[106] the empirical facts of the bodily world, step by step, in the famous Aristotelian ladder of potentiality and actuality, to the highest, to the divine. And the ultimate jump is made no more as a jump, but as the five arguments for the existence of God^a, on the basis of an empirical understanding of reality. Now this was of greatest importance because this brought again the natural world, in its empirical structure, into the interest of the medieval mind. On this basis, Thomas Aquinas ^bproduced his greatest synthesis, the great synthesis between the Christian tradition and all the knowledge about the nature of the world which was available at this time, especially with the help of the rediscovered Aristotle^c. Now it was one of the many attempts to produce the great synthesis. In the last century we had two people who tried the same thing, and to whom we refer in different ways later on. Hegel^d the philosopher, and Schleiermacher^e the theologian. And before them, the philosophers of the Enlighten- ment--and before them, the early Renaissance^f philosophers. And after them, the Ritschlian^g and other schools. We all stand, always, before the problem, which I can describe in the following way: from the very beginning, Christian theology^h was driven towards the production of the great synthesis. Synthesis does not mean putting-together, but means uniting in an essential creation, Christian tradition and the understanding of reality in its empirical structure. And each time, when such a great synthesis was reached, critics came and tried to dissolve it, and showed the joints, which were not real joints but only external compositions. And then a great disappointment and often intellectual despair, following the periods of the great syntheses. And so it was already in the 13th century with Thomas Aquinasⁱ, when