it clear up front that the details are based on my recollection of the event and the exchanges that took place during it. Out of prudence and fairness, I will not name anyone directly involved other than myself. Nonetheless, I think the central point I am trying to convey will be sufficiently highlighted by my account, which I do take to be accurate, even if that is not essential to the point.
During my first year of graduate studies, I attended a public lecture by a theologian who shall remain nameless. The presentation compared and contrasted two other theologians on the question of religious pluralism: Rahner and Schillebeeckx.
To simplify the main thrust of the comparison made, we can imagine a scenario (which I believe the presenter himself provided) and succinctly summarize how Rahner and Schillebeeckx would each respond to a specific question about it. The scenario is this: Imagine that a non-Christian (e.g., a Buddhist) goes to heaven. The question: Does this non-Christian’s salvation have anything to do with Christ?
According to what I remember the presenter saying, he thought Rahner would answer in the affirmative (yes) and Schillebeeckx would answer in the negative (no). That is, Rahner would say that if the Buddhist is saved, even if he had never heard of Christ, it must nevertheless be based on Christ’s redeeming work, while Schillebeeckx would say it has nothing to do with Christ. From my fairly extensive study of Rahner’s thought, I concur with the presenter’s speculation about Rahner’s response. Given my relative ignorance about Schillebeeckx, I will not judge whether this presenter’s assessment is correct, but he was much more familiar with Schillebeeckx than I am.
It dawned on me that perhaps not everyone was pursuing theology for the same reasons.
Either way, the important point is that the presenter declared that he, himself, sided with Schillebeeckx’s position. I will admit, I was shocked and horrified. (Note: Some years later, this theologian presenter was censured by the then Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which revoked his ability to teach as a Catholic theologian.)
During the Q&A portion following the lecture, an attendee asked why the presenter took Schillebeeckx’s side. The response that I recall was: “Well, for one thing, it makes interreligious dialogue easier.”
My immediate thought was: “It might make it easier (on some level), but it does not make it true.” As one of my professors said in a conversation I had with him on a subsequent day, “It isn’t dialogue if you give up your position before you even start.”
Immediately after the lecture, I expressed my concern to a fellow graduate student, “It seems to me that the purpose of dialogue is a mutual search for the truth. Both parties think they are closer to the truth, and with respect, they each share their side to try to help each other arrive at the truth.” My classmate’s response: “I do not think that truth is the purpose of dialogue.” Again, I was shocked and, admittedly, a bit confused. I think that was pretty much the end of the conversation.
I remember ruminating about that evening over the course of the following days, and occasionally I still do to this day. It dawned on me that perhaps not everyone was pursuing theology for the same reasons. I wanted to learn more about Catholic theology to better understand the truth and to be able to convey that truth to others more ably. Whether I was correct or not, it appeared to me that some people were pursuing graduate studies in theology to gain credentials, which they could then use to push an agenda that they might have had before they even began their studies. It was about power and influence independent from the question of truth itself. Perhaps cynically, I imagined these folks getting their degrees and going to work in schools and parishes, so that they could proclaim their ideology to others as if it corresponded to Catholic theology—despite the fact that it had nothing to do with any sort of authentic theological process and was largely their own opinion coming from sources other than Scripture, Tradition, the history of theology, or the Magisterium. It also occurred to me that some theologians, rather than being advocates of the Church’s doctrine to society, had become advocates of contemporary, socially popular views of the Church. They attempt to mold the Church into the image of society at large rather than the other way around. The aim is to convert the Church to modern thought rather than convert modern and contemporary people to the mind of the Church. In my mind, I deemed this anti-theology. It is exactly the opposite of what the true purpose of sacred theology is and ought to be.
If someone with an advanced degree in theology asserts something, that fact alone does not make it theological.
As a former biology and chemistry student, an analogy came to my mind. If a chemistry professor makes some assertion that is not based upon the results of the scientific method or other procedures within the realm of chemical science, then that assertion does not become scientific or a matter of chemistry simply because a PhD in chemistry is the one who asserted it. This is all the more true if the assertion actually contradicts all that is known about chemistry. (To be clear, I am not speaking of a hypothesis that will later be tested by said chemist. I mean something more egregious, baseless, and counterfactual, unrelated to prior evidence.) In the same way, if someone with an advanced degree in theology asserts something, that fact alone does not make it theological.
Each science has its methods and procedures. Theological science is based upon divine revelation, from which it obtains its first principles. It also has its proper sources from which it gathers data to formulate its arguments and conclusions. Its aim is to obtain knowledge of the truth about God and about other things in relation to God, including his saving will. In a real way, theology strives to see reality the way that God sees it and knows it. It is a limited participation in divine knowledge, based first and foremost on the knowledge that God himself has shared with us.
For such reasons, Joseph Ratzinger referred to theology as an ecclesial vocation. As St. Anselm describes it, theology is “faith seeking understanding.” But faith is properly ecclesial.1 Based on Romans 6:17, Ratzinger describes “baptism as an experience of being committed to the standard of doctrine.” As I wrote in The Mind of Benedict XVI, “Theology is not merely the exposition of one’s personal opinions. Indeed, it can and ought to be a very personal endeavor, but it ought never to be an individualistic enterprise. It is the Church’s faith that one is seeking to understand and elucidate. Perhaps more precisely, the individual theologian’s faith and the faith of the Church ought to be one and the same.” Thus, Ratzinger asserts against false visions of academic freedom in theology that “the liberty of theology consists in its bond to the church and that any other freedom is a betrayal both of itself and of the object entrusted to it. . . . There can be no office of teaching theology if there is no ecclesiastical magisterium.”
When the Magisterium intervenes to rebuke a theologian, it is not the act of an oppressive government hampering the freedom of an academic. Rather, the Magisterium is protecting people of simple faith from the tyranny of the academic elite.2 Accordingly, obtaining a degree in theology does not thereby grant one the license to teach whatever one wants in contradiction to the doctrine of the Church. Certainly, on a great many questions, there is room for diverse theological opinions, but those opinions—to be considered properly theological—need to be somehow arrived at through a rational and humble consideration of the sources of theology as understood and taught by Holy Mother Church.
1 See Joseph Ratzinger, “The Ecclesial Form of Faith,” Ch. 2 of Introduction to Christianity, trans. Mary Frances McCarthy (Ignatius, 1987), 82–100. See also Richard G. DeClue, Jr., The Mind of Benedict XVI: A Theology of Communion (Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, 2024), 51–55.
2 See DeClue, The Mind of Benedict XVI, 55.
