and look to the past nostalgically. Maintaining theology’s queenly dignity in the
modern age, in fact, depended on theology‘making use of the sister sciences’,
drawing from the best of other disciplines and putting them in the service of her
own distinctive purposes. A modern theologian, therefore, must possess courage,
liberality of mind, and‘self-confidence enough to appropriate the good, sound
material produced by other sciences, to pluck the best fruit from all branches of
the tree of knowledge’. Theology cannot‘close the windows of the mind against
the fresh air of inquiry’.Ifthishappens,ifshe‘dismisses every inconvenient fact
of history...as a tough morsel, too solid for her weakly constitution’; theology,
then, forfeits her queenly dignity. Above all, present-day theology required the
‘historical sense’. This sense helped theology to locate its own tasks in theflux of
time, and also to recognize the provisional and perpetually evolving character of
all the domains of knowledge. Possession of it allowed one to look upon other
disciplines without fear and with an eye to selective appropriation.‘Let us not
condemn [otherfields] without a hearing, on the strength of a merely superficial
glance or because of the ring of words is displeasing; neither let us turn away
with a cold gesture of superiority from whole departments of knowledge as if
they were possessed by the devil and his minions.’^50
In his concluding words, Döllinger offers a theological justification for
inquiry in the context of the modern university, even if he also recognizes
the difficulty of what he is asking for. Adapting the famous adage of the
Roman writer Terence, Döllinger exhorts young theologians to adopt as
their motto,Theologus sum, nihil divini a me alienum puto:‘Nothing divine—
and therefore nothing that is true, for all truth comes ultimately from God,
ought to be strange to me’, Döllinger noted, freely elaborating on the Latin.
Appealing to Christian humanists of antiquity, he recommends that young
theologians strive to think like the‘great men of Alexandria’; just as church
fathers such as Clement sought to distinguish the good from the bad in
classical thought, so theology students today must strive‘to have the right
magnet which may serve to attract the truth itself out of the heap of rubbish,
which surrounds and often conceals it’.^51 But Döllinger admits the analogy
with antiquity does not apply completely, because the dynamic conditions of
the modern university presented a steeper challenge for theology. Because of
the ever-expanding domain of knowledge in the modern age, he admits, in a
pregnant line, that‘ours is a more difficult task; because the material with
which we deal is immeasurable, and is daily increasing’(Uns freilich ist eine
noch viel schwierigere Aufgabe bei dem unermeßlichen und noch täglich sich
mehrenden Material gestellt).^52
(^50) Universitäten,53–4;Universities,48–9 (translation modified).
(^51) On Alexandria as an early centre of‘Christian humanism’, see J. G. Davies,‘Clement of
Alexandria (A.D. 155–215)’,Expository Times80/1 (1968), 18–20.
(^52) Universitäten,54–5;Universities,48–9.
Ignaz von Döllinger and the University 235