Religion & Law

This week I'm participating in a St. Thomas faculty seminar titled, "Must Knowledge Be Secular?"  The seminar is being led by Notre Dame history prof Brad Gregory, and Brad is using it to try out portions of his forthcoming book, Disentangling the West: The Reformation Era and the Makings of Modernity.  The book should generate lots of conversations on MoJ and elsewhere.  He's pushing back against many of the dominant historical narratives, including the story that science's eclipse of theology was an inevitable byproduct of the nature of scientific inquiry.  Brad complicates the story -- e.g., arguing that the widespread and seemingly unresolvable disagreements about Christian doctrine during the Reformation era helped drive the trend toward the privatization of religion and the secularization of knowledge.  In order to move beyond the doctrinal disputes, the conversation retreated to a plane of "natural" reason, becoming more and more disconnected from substantive Christian claims. 

The history has opened up a range of questions within the seminar:  When a historian is open to theology, is that openness aimed simply at a better understanding of the subject, or should the openness encompass the possibility that theological claims are actually true?  What would it look like for universities (secular as well as Christian) to make space for theology (or more broadly, the transcendent)?  And should a Catholic university do more than "make space" for theology?  If so, what exactly should it look like?  In any event, Brad's work reflects the extent to which many of our current debates are shaped by the historical narratives we embrace.