Before "the grand possibilities" that "the modern development of the spirit" has "opened to man”, “we also see the threats that come out of such possibilities and we must ask ourselves how to dominate them”, went on Benedict XVI in his speech to the scientific community at Regensburg. “We can do that, provided reason and faith find themselves bonded in a new way; if we overcome the self-ordained limit of reason to what can be experimentally ascertained and open it up, once again, to all its vastness. In this sense, theology, not just as a historical and humane-scientific subject, but as theology proper, i.e. as a question about the reason for faith, must have its place at university and in the vast dialogue of the sciences”. According to the Pope, "only thus do we become capable of a true dialogue of cultures and religions; a dialogue which we urgently need”. As to the widespread tendency "of the western world" to regard as universal only the positivist reason and the ensuing forms of philosophy”, Benedict XVI also remarked that "the deeply religious cultures see in this exclusion of the divine from the universality of the reason an attack to their innermost beliefs”. According to the Pontiff, “a reason that is deaf to the divine and drives religion back to the sphere of subcultures is unable to partake of the dialogue of cultures”.
