Free thought; Modernism (Christian theology) -- Catholic Church; Religion and science; Teaching, Freedom of
Modern Protestant theology has achieved a great deal in this
direction; its evolution has progressed to a complete
disintegration of Christianity, by adapting it to modern ideas so
thoroughly that there is not a single thought left which this
Christianity, reduced to meaningless words, might not accept.
This is the relativism of the present subjectivistic reasoning and its
consequences.
Now, it is true that there is room for a certain relativity and evolution
in the field of thought and truth. There is a relative truth in the sense
that our knowledge of it is never exhaustive. Even the eternal truths of
the Christian religion we always know only imperfectly, and we ought to
perfect our knowledge continually; established facts of history can also
be known, if studied, in greater detail. Thus there is progress and
evolution. But from this we may not conclude that there can be no fixed
truths at all. In the astronomy of to-day one can surely have the
conviction that the fundamental truths of _Copernicus’s_ System of the
Universe must remain an unchangeable truth, and that the time will never
come when we shall go back to the obsolete doctrines of old _Ptolemy_, who
made the sun revolve around the earth. Is astronomy therefore excluded
from progress and evolution? It is moreover true that the individual as
well as the community pass through an intellectual evolution in the sense
that they gradually increase their knowledge and correct their errors,
that literature and the schools gradually enhance the energy and wealth of
our ideas and thoughts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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