Abstract:

The 19th century witnessed a revolution in higher education with the rise of the modern research university and the establishment of the first secular colleges and universities. In a growing number of institutions, theology was not only dethroned as ‘queen of the sciences’ but was marginalized or, indeed, excluded altogether.

With these developments, theologians found themselves confronted anew by old questions–Is theology a ‘science’? For that matter, what qualifies any subject as a ‘science’?–with dramatically raised stakes. Now these were questions about whether theology is a subject suitable for serious study within the modern university at all.

This lecture will explore the ways in which three very different 19th-century theologians who helped to found modern universities—Friedrich Schleiermacher, John Henry Newman, and Abraham Kuyper—grappled with these questions to contend for theology’s role in the modern research university, and how their arguments relate to contemporary debates about the ‘demarcation’ of science, the nature of academic disciplines, and the value of theology for universities today.