the material with which we deal [in the modern university] is immeasurable
and is daily increasing.’If the church recognized this, then theology would
realize, according to Döllinger, its‘inner active life-giving force’and achieve
‘development’(Entwicklung). Otherwise, it would become‘narrow and deformed’
(eng und krüppelhaft).^59
While frequently forgotten today, Döllinger’s example and influence has
lived on.His favour of historical inquiry in theology as a counterweight to
scholasticism might be regarded as a harbinger of theNouvelle théologie
movement in France and Germany in the twentieth century, treated by Martin
Schlag in this volume, which diluted the influence of neo-scholasticism and
helped set the Catholic Church on a path ofressourcementfor the purposes of
aggiornamentoat the Second Vatican Council.^60
In our day, as we have just marked thefiftieth anniversary of the Second
Vatican Council, and as we have recently witnessed the retirement of a
humanist German‘scholar pope’(indeed, a former Archbishop of Munich)
in the person of Benedict XVI, the relationship between the theological verities
of the Catholic Church and the task of scholarship remain as complex and
important as ever. But, of course, this relationship represents the latest chapter
in an ongoing interaction between the academic imperative of producing
accurate scholarship and the ecclesiastical task of ascertaining theological
truth. In this dialectic, Christian humanists have traditionally located them-
selves between the academic and the ecclesiastical, mediators between Athens
and Jerusalem.
This of course can be a difficult and sometimes lonely place. This was
certainly true in Döllinger’s case. While the past rarely offers tidy lessons,
Döllinger’s life and thought merits contemporary re-evaluation. For the pro-
ject of Christian humanism in the twenty-first century, we stand to gain
wisdom and instruction by remembering this excommunicated scholar from
Munich and his reflections on the university.
(^59) Döllinger,‘Die Vergangenheit und Gegenwart’, 254–63.
(^60) See Jürgen Mettepenningen,Nouvelle théologie—New Theology: Inheritor of Modernism,
Precursor of Vatican II(London: T&T Clark, 2010). For an interpretation of Döllinger as a
harbinger of Vatican II, see Peter Neuner,Dölligner als Theologe der Ökumene(Paderborn:
Schöningh, 1979).
238 Thomas Albert Howard