Page History

Scanned PDF Version of this Document

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.

...

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.

...