Santiago Collado

This work deals with Ratzinger's contribution to the debate on the relationship between science and faith. We do not analyze it from the usual schemes that classify this relationship in models such as “conflict”, “non overlapping magisterial”, “integration”, etc. Ratzinger's position fits better in a scheme that classifies the different attitudes adopted before the thesis of the conflict. We propose a classification of these attitudes. We show how Ratzinger recognizes the existence of a real conflict in the relationship between science and faith. We expose the epistemic roots that, according to Ratzinger, give rise to said conflict and we call “harmonization” his attitude towards it. The task of harmonization proposed by Ratzinger is possible to maintain only from faith. But it is a faith understood differently from the way it appears in the relationship models mentioned above. They are usually presented as alternative models. Ratzinger's proposal serves to give unity to these models. He does not approach the conflict from the illustrated budgets but revealing the keys that determine its nature. They are discovered in a historical process of which our author draws a global picture. In Ratzinger, the conflict is better understood as an insurmountable tension that invites us to undertake a continuous task of purification. The subject of this purification are the images with which faith has been expressed throughout history and the worldviews in which said faith has been embraced, those that have lent it the images.

The present article provides an overview of the different positions throughout history on the connections between science and religion. We expose the diffi culty to classify these connections and the defi ciency in the taxonomic proposals. This study is intended to revise this interplay from the perspective of the impertinences committed to each other, as well as from the benefi ts that one has received from the other. From this point of view, we can get a glimpse of a more complex and rich scene than that offered by a simple classifi cation. We also reveal that, when one of these fi elds ignores what pertains to the other and fi nally rejects it, it ends up either taking its role or accepting it as its own, but in a poor or completely unfocussed way. The consequence of this is unavoidably scepticism.