Intervention in the academic workshop on Theology, Humanism, University, which took place at the School of Theology of the University of Navarra, on January 17, 2025, on the occasion of his upcoming retirement.

We are starting the Jubilee Year 2025. And we can put together some ideas, going through other years 25. 

In 225 (1800 years ago), Origen wrote the Peri arché, the first systematic attempt at theology. He had bought a Hebrew manuscript, found in a jar, with which he would begin the Hexapla. Thus began the work of theology in dialogue with human thought and with the Holy Scriptures.

In 325 (1700 years ago), the Church celebrated the Council of Nicaea, which originated a great Creed and defined the place of the Son of God with the term homoousios. It was possible thanks to the support of Emperor Constantine. The first phase of Christianity began. 

In 425 (1600 years ago), St. Augustine was writing the last books of The City of God on human history where divine history is realized. In barely a hundred years, it was observed that the Christian message was not enough to revitalize the old empire. The West, moderately Christianized, would fall with the barbarian invasions and another world (the Christian nations) would be born after a long period of gestation. The East, on the other hand, would last a thousand years more, until it was subdued by Islam (1453).

In 1225 (800 years ago), St. Thomas Aquinas was born. We owe him the basic structure of Catholic theology, which comes from the Summa. And many other insights. Although the story is not usually well told. What triumphed around 1220 were the Sentences of Peter Lombard, which defined theology for more than three centuries. The Summa triumphed later. In 1526, the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria won a Chair and replaced Lombard's Sentences with the Summa Theologica as the basic book for the study of theology. In addition, he promoted the Law of Nations. 

In 1525 (500 years ago), Juan Luis Vives, fed up with university scholasticism (writing De disciplinis) and far from Spain (where his father was burned for Judaizing in 1524), was in England with Thomas More, studying precisely The City of God. That year, Luther married Catherine of Bora. And King Henry VIII, who had deserved the pontifical degree scroll of Fidei defensor for opposing him (1521), was thinking of divorcing Catherine of Aragon, which would end up separating the Anglican Church (1534).

In 1825 (200 years ago), John Henry Newman was ordained as an Anglican priest, started as a guide for university students, and began to study the Fathers and the Arian controversy, about which he would write an excellent book. He also began to study the legitimacy of the Anglican Church as a third way between Protestants and Catholics. This would lead him to the Catholic Church. In addition, he lived through the liberal secularization in England, the beginning of the end of the Christian nations forged in the average, as the modern democratic and pluralistic state developed.

There are a lot of interesting things that happened 100 years ago. 

In 1925, Maritain, a convert to faith, to Thomism (and to political traditionalism), published Three Reformers. Luther, Descartes, Rousseau; but in 1926, with the condemnation of L'Action (unclosed wound), he passed from the nostalgia (and vindication) of the Ancien Régime to the defense of the Rule of Law. He developed a Philosophy of the person and of the state inspired by Thomism. And he considered how to live Christianly in a democratic and pluralistic society, especially in Integral Humanism ( 1937). He had a great influence on Dignitatis humanae of the Second Vatican Council.  

In 1925, Guardini had already set in motion his great dedications. He was helping the young people of Rothenfels, he had published The Spirit of the Liturgy (1918) and the Letters on Self-Formation; and he was preparing Letters on Lake Como (1926), reflecting on the change of epoch and its Christian demands; he would rethink it in The Twilight of the Modern Age (1950). In addition, he had spent two years at the Chair of Weltanschauung (1923) re-reading Kierkegaard, Dostoyevski, Pascal, Saint Augustine... 

In 1925 Von Hildebrand (at the age of 36), organized circles on love. Inspired by faith, he dealt with spiritual affectivity (the heart) and its response to values. In addition, in those years he courageously defended other professors in the face of growing Nazi pressure at the German university. 

In 1925, her colleague and friend, Edith Stein was working to form religious vocations in Speyer and was concerned about Heidegger's atheistic drift. They had been, almost at the same time, Husserl's assistants, and while Heidegger lost faith, Edith Stein found it. Thus, they originated two divergent metaphysics. Heidegger summarized it in Being and Time, 1927. Edith Stein in Being finite and eternal, published posthumously, after her death in a concentration camp (1942). In its last part, it points out what is missing in Heidegger's metaphysics. Tragically parallel lives. It will be worth remembering in 2027.  

In 1925, the Saint Serge Institute of Orthodox Theology was founded in Paris by a group of Russian thinkers and theologians, expelled in 1922. They left with the clothes on their backs. Others had to premiere the Gulaj Archipelago (1923). Saint Serge made patristic and Byzantine theology present live in Paris, and this is how De Lubac, Congar and other Catholic theologians came to know it. He gave identity to modern Orthodox theology and marked its red lines before Catholicism and Protestantism. 

In 1925, De Lubac, in a Jesuit novitiate in England, was reading Rousselot(The Eyes of Faith, 1910) and Blondel, and introducing himself to the Fathers. And Congar began his programs of study in theology at Le Saulchoir (then in Belgium), with Chenu, who had proposed a new Study program. These ferments would shape the theology of the twentieth century. 

In 1925, Chesterton published The everlasting man, a brilliant and topical work, which struck a chord with C. S. Lewis and led to his conversion. In two parts, he vindicates the Christian deployment in history and the unique religious value of Jesus Christ in the face of modern "Arian" ("Unitarian") or pan-religious tendencies.

In 1925, St. Josemaría was ordained and began his priestly work, which, with God's inspirations, led him to found Opus Dei. His mission statement was not academic, but he shed much light on how to be a good Christian in the world. In addition, he had a marked humanistic disposition with his appreciation for the fruits of human work , of language, culture and study, of Education and virtues, of civic and social responsibility. 

First of all, we should be amazed and grateful for such a vast and beautiful patrimony, the fruit of so many Christians in dialogue with their times and with the Scriptures (with revelation). There is nothing so rich and coherent in the intellectual universe. It is enough to recall the dominant communist ideology of the last century (and to read De Lubac's The Drama of Atheistic Humanism ). Today transmuted into woke culture, which promises to be as ubiquitous, arbitrary (and suffocating) as communism was. Epidemics or intellectual covid. 

The gospel, in dialogue with every age and incorporating the legitimate fruits of the spirit, produces around it a Christian humanism. It financial aid us to understand each other. And it is a field of meeting (and evangelization) with all people of good will.

Thus we have an idea of God, which connects with the mystery of the world and with our deepest aspirations (we can no longer believe in other gods). And a rich and exact idea of the human being, of his spirit and development. And of his mysterious wound (brilliantly expressed in the 7 deadly sins). And of his end, happiness and salvation in Christ (way, truth and life, cfr. John 14,6). And it should be emphasized that the Rule of Law, with Human Rights, which is the legal framework of our societies (and our defense against the new tyrannies) is also the fruit of this Christian humanism, and today it is in danger amidst materialistic simplifications and ideological whims.

In his Introduction to Christianity (1967), Joseph Ratzinger warned that the Church is moving from ancient Christian societies to fervent minorities (a process that may take centuries). The Western Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th and 6th centuries. And since the end of the 18th century, an impulse of secularization (partly legitimate) dismantles the Christian nations forged in the average. And it turns us into a minority, which must carry out as a leaven the mission statement that the Lord asked: "Go and evangelize all nations"(Mark 16:15). 

Many things have changed since our School of Theology was founded in 1964. At that time almost 700 priests were ordained every year in Spain, and now there are a little more than 70. And a few months ago, a process of unification of the Spanish seminaries was initiated. This will probably be followed by a revision of the ecclesiastical programs of study , because it is felt that they do not correspond to what the times demand: they do not sufficiently encourage the faith of the candidates and do not prepare them for the mission statement. 

The German synodal journey has revealed the inadequacy of a strictly academic theology (with many means), perhaps too aseptic if not problematic, which has not succeeded in nourishing the faith of the ecclesiastical Structures it has formed. 

The topic of theology, by definition, is God. But God revealed in history and fully revealed in the Son. Today, a new Arianism wants to turn Jesus Christ into a good person. Chesterton warned about it in The Everlasting Man and C. S. Lewis, when he raised the question of God in history and fully in the Son. S. Lewis, when he posed his famous "trilemma" (see in Wikipedia).

Jesus Christ, the Son, has revealed to us the truth and beauty of God's love, manifested in its full submission. This love staff (from person to person) constitutes the Trinitarian union, through the Holy Spirit, and extends to the communion of saints. If Jesus Christ is not homoousios, a solitary God remains enclosed in his distant and veiled mystery. "No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father has revealed him to us"(John 1:18).

And we are left without the way of salvation, which is Jesus Christ. We need to renew and make the message of salvation meaningful for our contemporaries. The Gospel of Christ's love saves us from the meaninglessness of the world and of history, from our moral failures and those of humanity, from death and sin, which is the deepest and most mysterious thing. And what our contemporaries feel the least.

For this reason we also need a believing reading of the Bible that makes clear the history of revelation, of the covenant and of salvation, which culminates in Christ(cf. Letter to the Hebrews 1:1). And it should not be limited to punctual exegesis, which disperses the attention. A detailed philological study is only a preliminary task (which does not require faith, nor does it kindle it). 

The current internal discussion of the Church calls for a just and profound diagnosis of what has happened in order to understand the deep reasons for the crisis and to react accordingly. 

It is necessary to review the confrontation of the scholastic Thomism of the forties of the last century with the nouvelle theologie. It arose amidst many misunderstandings and was quite alien to the true thought and disposition of St. Thomas. But it is in danger of being prolonged.

In addition, there are two philosophical areas where the legacy of St. Thomas requires developments (which he would make). The relationship with the sciences, which is expressed in the Philosophy of Nature and in Metaphysics. Gilson claimed it in the last pages of The Philosopher and Theology.

Also the relationship with political thought. final, discernment on modernity: the legitimacy and value of the rule of law, with human rights and religious freedom. This thread comes from Francisco de Vitoria. It is taken up by Maritain and many others. The Second Vatican Council assumes it and originates, by reaction, the schism of Lefebvre. 

The theology of the 19th (with Newman, Scheeben, Möhler and others) and 20th centuries (with so many interesting authors) is, without a doubt, a third golden age, together with patristics and scholasticism. And it is necessary to synthesize and incorporate it. The difficulty lies precisely in its richness and variety, and in the limits of what can be taught. 

We also need a revision of Liberation Theology, which discerns the past and projects itself into the future. Because it runs the risk that the preferential option for the poor, the most noble and Christian thing it has, becomes an illusory revolutionary nostalgia or an inoperative rhetoric. Political and moral (and theological) efforts are needed to build just societies with Christian inspiration. 

We have an immense heritage to inspire us and to engage in the evangelizing dialogue that we are engaged in today.