A Scientific Theology, Volume 1: Nature (original) (raw)
Related papers
Early Modern Theology and Science 2016
Ulrich Lehner, Richard Muller and Gregory Roeber (eds), Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600-1800, 2016
This chapter surveys prominent aspects of historical relations between theology and science in the early modern period. It argues that the medieval "handmaiden tradition," in which natural philosophy was seen as a support to theology, continued throughout the period but with apologetic complications caused by the fragmentation of religious authority, and the proliferation of alternative new philosophies. It considers the mechanical philosophy and the concomitant concept of laws of nature, and their impact on mind-body dualism, and the development of natural theology. It also considers the role of natural philosophy in the rise of atheism, arguing that it did not create atheists, but was appropriated by them. Devout natural philosophers played into the hands of atheists by arguing among themselves as to the best way to combat atheism, and by taking a naturalistic line in their arguments, relegating God to the role of a remote primary cause and increasingly denying Providence. Finally, it considers persistent suggestions that Protestantism played a greater role in the promotion of the natural sciences than Catholicism. We consider here claims about millennialism as a stimulus to science; the effect of Protestant attitudes to the Bible and how it should be read,; and the role of Augustinian post-lapsarian anthropology.
The History of Science and Theology
St Andrew Encyclopaedia of Theology, 2022
This entry offers a history of the different ways in which the formal study of the natural world has been related to theological considerations in the Western Christian tradition. Because what counts as science and what counts as theology has changed over time, it begins with a history of the concepts 'theology' and 'science' and the bearing of these conceptual shifts on their relationship. This is followed by a general account of the kinds of relations obtained between science and theology in different periods from antiquity to the present. A final section deals with three recurring issues that also exemplify some general principles.
Verbum et Ecclesia
This study aims to present an effort for an encounter between Christian faith and science in Alister E. McGrath’s thinking. The process of encountering both Christian faith and science is mediated by Christian natural theology. Christian natural theology is the result of rethinking conventional natural theology by McGrath. This is carried out because the meaning of conventional natural theology as an interface of Christian faith and science is not in accordance with Christian faith. The efforts to encounter Christian faith and science through conventional natural theology are something that is not possible, because conventional natural theology is denoted as pure theology centred on the rationality of scientific thought alone. In this article, we will show how Christian natural theology as a result of thinking by McGrath can be a medium for an encounter between Christian faith and science. The analysis of this article is generally based on the writings of McGrath, which are only par...
Natural theology and natural philosophy in the late Renaissance
Despite some great strides in relating certain areas of Christian doctrine to the study of the natural world, the category ‘natural theology’ has often been subject to anachronism and misunderstanding. The term itself is difficult to define; it is most fruitful to think of natural theology as the answer to the wuestion, ‘what can be known about God and religion from the contemplation of the natural world?’ There have been several erroneous assumptions about natural theology – in particular that it only consisted of rational proofs for the existence of God, that it was ecumenical in outlook, and that it was defined as strictly separate from Scriptural revelation. These assumptions are shown to be uncharacteristic of the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century. The study of natural theology needs to be better integrated into three contexts – the doctrinal, confessional, and chronological. Doctrinally, natural theology does not stand alone but needs to be understood within the context of the theology of revelation, justification, and the effects of the Fall. These doctrines make such a material difference that scholars always ought to delineate clearly between the threefold state of man (original innocence, state of sin, state of grace) when approaching the topic of ‘natural’ knowledge of God. Confessionally, scholars need to recognise that the doctrine of natural theology received different treatments on either side of the sectarian divide. In Catholicism, for instance, there were considerable spiritual benefits of natural theology for the non-Christian, while in Protestantism its benefits were restricted to those saved Christians who possessed Scriptural insight. Chronologically, natural theology does not remain uniform throughout the history of Christian theology but, being subject to changes occasioned by philosophical and theological faddism and development, needs to be considered within a particular chronological locus. Research here focuses on late sixteenth-century orthodoxy as defined in confessional and catechismal literature (which has been generally understudied), and demonstrates its application in a number of case-studies. This thesis begins the work of putting natural theology into these three contexts. An improved understanding of natural theology, with more rigorous and accurate terminology and better nuanced appreciation of confessional differences, makes for a better framework in which to consider the theological context of early modern natural philosophy.
The Christian View of History and the Revival of the Liberal Arts (Conor Court Quarterly Special Edition 5/6), pp.167-182., 2012
Debate over the positive role of Medieval Catholic institutions and thinkers in the process of emergence of Western science has been rife since the nineteenth century. Advocates, such as the Pierre Duhem, and later, Alistair Crombie, were continually countered by proponents of the view that modern science arose suddenly in the seventeenth century, through a necessary rupture with, and revolution against, Medieval thought and institutions. These deniers came from both the idealist right (Koyré) and the materialist left (Haldane), as well as from champions of a definitive role for Protestantism (Merton). Historians of science have outgrown those debates, without resolving them. However, recent work on the seventeenth century Scientific Revolution provides hints about how to take seriously the role of the High Medieval heritage in the process. This paper surveys the earlier debate, arguing that Duhem and Crombie suffered from now outmoded historiographical conceptions, and also from cultural assumptions that Catholic advocates of continuity in the West, such as Christopher Dawson, properly rejected. A new form of positive solution is then sketched. It consists in reconceptualizing the precise nature of that ‘dynamic continuity’ of the Western tradition of seeking theoretically systematic and empirically reliable knowledge of nature, which runs from the High Middle Ages, through to the generations of Descartes and Newton. This historiographical strategy is based upon creative articulation back to the Middle Ages from what we now know about the Scientific Revolution itself, using the categories and interpretative frames that leading historians of that event now invoke.
Theology and Science in Dialogue. Signposts and Perspectives
2020
One can note that science tends to turn man into a master of the external and material, yet at the cost of turning him, on the level of his inner and spiritual life, into a slave of instincts altered by sin. All these, without a moral norm, become a power of destruction for man and represent issues addressed not just by bioethics, where the opinion of ‘theologians’ is consulted as well, but especially by the Church and by the Orthodoxy. The pressure of events imposes the issue of the recognition or, according to some, reformulation of the bases of ethics. Yet, this ethics ought to be constrained to a revision founded neither just on the progress of science, whose truths are partial, nor on the principles of rationalist or positivist philosophy, which try to convince man that he is no different from all the other living beings and needs to be treated in the same way as them, but on the reality of the religious fact, and, moreover, on the evidence of God’s Revelation and, implicitly, ...
2005
The thesis consists of four separately published articles and a summary. Three of the articles are research papers and the fourth comprises the critical edition of questions 3, 4 and 5 from Roger Roseth's Lectura super Sententias. The aim of the study is to make Roseth's text available for historical study and to trace the close relation between late medieval theology and teaching and research in the faculties of arts.
Philosophical Foundations of the Dialogue between Science and Theology
Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences
The paper discusses the philosophical difficulties in conducting the dialogue between science and theology. It is argued that theology deals with the event-like phenomena which cannot be presented in phenomenality of objects (what happens in science). Correspondingly, in order to incorporate the givens of theology (the "data" of religious experience) into a philosophical framework one needs to extend philosophy beyond its metaphysical and transcendental setting. This extension inevitably leads to the recognition of the fact that the foundation of both science and theology originates in human beings, having an ambiguous position in the universe which cannot be explicated on metaphysical grounds. The phenomenon of man remains inexplicable to man himself thus creating an ultimate reference point of the contingent facticity of both science and theology. The so called dialogue between science and theology demonstrates that the difference in hermeneutics of representation of the world in the phenomenality of objects and the inaugural events of human life and religious experience pertains to the basic characteristic of the human condition and that the intended overcoming of this difference under the disguise of the "dialogue" represents, in fact, an existentially untenable enterprise. Discussions on the differences in experience of the world and experience of God are profoundly timely for further articulation of the sense of the human condition, but not for its change.
The World as a Gift: Scientific Change and Intelligibility for a Theology of Science
Religions, 2023
“Truth” and “cause” are essential issues in theology. Truths of faith are meant to remain solid and fundamental and can be traced back to the unique truth of God. The same God is conceived of as the Creator who brought everything into existence before every other cause. Recent discussions about scientific rationality and causality have engaged with the same ideas of “truth” and “cause”, even though they have done so according to different methodologies and from different points of view. Can those discussions stimulate theology, and if so, in what manner? In this paper, we begin by considering the subject of scientific change and rationality, arguing that scientific change leads to the recognition of the connection between any scientific theory and what remains intelligible in nature. Next, we show some of the outcomes from new mechanistic philosophy, focusing on the idea of cause, which unveils a strong correspondence between epistemology and ontology and provides a unique way of speaking about causality. Finally, we conclude that science can support theology through new approaches to nature and that a theology of science is required today as an intertwined perspective between science and theology. The main virtue that guides this approach is humility.
Theology and Science Natural Theology Reconsidered (Again) Russell Re Manning
Neither the “traditional” nor the “revisionist” accounts of the nature and fate of natural theology are adequate to the task of explaining the peculiar trajectory of its history and, in particular, the consensus view of its apparent terminal decline. Contrary to the accepted narrative, natural theology was not fatally undermined by the scientific revolution. Even if temporarily marginalized by disciplines such as systematics and dogmatics, natural theology never went away. It is still with us, and it provides a healthy grasp of the divine presence in the natural world.