The university was also very
proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring
about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is
necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum,
even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to
correlate with reason as a whole.
If theological faculties are
to ensure that faith is reasonable, and if the end as such is more important
than the means, then this "theology" is the judgement of God in order to be
proved adaequate to reasoning. If reason is able to ensure faith and if this
is the aim of theology, then no God can be more godly than reason. The
dividing, equating, comparing and handling power of reason is the ultimate
and most certainly godly reality we have and can have experience of. As we
will see, after a while the pope criticizes Descartes!, which means that he
has no idea whatever of the ways of his thinking, which is why I'm talking
about him being innocent in his madness.
Byzantiumincorporated reasoning simultaneously transcending it on the higher level of real
Theology, not seeing in reasoning more than an inferior power of mind and an
aid to define errors and explain truth. This explanation does not regard
anyone, but only people who should have other and more important presuppositions of approaching truth
beyond reasoning and even beyond
sentiments, that is, in the manifestation of divine wisdom which is
Christ himself. The pope tries to infuse a 'theology' cut down as a
scientific ideology, into the 'whole' of the 'universitas scientiarum'. This
way he does not adopt the Byzantine mentality, but he refuses it. In
Byzantium reason and faith were not opposing each other, and they
were not on the same level with each other, they did not belong in any
'whole' of 'universitas scientiarum', which is why theology was not
being taught at the Byzantine 'university'.
