Transcript
Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the dedication of Henry Robinson Luce Hall. At the conclusion of this service of dedication, you're invited to explore the building. You're in what we call the big room. There is an oak room, which is the common room on this floor, and there is space on down the hall for the service staff. But the real work goes on upstairs. In the twelve studies, you will discover
that we are still moving in, that bookcases have not come, but that they are on trucks coming up from North Carolina at this very moment. I suspect we shall be moving in for another week or so, but still, you will be able to learn something about not only the beauty of this building, but also its functional character, if you will take the time to visit while you are here after the service of For a long time,
there has been a recognized need for such a postdoctoral center of theological research. The first person I discussed this with many years ago was the late H. Richard Niebuhr, and when we would meet after committee meetings late at night, we would always dream of a time when there could be a postdoctoral center of theological research. Another colleague who dreamed with us was Paul Ramsey, who is a member of the center this year and has been a
member for the last two years. The center is really designed to deal with theology, as I said a moment ago, from the inside rather than from the outside, not phenomenologically, but from the standpoint of those who are committed to the Christian faith. And we are particularly interested in theology in its relationship to science and theology in its relationship to modern culture. Paul Johnson, in a recent book entitled Modern Times, indicates that the scientific revolution that has
characterized the 20th century began in 1919 with the experiment verifying Einstein's theory of relativity. And since 1919, there has been this tremendous revolution in human understanding and in the human understanding of creation. Strangely enough, the person who began it lived on the corner at Two Library Place in Princeton his first two years here, and then later in a house just two doors from the seminary campus on Mercer Street for the remainder of his life, so that
it is appropriate that an institute or center that is dedicated to the study of theology in its relationship to modern science and modern consciousness should be cheek by jowl with the residence of Dr. Einstein and also with the great Institute where he was a member. I feel like this afternoon quoting W.H. Auden, having this building completed as a living symbol of what we are about in this enterprise and also as a commodious place for scholars
to work, makes me think of Auden's Oh Here and Now My Endless Journey Ends. And in some ways I could say with Simeon, Now, Lord, letteth thou thy servant depart in peace. But Auden also has a far more challenging line, Oh Here and Now Our Endless Journey Begins. And this is the fascinating challenge, that here begins a journey that is endless, a journey into the pursuit of truth in the confidence that God has given us minds
that enable us to explore his revelation, in fact that enable us to think ourselves into the very being of God. We have nine members this year. We expect to have 12 when the institution is financially mature. I want to thank the Henry Luce Foundation Incorporated for making this building possible with all of the endless possibilities that lie before us. Now I want to make an announcement. After the benediction, the Luce family will adjourn to Miller Chapel
for the baptism of Henry Luce Hagenbuch. The Board of Trustees of the Center of Theological Inquiry will meet after the baptism in the library upstairs. Now let me ask one of the great ecumenical leaders of this generation, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, to give the prayer of invocation. Let us pray. We thank you, O God, for this gathering of your servants and for the occasion that brings us here together. We thank you for the new building which
we dedicate and for vision and faith that has built this center here. We pray that you will use the new residence and guide all those who work here through the be with and lead the Chancellor and all the colleagues in the program in what they think and do and work through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. I'll ask Governor Robert Miner, one of the founding trustees of the Center, if he will unveil the plaque to Henry Robinson
Luce and whose memory this building is being dedicated. Someone said I could pull strings. You're still good at it. Nothing could be more appropriate this afternoon than an address by Henry Luce III on the faith of Henry Robinson Luce. Henry Luce III is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Theological Seminary here, of the Center of Theological Inquiry, has been publisher of Time magazine, and is the president of the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. Thank
you, Mr. Chancellor, Dr. Blake, Reverend clergy, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great satisfaction, even a thrill, for me to have had a part in the creation of this building which we are dedicating to the memory of my father. I'm delighted also to see here so many members of his family whom I know are equally proud of this memorial and what a marvelous combination of events it is that after this ceremony we shall be having in Miller
Chapel, the christening service of my father's first great grandchild. It is also a great honor for me to have had a part in the founding of the Center of Theological Inquiry, the new institution for which this building is headquarters. It is an institution whose purpose is to raise and pursue and elucidate and promulgate large questions. So its building is, as I hope to illustrate to you, a marvelously fitting memorial to my father, born as he was,
the son of an alumnus of Princeton Seminary, born in a mission compound populated by stern, bearded, Calvinist educators. Henry Arlous could not claim to have experienced, as most of us have, a theologically naive childhood. Referring to this, he liked to quote Matthew's, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. In what may have been his first sermon, addressed
at the age of six or seven to heathen people, Arlous preached, Now, I have no doubt that some of your friends have beautiful grounds and houses. Do they love one another or not? If they do, more beautiful than their earthly home will be their home in heaven. Now, I hope every one of you understands love, as well as those who are in near contact with God. Now, if any of you do not understand, please ask questions.
At sixteen, from Hotchkiss, he wrote his father, Mr. Ray, the elocution master, paid me a compliment unawares by telling one fellow that the only fellow who could sling the religious bull without appearing foolish was Luce. The oration in question was what Harry called a hot one on Christian democracy as the foundation of America's leadership of the world at the close of the European war. At seventeen, he was sending his father long-distance advice on what to
preach. Will you not tell them of the strife and the factions of the big outside world, and bid them to be of the same one mind that was and is Christ Jesus? For without our dogs wrangling over the dry bones of corruption, within should be unity, one church, one faith, one Lord, one service, one aim, Jesus Christ. Perhaps as insurance against that advice not being taken, he went on to report his own agenda. My next oration
will, I think, be entitled, Unity, One and Indissoluble. Unity meaning strong individualities united in works and spirit greater than they. As I was going through my father's scores of speeches, although I've read most of them before, I was astonished to see how many of them were on themes of the faith of Christianity and of God. And not just the ones given to church groups, but also ones given to university audiences, businessmen, lawyers, and scientists. And this
amidst speeches on practically every topic under heaven from foreign policy to journalism to the arts and the art of making money. Neither did he lack courage in bearding the lion in his lair. For one day, he marched to his church, the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, whose then pastor, a famous and stentorian preacher, was an uncompromising pacifist and delivered a long and ardent lecture on the importance of maintaining a strong defense capability. Harry Loos liked to allude
to an early missionary named Paulinus, who in the year 627 called at the court of Edwin, the pagan king of Northumbria. After hearing Paulinus' message, the king reflected on how little he and his people knew of why they were placed on this earth and whither they might be heading from it. He decided that Paulinus' Christian message, tell us something more certain, was a reasonable and valid one. The something more certain, of course, was that meaning was
built into life in the beginning by the creator, and with Tennyson, that through the ages, one increasing purpose runs. Loos saw his Presbyterianism as focusing on three precepts. First, the doctrine of the sovereignty and majesty of God. It is a blinding light, he said. He stressed the first commandment, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Time and again, his references affirmed this, this is my father's world, fear not little flock, God will give you the
victory. Second, he saw Calvin's curious doctrine of predestination as imbuing Presbyterians with a sense of responsibility. Since all believers were either saved or damned from birth, no self-respecting Presbyterian wanted to contemplate that he might be damned, therefore, he set out to prove that he had earned the right to be saved. Activism, the work ethic responsibility. I'm reminded of his telling me one day that he had brooded at length over the matter of to whom he
was accountable for his great journalistic enterprise, Time, Incorporated. In some detail, he explained that it could not be any of the obvious constituencies, not stockholders who cared only for profit, not journalistic quality and purpose, not advertisers with their self-evident conflict of interests, not readers who could not know what they wanted or needed to read until they read it, not the board of directors, a small group of well-meaning, but not necessarily wise gentlemen. No, he
said, I decided that my ultimate accountability had to be to my creator, responsibility. Third, he said that Presbyterianism is a theological religion. It is intensely concerned with truth. We have a duty to study, to think clearly, to express what we know and think candidly and precisely. The great truth is that the gulf between God and man was bridged. God became man in a mystery of love. That truth is known by faith. That faith must be held
and elaborated in truth. That is the business of theology. Upon it, all intellectual coherence depends. Without it, confusion reigns as it so nearly does in our day. And that, I may say, can be taken as a charge to the center of theological inquiry. For as God is the author of all truth, therefore, that truth must be seen to be one and indivisible. To Harry Lew's faith and reason, Jerusalem and Athens Church and State were not dualities
in opposition. But streams flowing in parallel, all toward the same purpose. On this he said, when reason becomes humble and responsible, it discovers the need for faith. Faith is the great word, for faith is what many nations live by, or by the want of it, disintegrate and perish. Faith is the sum product of intellectual effort, of intuition, of experience, and of the unmerited good fortune of the soul. Blind faith? There never was such a thing. Faith
is a continual dialectic between a man and whatever it is he believes in. He quoted Saint Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, Just the right order of going requires that we should believe the deep things of God, before we presume to discuss them by reason. So it seems to me negligence if, after we have been confirmed in the faith, we do not study to understand what we believe. There is a hunger in the world, Harry Lewis proclaimed in
1944, and in America, which is not a hunger of the body. It is a hunger which the Church was commanded to assuage. In the grossly practical terms of the market, there is a pressing demand for a certain commodity. The name of that commodity is truth. If it is now again truth which men deeply desire from the Church, it is a test which the angels themselves must welcome. For this hunger for truth presages the dawn of another
age of faith. The essential characteristic of the great ages of faith was not that faith was one thing and reason another. The characteristic of an age of faith is that faith and reason march together. March together against doubt and evil and disunity. March together to attack the most terribly practical problems. March together toward the highest aspirations of the soul. I come now to Harry Lewis's conception of a triune god, which he called the three Immanuels. God
in history, God in nature, and God in each person. In effect, God in time, God in space, and God in the inner space of the soul. It is a formulation perhaps not that different from the Trinity if one sees God the Father as creator, God the Son as in history, and the Holy Spirit as in each person. But it is a formulation whose vivid imagery is illuminating. God in each person, no matter who, he mentioned the
prodigal son, the man who fell among thieves. The Holy Spirit, which is within us, each carrying some part of God's purpose, meaning was built into life. I remember one day my father had returned from visiting in the hospital an old friend who was connected to an array of tubes terminally ill. I gather she was able to communicate by mumbling a few words, by bending a finger, by a twinkle in the eye. What he said to me
was this, I am overwhelmed by the enormous difference between the presence of life, however little, and its absence. God in nature, God, he said, comes into his own creation to taste the beauty of the lilies and the music of the spheres. And yes, yes, to have a look at his tiger burning bright and to speak with man, his co-worker in all this cosmic enterprise. But he was not satisfied with God's conversations with his co-worker.
While we have got science and religion fairly well distinguished from one another, he said, we have not yet got them cooperating with one another. Where there should be only distinction, there is separation. The two affairs go on unrelatedly, whereas they should go on separately. They go on unitedly. The result is a certain impoverishment of both the religious and the scientific enterprise. The man of faith fails to know the full truth about this terrestrial universe, which is
the concern of science. Conversely, the man of science fails to know the full truth about the destiny of man, which is the concern of religion. Unless these two come together, he said, man will lack the kind of picture of himself within the universe that can unite his mind and place him at home in a harmonious universe of truth and assure him that all his terrestrial tasks have their final consecration from the fact that they further a
destiny that is not terrestrial. 22 years ago, Harry Luce, in delivering the commencement address at Princeton Seminary, elaborated on this theme. I will submit as a prediction that in the decade beginning now, he told the graduates, you will have to cope with the conflict of science and religion more seriously and on a grander scale than ever before. It does indeed seem that in recent years, the relation of science and religion has entered into a new phase
of peaceful coexistence. Instead of conflict, there is felt to be reciprocity, a desire for accommodation and even for mutual support. There is very little overt attack on religion. Scientists are among those who tell you cheerfully that religion is a good thing. But, he said, while there exists a happy concordat between science and religion, that dialogue is not serious. I get the impression that religious leaders are not paying strict attention to what scientists are saying and that
scientists are making up their own versions of religion. And even when they call themselves Christians, are politely ignoring all of the decisive propositions of the Christian faith. Here, of course, is subject matter a great pending agenda for the center of theological inquiry. To go on. God works in history, he said. God is busy in the world he created. After unity of truth, this was Harry Luce's most cherished theological precept. God said to Joshua, fear not, only
be strong and very courageous, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. Luce had enormous respect for the noted theologians of his day, including some who had attacked him. And he loved to quarrel with them also. I write all this only because of my admiration for Reinhold Niebuhr and my gratitude to him. And what was it that he wrote? Niebuhr has got a hold of a great message that God is in history. That
not only is there a purpose in human life, but it is God's purpose and that God's purpose is going to be achieved even if most of us have to fry in hell for it. But Niebuhr has only got hold of it. He sounds over and over again the overture. Niebuhr does not yet know how to write the opera. God had to be in history, Luce thought, to place Calvin in Europe a century before the American colonization,
thus to spread Calvinists across Europe in time for them to be the colonizers. With the result, that two-thirds of the American population at the time of the revolution were Calvinists. He saw America as the promised land destined by Providence. Unlike the Old Testament Israelites, whom God had to rebuke, chastise, banish, America was organized by those responsible Calvinists. One nation under God. And he said the American proposition makes no political or social sense without God. America
was the product of Providence, but it was never perfect. He said, I was never disillusioned with or by America, but I was, from my earliest manhood, dissatisfied with America. America was not being as great or as good as I knew she could be, as I believed with every nerve and fiber God himself had intended her to be. He exhorted America to be better. He coined the slogan, the great society, long before Lyndon Johnson borrowed it. He
asked, where were the American arches upon which he could inscribe to the greater glory of God? Well, as the Lord was in American history, Harry Luce was battling for the Lord. Chancellor McCord, you were the first person to speak to the topic, the faith of Henry Luce, at the dedication in 1972 of the Henry R. Luce Tower of Faith of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington. I hope this has been an acceptable sequel, and I hope
the center of theological inquiry under God's inspiration will succeed in telling us something more certain. Dr. Luce, the only way I can respond to what you have just said is to read the text of the plaque. I might say that Dr. Henry Luce III is the author of the text of the plaque. Luce Hall, 1984, given in memory of Henry Robinson Luce, 1898-1967, founder of Time, the weekly news magazine, quote, meaning was built into life
in the beginning by the Creator. I shall ask the Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Center, Dr. William H. Shidey, to lead us in the litany of dedication. Let us stand for the litany. The concurrence of the Chancellor, I crave your indulgence if I change certain pronouns from you and your to the and thy. Eternal God, creator of all that is true and wise and good on this high occasion, we lift up our
voices to thee in praise and gratitude, for we have received bountifully from in all that we have and are. For the heritage of faith and learning our forebears have given us, and the freedom to think deeply, speak openly, and witness boldly, we rejoice as we say together, blessing and honor be to our God this day and forever. For the men and women of religious faith who have pioneered into the far reaches of the human mind and
soul, and the large legacy of thought and inspiration they have left us, we unite to declare, blessing and honor be to our God this day and forever. For our great institutions of higher learning, where mind meets mind, and where the joy of discovery enlivens gallant companies of scholars, readers, and mentors, we record our unfailing thanks and proclaim, blessing and honor be to our God this day and forever. O God of all grace, whose kingdom is truth,
we pray to be challenged daily to contend here with great ideas, to explore fruitful exchanges of soul with soul, and to lead our civilized life toward deeper moral quality and spiritual usefulness. Hear us, we beseech thee and strengthen our endeavors to join in thought and conviction with the prophets and master spirits of the ages, and to make ancient deposits of wisdom to become lively values in contemporary works in life. We ask for thy guiding hand and
supporting will. Hear us, we beseech thee, and enlarge our endeavors to continue not only as guardians of religious thought, but to kindle excitement in this new day for the voices of the past and the visions of the present, and to point out more clearly thy redemptive purpose for all humankind. We plead for thy presence to be constantly standing by. Hear us, we beseech thee, and give power to our endeavors. O God of all goodness, in joyful
recognition of every gift of mind and heart and hand that is symbolized in this new center of theological inquiry and for the worthy intention for which it is founded and designed, allow us now under the benediction of thy will to say, we dedicate this house in the hope that in this place the dialogue among the various disciplines of learning may single out the claims of Christianity and the merits of all other faiths and under the constraint
of open minds, move us to pledge our devotion to this ideal by declaring, we dedicate this house in the name of the one eternal God whose prophets spoke at holy scripture and whose redeeming word lives in triumph through the works and witness of every faithful generation and whose glory spreads wherever his servants toil and pray and sacrifice in the cause of truth, we dedicate this house. Amen. The dedicatory address will be given by a scholar who
in his own life and work and faith and witness epitomizes what this center stands for and hopes to achieve. The very Reverend Professor Thomas F. Torrance is past moderator of the Church of Scotland. He is winner of the Templeton Prize for progress in religion for his work in theology and science. The Royal Astronomist Sir Bernard Lovell says that Dr. Torrance knows more theoretical science than any scientist that he knows, although his discipline is theology. Yet he
has been and is and will continue to be a pioneer in the relationship between theology and science, in the conviction that truth indeed is one and that the revolution that has taken place in modern thought, revolution of which many of us remain oblivious, is something that holds very great promise for the future of human knowledge, human understanding, human faith, and human living. I'm grateful that Professor Torrance crossed the Atlantic with his wife Mrs. Torrance and their
daughter Dr. Allison Torrance for this occasion and it's a very great joy to present Professor Torrance now. Nothing has a higher place in my pride than the friendship of Jim McCall and I should like to say to him that we all share with him today the fact that the vision he brought from Austin to Princeton 25 years ago today comes to its great and beautiful fruition. In those that shared his vision he omitted to mention the
one who shared it longest and most profoundly his dear wife Hazel who is not able to be with us today. But I should like to say in our gratitude to her and that we and in our prayers and thanks for her that the beauty of this place internally and externally owes an immense amount to Hazel's wonderful taste and we want to say thank you to her along with Jim and to those others who have made this
possible. The Center of Theological Inquiry has been established to provide conditions in which fundamental thinking of the most advanced kind can take place and human understanding of God in response to his truth is renewed and re-expressed in the context of advances in knowledge of the created universe and of the knowledge of knowledge itself. Primary attention must be given to research that probes into the conception of reality implicit in the scientific mind. The ultimate beliefs, the
hidden premises, axiomatically shaping the framework of understanding that has guided and controlled scientific inquiry for nearly 300 years. Through clarifying our ultimate beliefs and releasing their and unifying force in all human inquiry we are intent upon closing the gap torn in the age of enlightenment between faith and reason, the humanities and the sciences and healing the rift between knowledge of God and knowledge of the created universe. Our aim is thus to promote the reintegration of understanding
and knowledge across the whole range of human enterprise and thought. Scientific inquiry as we have come to think of it in modern world is bound up with the rise of experimental science in the 16th and 17th centuries when a radical change in the human approach to natural knowledge took place. It became the task of science to devise experiments in which appropriate questions may be put to nature in order to encourage the disclosure of its coherent patterns
of behavior and then in the light of what is discovered to formulate explanatory theories. This change was made possible by a powerful re-emergence during the Reformation of the Christian doctrine of the creation of the universe out of nothing which carried with it a very different view of nature from that which had prevailed since classical times. Nature was no longer regarded as the embodiment of eternal rational forms and final causes through which it could be interpreted
and explained in logical-deductive ways. The fact that the world had been created out of nothing endowed with a creaturely reality and rational order of its own in utter differentiation from God meant that it must be investigated out of itself alone on its own contingent ground and understood in the light of its own autonomous structures or natural laws. It also meant correspondingly that the sciences of nature had to develop their own autonomous methods of inquiry and
explanation. This was a conception of natural science detached from the control of all external authorities disconnected from any systems of thought philosophical or theological gained on other grounds that might prejudice the results of independent investigation but functioning under the control of the objective reality of the created universe so that the nature of the universe was regarded as the ultimate judge of the truth or falsity of scientific concepts and explanations. I like to think that there have
been four significant turning points in the development of scientific inquiry since it began in the 16th century. I shall speak about three of them and concentrate mostly on the fourth which is the main theme I've taken for today. First, while scientific inquiry was held to start from experience and end with it under the aegis of Newton it was believed that the basic concepts and theories of science could be logically derived from experience without having recourse to
invented hypotheses. It was the business of inquiry to gather experimental data and then to offer a theoretical construction of them. Since it was the assumption of the new science that only what is measurable or can be made measurable qualifies for scientific investigation it was understandable that mathematics should become the rational instrument employed in the analysis of natural phenomena in deducing concepts and in organizing them into explanatory theories. The effect of this was in fact to give
the human reason a legislative role in reducing understanding of the world of nature into a consistent mechanical system as we see in Newton's great system of the world in which the rational explanation of natural phenomena was achieved by clamping down upon them a frame of absolute mathematical time and space that is a set of rigid concepts that were in fact not derived from or even affected by experience. It is not surprising then that at the same
time they should have developed the notion of the autonomous reason parallel to the notion of autonomous structures in nature. Thus a thoroughly empiricist conception of natural science and scientific method was put forward during the so-called age of reason with the claim that rational man is now able to shed light upon the real nature of things in the universe by subjecting them everywhere to reductive analysis and mechanistic explanation. The effect of this marriage between modern science
and rationalism in the 18th century and of the strictly deterministic conception of the world which it promoted was not only to import a grave split into human culture but to build a deep tension into the development of science itself which it has taken nearly two centuries to overcome. The emphasis and scientific inquiry was shifted away from the objectivity of empirical reality to the autonomous self-legislating reason. Thus there arose the view that the laws of nature
are not read out of nature but are read into nature along with the claim that we human beings understand and accept as real only what we have fashioned by our reason for ourselves. Now when we consider this constructivist rationalism together with the position adopted by natural science at its very outlook with Galileo in a dogmatic exclusion of all that transcends the limits of the mathematical reason we are in a position to appreciate the serious damage which
such a narrow-minded view of scientific inquiry was to do not only to human culture but eventually to the nature of science and scientific inquiry as such. Sooner or later the demand had to be made that we transcend the self-set limits of modern classical science in its closed mechanistic conception of nature. This is what happened in the latter half of the 19th century when it was found that Newtonian mechanics could not offer any adequate explanation
of the behavior of electromagnetism and light. And so we come to the second turning point with the 20th century under the aegis of Einstein a considerable shift in the foundations of science set in along the line pioneered by James Clark Maxwell. His conception of the dynamical field as an independent reality within which matter force and field were indivisibly integrated for the understanding of which an embodied mathematics was needed. It was only with general relativity theory however
that the nature and extent of the change involved really became apparent in closing the gap between experience and mathematics in the logical structure of classical physics. With the realization that time and space are inherent features of the empirical universe the old Newtonian idea of infinite time and space independent of the empirical universe with all the rigid absolutes it had imported into the foundations of science fell away and a more open and dynamic yet a more objective
understanding of the universe began to take over. The ontological and epistemological implications of this new relativistic physics were immense in the fundamental conception of the world and not least in the operation and limitation of scientific inquiry. The universe was now held to be finite yet unbounded. This had the effect of making room again in our for our understanding of the contingent nature of the universe and its rational order so that science began to accept limits to
its explanations and to withdraw the claim that natural scientific explanations could be extended effectively to the whole range of human experience. The recognition that the inheritance of theoretical and empirical factors in each other limits scientific explanation has been greatly reinforced by the stubborn problems of measurement encountered in quantum mechanics. It is thus to a humbler and more objective view of scientific method that science is now returning. The fusion of physics and geometry that lies at the
heart of general relativity theory has an importance far beyond physics itself. It destroyed the radical dualism built into the Newtonian system of the world and replaced it with a profound integration of ontology and epistemology in the framework of time and space within which all human knowledge arises and takes shape. That was an event of the greatest significance for rational inquiry in every field for it clarified the foundations of knowledge and altered their rational structure. They developed
a form of scientific inquiry which is more rigorous in that it is more governed it is governed throughout by the demands of its object and yet for that reason more flexible in that it is equally applicable in every field of human experience. A scientific imposition upon one field of experience of forms and connections of thought abstracted from another is ruled out for every field of experience is to be understood strictly out of its own natural organization
and explained only through empirical theoretical structures developed in the course of scientific inquiry under the constraint of the reality there being investigated and in accordance with this distinctive nature. Rigorous scientific inquiry of this kind applies to theological and biblical studies no less than it does to the operations of any natural science. Now in scientific inquiry of this kind the fact that empirical and theoretical elements interpenetrate each other means that fundamental ideas in Clark Maxwell's expression actually
play a major role in scientific investigation and verification. And here we come to the third turning point in the development of scientific inquiry in the directing of attention specifically to our ultimate beliefs about the nature of things. This became forcefully evident in Einstein's many intriguing references to God and decisive points in his argumentation when he made it clear that what was at stake was his intuitive grasp of the structure of reality from which he refused to
be moved by any arguments that were not intuitively related to it. It was Michael Pallendi however more than any other who showed that ultimate beliefs play an essential part in all explicit and rational activity. While these beliefs cannot be made fully explicit they belong to the premises without which no scientific inquiry can take place. Proper beliefs of this kind are rational and not irrational although they are not subject to direct testing for their truth and falsity
since they have to be assumed in any attempt at rational proof or disproof. Nevertheless they should not be held blindly but required to be examined to see whether they really are ultimate beliefs generated in our minds by the unalterable nature of things for which there can be no alternatives. What is now demanded of us however is not just a critical but a positive reconsideration of the place and importance of ultimate beliefs and the nature and function
of explanation in relation to their normative role in scientific inquiry. Let me focus the issue by referring to an ancient Greek distinction between two kinds of demonstration apothexis reflected in Saint Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians and taken up and developed by the Greek fathers in the second, third and fourth centuries. They frequently adduced it in elucidation of the words of Isaiah and the Septuagint, unless you believe you will not understand, which later on through Hilary
was greatly to influence in Augustine. Now this is the distinction between the discursive mode of demonstration found in geometry and kindred sciences when we argue from fixed premises or axioms to certain conclusions and the ontological mode of demonstration that arises when something utterly new becomes disclosed and our minds cannot but yield conceptual ascent to its self-evident reality. Such an act of ascent was also spoken of not only by the Christians as the response of faith
made in recognition and acknowledgement of a truth that seizes the mind and will not let it go. Genuine faith in God, for example, was held to involve a conceptual ascent of this kind as the human mind is allowed to respond faithfully to his self-evident revelation. Both forms of demonstration were considered by Greek theology to be necessary in genuine inquiry into the truth, for while access to reality independent of ourselves is given only to the latter
is with the aid of the former that conceptual ascent may respond more accurately and consistently to the nature of the reality apprehended. In classical geometry, however, long considered the model for scientific demonstration form and being were held apart so that the force of demonstration lay in its purely formal connections and logical compulsion. On the other hand, when form and being are found not to be separated but to be indivisibly united, the real force of the demonstration
lies in its ontological compulsion. It is only through such an ontological grasp of things in their intrinsic intelligibility and truth that genuine advances in knowledge are made. Now that was precisely the nub of the position adopted by Einstein. When he accorded primacy in all scientific inquiry to his intuitive beliefs in the fundamental nature of things, although of course he recognized the necessity of logical or geometrical reasoning and reaching a consistent formalization of new knowledge. And that
was the reason why Paul Landy set out to reinstate the function of ultimate belief in the regulative framework of scientific knowledge, thereby restoring the balance of our cognitive powers disrupted through critical rationalism and scientism and healing the breach between faith and reason brought about by the enlightenment. Faith is thus recognized again as the very mode of rationality adopted by the reason in its fidelity to what it seeks to understand and as such it constitutes the most
basic form of knowledge from which all subsequent inquiry proceeds. Ultimate beliefs above all are to be appreciated as the indemonstrable ontologically derived insights of the human mind in its commitment to the compelling claims of reality which all rational knowledge presupposes and on which scientific inquiry relies in every authentic drive toward the truth and without which it is finally blind and impotent. Now it's not my purpose to discuss further the rational status of these ultimate beliefs but
to draw attention to the nature of their inherent force and to the mode in which they are apprehended. For it is in these respects I believe that theological inquiry has a significant contribution to make at this fourth turning point in the development of inquiry and one of particular significance to us today in our institute. The inherent force of ultimate beliefs is due not simply to the fact that reality is what it is and not something else
but to the fact that it thrusts a compelling obligation upon us emanating from the ultimate ground of all order.