Greek and Christian Philosophy

Jenson notes that the university arose as a place of discourse, an institution centered on the word, and adds that “Mediterranean antiquity’s specific ideal of knowledge would never by itself have made the university.  The organ of truth, in the classic tradition, is the ‘mind’s eye’; knowledge is theoria , seeing .”  In practice, philosophy took a different track: Socrates and Plato conversed , and this not only “rescued Greek theoria from the inhumanity that was always its temptation,” but also made it possible for the gospel to engage philosophy as “a rival and an ally.”

Jenson adds, “The difference between Christian and pagan antiquity’s theology is that the latter, for all that it consists in talk, leads to silence, is the handmaiden of cognition as pure seeing, while Christianity’s talk leads precisely to more talk, to the purification and enlivening of a message.”

Christianity took up the philosophical dialogue into its own conversation: “The university was founded by believers, to have a place in which to exegete their Book and argue interpretations of their message.  Just so, no book and no argument could be foreign to it.”  That is crucial to understanding what happened to the university when the Enlightenment detached learning from theology: “When the Enlightenment revolted against theology in the name of reason, it thus revolted also against philosophy as anciently practiced, since it was theology by which that practice was now carried on.  Thus in the Enlightenment’s understanding and practice of ‘reason,’ the countervailing factor is gone.  Reason becomes what even Aristotle did not make it: sheerly the individual’s ability to see truth.  And for that, the university is, when push comes to shove, not really needed at all.”