Meaning and the Necessity of Theology

New Discourses

Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2021

⏱️ 94 minutes

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Summary

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay. Episode 57 What is the University? It's the center of intellectual life in civilizations in the broad era we might call Modernity. And what is the purpose of the University in its essence? If we turn to the 19th century Catholic thinker John Henry Newman and his iconic The Idea of the University, we see that it is to teach all knowledge. The Universities were originally seminaries, though, and theology sat at their heart. Newman, in this iconic and valuable work, makes a convincing case that without theology, which Universities could merely assume would be present in their beginning, other sciences less suited to the task would take up theologizing and would do so poorly. Newman is right, and this is exactly what has happened in the secular Western University over the last few centuries. In that gap, the social sciences have filled in the role of theologians, and the Critical Theory perversion of the social sciences has therefore resulted in a pervasive rot throughout Western Civilization that we are realizing only just in time. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay, perhaps an unlikely host for this subject, takes on Newman's argument and, in fact, agrees that a mature theology must sit at the center of any vital and healthy society, including whatever institution resides at the heart of its intellectual life. What that looks like not just in a post-Enlightenment world (Modernity) but also in one that is entering its Second Enlightenment (Postmodernity) (https://newdiscourses.com/2021/10/welcome-to-the-second-enlightenment/) is a challenging question that he believes is the most immediate task for taking humanity through its present and emerging challenges. Join him for an unexpected and groundbreaking discussion of the centrality of theology to a thriving civilization. Support New Discourses: paypal.me/newdiscourses newdiscourses.locals.com/support patreon.com/newdiscourses subscribestar.com/newdiscourses youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg/join Website: https://newdiscourses.com Follow: facebook.com/newdiscourses twitter.com/NewDiscourses instagram.com/newdiscourses https://newdiscourses.locals.com pinterest.com/newdiscourses linkedin.com/company/newdiscourses minds.com/newdiscourses reddit.com/r/NewDiscourses Podcast: @newdiscourses podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-…es/id1499880546 bit.ly/NDGooglePodcasts open.spotify.com/show/0HfzDaXI5L4LnJQStFWgZp stitcher.com/podcast/new-discourses © 2021 New Discourses. All rights reserved.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there everybody, it's James Lindsay, you're listening to the new Discourses podcast
0:24.3	and as threatened on Twitter, we're going to do a podcast kind of about theology. Actually, I'm not
0:32.9	really going to do what people are either looking forward to or fearing in this podcast, but I'm
0:39.3	going to talk about theology. I'm going to take theology quite seriously. I'm probably not
0:42.4	going to use the definition of theology that you're used to. I'm not also going to use my own
0:47.2	definition of theology. Just going to tell you the story to get started. I recently
0:53.9	had the pleasure of being invited to speak at the University of Dallas in Dallas, Texas,
1:00.6	which is a small Catholic college or university. While I was there, I was given a couple of books
1:11.5	which I will confess at this point. I've only read the preface and introduction, which is about 60
1:16.5	pages of one of them. Both of these books, though, are by the same author. His name is John
1:22.7	Henry Newman. He was a Catholic thinker in the mid 19th century. One of these two books is called
1:31.1	the idea of the university and the preface and introduction that I read by Newman himself and the
1:38.4	person who wrote the forward, but Newman's preface was written in 1852, if I believe correctly,
1:46.1	to give you a sense of the date. The title of this book is the idea of the university. This has
1:51.8	been a very interesting read, and I'll kind of summarize what I've got out of it so far. Of course,
1:57.0	I haven't read Newman's actual argument. I'm looking forward to it, but time is my actual mortal
2:04.6	enemy at this point. I'm definitely very interested in getting through this. If you're interested,
2:10.1	the other book is the grammar of a cent. I'm also more interested actually in that one. Just so
2:15.9	you know, I'm about to start turning my attention toward education. I want to consider this to be
2:24.1	kind of a preamble podcast that connects a previous one that I did to the direction of education,
2:32.1	not that that's actually necessary to do. I just think it actually is interesting that my thought
2:36.4	is bridging this gap, and I can share that with you. What I mean by that is that, first of all,
	...

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