Abstract
I am deeply grateful to Harvard Divinity School for having invited me again. I am happy to be back at Harvard. Why has God been rejected in modern times? Mainly for two reasons: First of all: God was invoked, and science opposed. Catholic apologists even today are inclined to make light of the condemnation of Galileo by the Roman authorities on faith, approved by Pope Urban VIII himself and carried out, in the Catholic universities, with all the resources of power at the disposal of inquisitors and nuncios. But this declaration was regarded in practice in Catholic theology as an infallible and irreformable decision and nipped in the bud the modest attempts of open-minded theologicians to think out afresh the biblical message in the light of Church, but also by the state, not only by Rome, but also by Lutheranism and Calvinism, when proceeding against scientists. On the one side, as on the other, censorship, visitation, prohibition of books, suppression of dissident opinions was the order of the day.