Read Pope Benedict's speech at the University of Regensburg (September 12, 2006).  (In fact, it would be a good idea to read it two or three times.)  In this speech the Holy Father alludes to a number of themes, having to do with the relation between faith and reason, that were touched upon in the essays we read from The Nature and Mission of Theology. Among these themes are, e.g., (a) the centrality of the claim to universal truth, valid for all times and places and cultures, in the Christian conception of wisdom; (b) the demise of metaphysics (or ontology) in contemporary philosophy and theology, and the unfortunate effects of this demise for both philosophy and theology; (c) the emergence of an ideal of empirical reason that exalts science and relegates questions of ethics and faith to the private sphere; (d) the claim, made for very different reasons both by the Reformed evangelical theological tradition and by 19th and 20th century liberal theologians, that Christian theology was historically polluted by Hellenistic philosophy and that what is required is a "return to the primitive, pre-Hellenistic, Gospel message. Drawing from the speech and the readings alluded to above, your task is (a) to select one of these themes, (b) to define the problematic surrounding that theme as Ratzinger understands it, (c) to give a clear explanation of his response to that problematic, (d) to formulate what you take to be the strongest objection to what he says, and (e) lay out a reply to that objection that he either gives explicitly or that can be plausibly based on what he says.