THE IMPACT OF THEOLOGY OF all the ecclesiastical disciplines with which students for the priesthood are to be imhued during their course of studies, Sacred Theology holds the first place, both by long-standing custom and by positive law. The other disciplines are ordered to preparation for, completion or application of it; (and in point of fact) it is apportioned many scholastic hours in the program of studies. It is truly the center of ecclesiastical studies in the Catholic Church. For this reason it has been hailed over the past centuries as the Queen of all the sciences, a higher science being inconceivable, since it is the science of God under the " ratio " of God. It is a science which is taught by God, teaches God and leads to God, according to the author of the Summa Theologiae which is attributed to Alexander of Hales; 1 a science of the Most High and from the highest, as St. Thomas Aquinas remarks.2 Now Natural Theology, which is the summit and goal of all the sciences of the natural order, is without doubt about the highest things, since it attains to God, Who is the highest of all things that are and that can be known, Who is, to use the words of the Vatican Council, " ineffably exalted above all things which exist apart from Him and can be conceived." 3 Yet it does not proceed from the highest but from the lowest things, since in this Theology He is known from creatures, as a cause from effects. But on the other hand, Sacred Theology attains to God and to divine things, and according to the proper " ratio " of divine things, from the highest and divine things, that is, from God Himself speaking of Himself and revealing Himself to us, Whom we believe, by the gift of this same God, 1 Ed. Quaracchi, l9fl4: I, n°. fl, p. 3, ad objecta. • ln Boet. de Trin., q. ~. a.~' ad l. • Denz. no. l78fl. 558 THE IMPACT OF THEOLOGY 559 with a divine and supernatural faith. As a result of this, Sacred Theology is of the highest and from the highest things in the full, perfect and absolute sense, and not in a relative sense, as is the case with Natural Theology. Yet this Queen has at all times suffered critical reproaches corresponding to the culture, difficulties and problems of different ages or different men. But aU are reduced to two chief points: its scientific or intellectual value, and its vital or affective value. For, at times it is charged with a lack of scientific vigor and precision, even with being excessive; and at times with a lack of vitality and practicality, often with an excess of the same. There have been those who considered Mathematics or Formal Logic or Metaphysics to be the ideal of science. Not finding in Sacred Theology the rigor and evidence of the mathematical sciences, nor the classifications, definitions and syllogisms of Fonnal Logic, nor the demonstrative rigor of Metaphysics working and speculating on necessary matter, they have accused Sacred Theology of a mutilated scientific speculative precision, as if it were too practical, or too vague, o:r even too positive. Contrariwise, some who were eminent in historical culture or learning, and who thus conceived the perfect science only as historical or even as related to every type of erudition, have accused Sacred Theology of a deficiency in learning, history and the evaluation of sources, doctrines, systems and arguments, and also of excessive speculation under the fonn of mathematicism , logicism or metaphysicism. Thus, they say, the scholastic theology of certain periods and of many theologians, rather than being a science of God from God, has turned out to be a logic or a metaphysics, the occasion for this being the supernatural truths revealed by God, and this according to the image of a deductive science which they term WoHiian. And these in turn charge those theologians who give themselves to positive or historical theology with a theology reduced to a pure and unsullied history or criticism, which collects the opinions and 560 SANTIAGO RAMIREZ efforts of men about divine things rather than the divine things themselves" In every...