TM
Copyright 2003 by Kevin Sharpe. All rights reserved.
Submitted for publication.
Theology Can Use the Scientific Method
and Still be Theology
by
Kevin Sharpe
Graduate College, Union Institute and University, Cincinnati, USA;
Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK;
Oxford Institute for Science and Spirit, Oxford, UK;
Founder, Science & Spirit
Magazine.
kevin.sharpe@tui.edu
www.ksharpe.com
and
Jonathan Walgate
Physics
Department,
jon.walgate@qubit.org
ABSTRACT.
To compare the methods of science and theology, and explore the application of sciences to theology, we first outline the scientific method as it has evolved from sociologically oriented philosophers and historians of science. Second, we look at what the method might mean for the structure of a theology and, third, we pursue outcomes and implications of the move, especially over the scientific nature of theological language and the truth of theological statements. An empirical method for theology assumes the existence of God and then asks what Gods nature is. It uses scientific techniques on proposed answers.
KEY WORDS.
God-world relationship, nature of God, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, scientific method, theological method.
CONTENTS.
Differences
between Scientific and Theological Criteria and Methods
Isaac Newton, perhaps Englands finest physicist, considered only two
things worth studying: the work of God and the word of God. The usual image of
theology conjures up pictures of the study and preservation of accepted doctrines,
yet not long ago it lay at the cutting edge of discovery.
Science alone in the publics eye now holds this lofty
position as the vanguard of human knowledge. So powerful is its image that
Richard Dawkins introduces his book, The Selfish Gene, with
We suggest that theological language describes reality as does scientific language. We also suggest that the idea God has a referent that functions at a metaphysical level just as the idea objective reality functions in physical science. Theology, therefore, can and should follow a method analogous to sciences.
The paper follows a straightforward plan. We seek to apply the method of the sciences to theology, and so, as a first step, we outline that method, especially as it develops from the sociologically oriented philosophers and historians of science. We attempt to justify its application to theology and look at the outcomes and implications of the move, especially at the scientific nature of theological language and the truth of theological statements.
We hope this stand, though it reflects an empirical bent and affirms theologys scientific nature, will contribute to an awareness and understanding of the primary decisions for any theology.
Science is a useful, productive, and successful endeavor. The evidence is all around us − planes in the sky, computers in our laps, and vaccines in our bloodstream. The publics faith in the accuracy of science is greater than at any time in history. Science is truth. But all is not well with the unqualified acceptance of this gospel truth.
The logical positivist movement had built up an
unrealistically mechanical model of scientific practice, a model that simply
did not fit. The attack began in the
These opposing interpretations now converge into a realistic appreciation of scientific study.
Ian Barbour describes scientific practice in his book, Myths, Models, and Paradigms.[3] A scientific discipline comprises research traditions, he writes, one such tradition often dominating a discipline. Key examples (or paradigms) embody each tradition and, as the subjects of teaching and modelling, initiate a student into the accepted methods for attacking problems. The paradigms also guide the traditions research programs.
A research tradition also assumes, sometimes jointly with
other research traditions, certain metaphysical beliefs. They assume
what sorts of things exist in the world, what qualities of experience are the
most fundamental, and so on. Newtonian mechanics (once an extremely powerful
paradigm and still reigning in some disciplines such as biochemistry and
psychology) generated a widely accepted collection of metaphysical commitments
concerning the regularity, causality, and action-at-a-distance properties of
the universe.
The doing of science within a research tradition requires the construction of models and theories. A model is an imagined mental construct, usually a mechanism or process. The scientist formulates an analogy between the patterns of a phenomenon and an imaginary construct, and a theory develops that matches observable aspects of the phenomenon with terms of the model. A familiar and intelligible situation thus becomes, with creative imagination, the basis for understanding some other aspect or part of the world.
Theories must be worthwhile. Criteria, which include simplicity, coherence, and agreement with experimental evidence, assess their value.
Simplicity refers, not only to simplicity in the form of the theory and the minimum number of independent assumptions, but also to an aesthetic element: the beauty, elegance, and symmetry of the theory.
Coherence refers to a unification of separate laws, a systematic linking of theories, and exposing similarities between diverse phenomena.
Supporting experimental observations refers to a theorys accurate account of known observations and prediction of future measurements, especially fresh discoveries. This is the main criterion.
Science does not verify or falsify theories by comparing
them with a set of objective data found through observation. To some extent
data are public and objective, but to a large extent the data depend on the
theories (and the process of observation); no clear line separates
observational from theoretical terms. A comprehensive theory of the world has
to explain what it means by all its terms, and these meanings change. The most
basic scientific concepts, like length, mean different things in different
theories. Einsteins length is a much more complicated quality than
Other features highlight the subjective aspects of science:
Criteria besides observation exert some control over theories, despite the lack of specific rules for their unambiguous application. Scientists make subjective decisions about the elegance and coherence of their work.
A scientific community can hold onto a theory threatened with discordant data. It might create auxiliary hypotheses to explain the data, for instance, or say the data are incorrect, or hope that someone will find something to undermine the rebel results. A comprehensive theory firmly resists falsification. A low-level law baldly stating relationships between observables lies more at the mercy of discrepancies.
Discordant data rarely overthrow fleshed-out theories. What
will are alternative theories that have greater promise of explaining known
data, resolving anomalies, and predicting novel phenomena.[4]
Newtonian mechanics, the triumph of pre-twentieth century physics, was well
known to predict Mercurys orbit incorrectly. Einstein superseded
Metaphysical assumptions lie at a yet higher level than theories, further away from direct empirical verification or falsification, but not immune to change. The arrival of new emphases in research traditions can change their metaphysics, or the acceptance of new traditions with difference basic ideas. The deterministic regularity of the universe itself is now questioned, thanks to the development of quantum mechanics. Changes in interest in science or other areas of human experience can also question the wider application of the metaphysical assumptions of a tradition.
The different facets of scientific knowledge (metaphysical assumptions, research traditions based on paradigms, comprehensive theories built from models, and laws that relate observables) can all change. The changes in each case are partly objective and partly subjective. This compromise reflects Barbours philosophical position, which he calls critical realism, a compromise between naive realism and instrumentalism. We must step away from a severe logical empiricism if theology (a more obviously subjective enterprise than science) is to adopt the scientific method.
To suggest theology adopts the method of the sciences rouses dispute. Polemics of late separate the two. Extreme empiricists, such as Dawkins, argue for the lack of worthwhile content in religion. Many religiously minded, in reaction, want to carve out an isolated niche for religious language. This attempt to defend theology stems from a fear that adopting sciences method is to sell out to the enemy. But this enemys bark is worse than its bite; Kuhn and others have manicured sciences claws.
Theologians do face a challenge, however, if they adopt the
scientific method: they need to understand how their discipline can be
scientific. Not only must theology be rational, but also our experience
of the world must ground it. Un
Theology is a constructive and reflective rational discipline. Religious adherents possess sets of beliefs, lives that are in some way religious, and a language in which they talk of matters religious. A theologian, a Christian theologian for instance, attempts to express and explain Christian beliefs in a rational, coherent, faithful, and systematic way. He or she accepts these aims and tries to explain certain phenomena. Theology is, in this most basic way, faith seeking understanding.
Two twists complicate this picture. First, theologians can also play leader-roles for religious beliefs, language, and life. They can suggest matters a little beyond the commonly accepted belief system and so lead believers into that new area. Second, theologians can hold to and explain a set of beliefs other than those they would call Christian. Schubert Ogden accordingly believes that a theology should align itself with what is inherent in human existence, and this need not be Christian.[5] In such instances, however, Christian theologians attempt to make their constructions faithful to a set of beliefs they consider the essentially Christian.
Many object that theology should not or cannot seek truth in
the manner of science. Three reasons supposedly
First, theological theories cannot in principle be verified or falsified and are therefore not scientific. This stance could arise from subjectivism, which says that both theology and science are totally non-empirical. It could arise from a positivist-empiricist view, which diametrically opposes theological statements to those of science − the only truly empirical ones. Both extremes mislead. Objective and subjective factors exist in each of science and theology. Any extreme separation of the two distorts the reality.
Theologys greater metaphysical content reflects its greater
subjectivity as compared with science. Many take this to an extreme and talk of
theology as if it were purely metaphysical. David Tracy suggests, for instance,
that theological claims do not function in the same dimension as those of
science because religious propositions ground all others and account for all
experience.[6]
Ordinary criteria of verification and falsification do not apply here.
The third reason for the apparent lack of the scientific in theology lies in its history. Theology used to make scientific assertions, laying out the physical structure of the cosmos and its means of creation. Powerful claims of empirical science found these theories wanting. Theology thus tries to distance itself from statements about the physical world and so save itself from further criticism. Existentialism appeared, along with demythologization, functionalism, language-game fideism, and other movements. To make its way back into suggesting scientific statements is not easy.
A theology can make scientific statements, including statements about the nature and creation of the physical cosmos, in several ways besides those we have already mentioned.
What theological theories say about the meaning of life and history tests them. We can compare them with philosophical and historical, hermeneutical and phenomenological analyses.
Theologies can rest on historical events, on knowledge of the structure of society, on human personality or psychology, on experiences claimed as common to all people. These are testable.
Theologies have made such factual assertions as
the coming of the end of the world at the year
A theologian who advocates the anthropic
principle − that we can read Divine purpose from the precise gearing of
the universe for the generation of life − must listen to the cosmologists
whose work may
Theology can make scientific claims for any part of its subject matter: human experience, history, and the physical, biological, and social world in all their facets. The methods and criteria of the relevant disciplines should evaluate these claims. A full and bold theology will attempt to explain in one coherent whole all that exists, and this will comprise statements proper to other disciplines and which those disciplines should evaluate.
Theology can be scientific. What would such a theology look like? What might we do to use the scientific method in theology?
The fundamental theological assumption, which defines theology as a discipline distinct from, say, biology or sociology, is theos. Theology centres on the idea God (whatever we mean by that word); God is the organizational key, the idea that all others depend on and with which they fall in line. A theoretical system becomes a theology if its central, dominant, and hinge idea is an idea of God.
Now the problem looms. Theology seeks to study God, but how can it identify the reality of God to begin describing it?
We might identify the reality God from the history of the words use. The theologian can attempt from this to isolate a cluster of attributes essential to God and areas in which human beings have and can experience God and Gods activity. This might enable the identification and description of God. Theology must take on board the additional metaphysical assumption that we can know God, at least imperfectly or in part.
God is not there to describe as is a physical object. But is theologys job to describe God as we might describe the chair we sit in? If God were the sole subject matter of theology, suggests Wolfhart Pannenberg, theology cannot be a science.[7] The question arises, he writes, of how to distinguish God from the affirmations of theologians and already-committed believers.[8] We must describe God in a more roundabout way than we do normal objects, and this gives God a peculiar but not unique place in our language. Theology must have something else as its subject matter, and through this we can learn the nature of God.
And what is this subject matter of theology? Don Wiebe judges that theology concerns the world, the empirical world in its totality and the sum total of our personal experience. It attempts systematically to account for and explain, not only religious experience (the category of experiences which is other than mere sensation), but all phenomena within the world, the daily round of experiences of which our life is made. [9]
God acts as a peculiar key concept for the explanations
and understandings of theology. It fulfils its role as the starting point for
theology just as another metaphysical assumption − that an objective and
regular physical world exists − is the starting point for science.
Natural science centers its explanations on the physical world. It believes
that the world comprises such invisible things as physical forces and fields,
and with existing and determining properties such as mass, velocity, valency,
and so forth. Both science and theology try to explain the same object, but
they use different media. Both look at (or describe) all of reality through
their respective lenses of physical reality and God. The lenses act to isolate
specific aspects of reality as central to explanation. Douglas Clyde Macintosh
saw this back in
There is one presupposition peculiar to empirical theology, just as there is always one presupposition in every empirical science that is the special presupposition of that science. The empirical sciences assume the existence and the possibility of empirical knowledge of the objects they undertake to investigate. Thus chemistry assumes the existence of matter; psychology, the existence of states of consciousness; psychology of religion, the existence of religious experience, and so on. In each case there is assumed, commonly on the basis of pre-scientific experience, the accessibility of the object to further knowledge through further experience. And what is true of the sciences is true of empirical theology. . . .Ordinarily the empirical theologian, it may be expected, will posit the existence of God − defined, to be sure, in preliminary fashion − because he [or she] is already practically sure, on the basis of religious experience, that God really exists. . . .It is. . .what God is, that is to be investigated through scientific theological observation and experiment under the guidance of definite working hypotheses. [10]
Theologians create a theology centered on an idea of God. They then need to evaluate critically their construction with certain criteria, both as an individual theory and, to a greater extent, against competing theories.
This departs from past understandings of scientific method. Suppose we reject a theological theory that suggests we should castigate ourselves for sinning in all sorts of terrible ways though we, upright and good Christians, do not know we have. We would reject the theory only because we know of an alternative theological theory that makes more sense of our life as we experience it. In ways like this, we tend to hold to a theory (especially a comprehensive one) if no better alternatives exist, while we search for another.
Scientists have the courage to shoot as best they can toward the truth, but their success lies in their humility: they accept that they never hit the bulls-eye. The humble acceptance of our inadequacies is crucial for any intellectual pursuit, and is crucial for theology. As we hold dear our most valuable and useful beliefs, we must look to refine them.
Theological schools of thought give different degrees of
importance to the criteria for evaluating theologies, though they draw from the
same pool of criteria. Simplicity of formulation, aesthetic charm, the
fruitfulness of the consequences − any human theory of the world, whether
a scientists or a theologians − values these. The difficult issues
arise as we consider the prime quality of a scientific theory − its
command of
Differences between the ideas God and the physical world lie in our feeling the immediacy of the physical world, a sentiment which many used to feel (and some still do) toward God. We cannot point to God because we coin the word to explain a wider class of experiences, including human subjective experience, than those the idea of the physical world can explain.
Three other differences appear to distinguish the scientific and theological methods and their criteria.
The first concerns the use of and desire for mathematical models and theory in science. The lack of mathematics in theology says more about the humanities background of most theologians than about the potential for using mathematical models in it. Mathematical ideas may not even imply a quantitative approach as opposed to the qualitative one that matters human seem to require; theology usually fights such reductionism. The use of probability theory and statistics in sociology, for instance, suggest the usefulness of mathematics in human sciences.
The second contrast concerns the unanimity of science, the ability of scientific experiments to achieve more or less the same results wherever and whenever and by whomever they are performed, given the same initial conditions. The assumption that the physical world behaves with repeated consistency makes the derivation of general laws of nature possible. Thus any claim to factual truth is incompatible with purely private or idiosyncratic experience. This opposes theological special case philosophy, which suggests that theology should not feel compelled to appeal to public criteria and method. God does what God wishes to do. The community of secular inquiry, however, rightly claims its rational procedures as the way to obtain truthful statements. It is repeated and careful examination of phenomena that lead to valuable knowledge. This applies to theology as well.
This returns us to the criterion of
John Godbey writes that, between the contents of theologies that use the method and findings of the sciences, complete unanimity is not to be expected [on scientific grounds], and, on religious grounds, . . .it is not to be desired. . .because of the absolutely indispensable nature of honesty in ones religious witness.[14] The proliferation of theologies and theological research traditions − each claiming truth and each based on different criteria, relative weights of criteria, and initial God-ideas − reflect the greater degree of subjectivity in theology than in science. Perhaps we should not expect complete unanimity in theology, given Kuhns interpretation of rival and discordant research traditions in science. We should, on the other hand, expect much unanimity within each theological research tradition. Those who share common criteria, areas of evidence, and basic concepts should build their theological theory together, reaching plateaux of agreement.
The third and most important difference between scientific
and theological criteria concerns predictability. Barbours criterion of
A comprehensive theological theory resembles a metaphysical system. Much of theologys corpus reflects on the nature of things in general, based on broad categories that include the idea God. Theology is a higher-level act of knowing than science because it lacks the lower-level laws apparent in science. Frederick Ferr admits that we cannot make predictions from metaphysical systems − a major difference between them and those of science − because their categories are general and they try to account for all types of phenomena, including those that occur in the future.[15] They leave nothing to compare them with. We cannot predict novel phenomena if we have already considered all types of experience. Thus, since theology is more akin to metaphysics than to the religious beliefs of Barbours discourse, we should expect less of this scientific predictability than in science.
Yet one of the means by which Hugh Jones suggests we test a theological position lies in its fruitfulness to anticipate and plan for whatever lies in the future.[16] William Austin concludes that, when we test theological theories, predictions of future events play some role, at least in some traditions, but in general the role is secondary and ambiguous.[17] Where theology deals with non-unique, repeating occurrences and causal laws, and in as much as it uses non-metaphysical categories, it can predict the future. With a higher-level focus, however, such theological predictions will probably not concern physical events, but peoples actions. A theologian proposes a theology as a valuable and meaningful way for people to understand existence, including their own. The metaphysical claims of theologies refer to the world of the future as well as to that of the present. They will sink or swim on their relevance to the people of the future.
The method we propose for theology provides a way for theology to attempt expressing truth. It should not claim, nor should any other method claim to lead to a complete account of truth. Knowledge is imperfect. Religious tradition after tradition stresses that perfect knowledge of reality lies beyond our reach. Science similarly admits it has not reached the truth, because it strives for better understanding. Truthfulness in science results in long-term, rational, and empirical arbitration between theories. We assume that science comes closer and closer to truth as scientific theories change. We assume that theology comes more and more to know the nature of God and Gods world as theological theories change. But we can only aim for truth; never can we know we are approaching it or have reached it. The scientific theological method will not provide a definitive description of reality viewed religiously. This method only provides the most adequate vehicle in our times for the expression of truth theologically.
The act of discovery is the key to all human knowing. So says Michael Polanyi. Knowledge progresses as we discover ever more about the world we live in. A sense of discovery exists in theology when it learns and encompasses new things. Theologians must involve themselves at the forefront of human knowing if they truly wish to discover and to seek understanding. Godbey writes: Theology must wrestle with the best human knowledge available in the historical epoch in which a [theologian] writes. This admission. . .arises. . .out of a concern for the wrestle of theology with truth. This wrestling, Godbey shows, has engaged many of the great theologians right down through the ages − Origen, Aquinas, Schleiermacher, Tillich, and, we add, C. S. Lewis. It must also engage us. Today, the method of science provides the best human knowledge available.[18]
The core motivation for pursuing a scientific method in theology comes from a desire to do justice to and to minister to secular life and experience, to the theologians secular being.
The scientific method is the paradigm in our modern western culture for producing truthful, useful, and perhaps meaningful knowledge − whether we like it or not. Theology dare not drift too far from that cultural placement of truth (even while fulfilling its task of criticizing secularity), else it (and its critique) will lose in meaning, worth to the community at large, and any relevant message or cutting edge it might have. Theologies should not side-step this challenge, but meet it head on, and adopt the scientific method. To do this would give weight and vibrancy to the theological enterprise and help theology face more openly the divide between fact and value. Our theology must be scientific to act as an effective moral force and means for directing and unifying our lives.
Austin, William.
Barbour, Ian
Dawkins, Richard.
Dulles, Avery.
Ferr, Frederick.
Godbey, John C.
Jones, Hugh O.
Kuhn, Thomas.
MacCormack,
MacIntosh, Douglas C.
Ogden, Schubert M.
Pannenberg, Wolfhart.
_________.
Tracy, David.
_________.
Wiebe, Don.
[1]
Dawkins
[2] Kuhn
[3] Barbour
[4] Barbour
[5]
[6]
[7]
Pannenberg
[8] Pannenberg
[9] Wiebe
[10]
MacIntosh
[11]
MacCormack
[12]
[13] Dulles
[14] Godbey
[15] Ferr
[16] Jones
[17]
[18] Godbey