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Is theology a science?

Unfortunately, the answer given to this question in Notebooks, 10 September 2002; rev. 6 April 2004, simply will not do. Although the answer itself still seems to me to be correct – theology correct—theology is not a science, properly so-called – the called—the argument given in support of this answer is seriously confusing and confused.

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24 June 2006; rev. 14 June 2009

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Is theology a science?

The answer depends on what, exactly, is meant by "a science." If all that is meant is some form or other of critical reflection and proper theory concerned somehow with clear and consistent conceptualization and employing some kind of objective argumentation, then, yes, theology is a science--in much the same way, or for essentially the same reasons, that philosophy would be a science.

But if one holds instead, as I do, that the conditions mentioned above are necessary but not sufficient to the meaning of "a science," because "a science," properly so-called, is also some form of intellectual, as distinct from existential, reflection, then, no, theology is not a science. For although theology is constituted by properly theoretical questions about the meaning of Christian witness and the validity of the claims that bearing this witness makes or implies, it is nonetheless oriented by the same existential question to which Christian witness is an answer -- ianswer—i.e., an answer that claims to be the answer. A proper science, on the other hand, is not oriented by this or any other existential question, but rather by some intellectual question-the difference between the two types of questions being that all existential questions. ask about the meaning of reality for us, whereas all intellectual questions ask, by a characteristic abstraction, about the structure of reality in itself.

By this criterion, theology is no more a science than philosophy would be  -  and be—and for the same reason: because it is oriented by the existential question about the meaning of ultimate reality for us, even though it is constituted by theoretical questions about meaning and validity -  in validity—in the case of theology, the meaning and validity of Christian witness; in the case of philosophy, the meaning and validity of religion and culture generally.

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