Holiness and the Times

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.