On Being a Christian and a Scientist part I

A few weeks ago, "Tom," who is probably also Steve the Troll, made the observation that one could not be both a Christian and a scientist, that the two were irreconcilable. Being both, I find the observation a bit amusing. Is this person either? I don't know, but I would find it quite ironic if someone was neither and was telling me I couldn't be both.

This is not to say that you can't make observations on something of which you are not a part. However, if you're going to do so, you need to bring more to the table than just, "You can't do both because that's stupid!"

I thought I would write a bit about being both a Christian and a scientist, and how there is no real conflict. To do this, I shall provide for you some material from Volume One of Thomas Oden's systematic theology, The Living God. The final chapter is an exploration of systematic theology, and he asks the question of whether or not theology can be considered a science.

A science is a branch of study concerned with the observation and classification of facts (especially with the establishment of verifiable general laws) chiefly through induction and hypothesis. A procedure such as science, widely regarded as useful, can hardly be completely inapplicable (even if inadequate) to Christian inquiry.

Insofar as it seeks to make accurate observations, test evidence, provide fit hypotheses, arrange facts in due order, and make reliable generalizations, the study of God may be called a science. It employs both inductive and deductive argument. It relies upon the same primary laws of thought and the same categories of reason upon which all scientific inquiry depends.

To be clear, theology requires many of the same intellectual tools that any science requires. Weight evidence and argument is necessary whether you are discussing philosophy, theology, history, or the latest evidence published in Science. The evidence that each of those fields examines is going to be different, but reason and logic are not tossed out the door when one leaves the Halls of Science.

The methods of inquiry into Christianity are held by many classical Christian writers to be a "science," according to the classical definition of scientia as an orderly knowing or knowledge, or a disciplina, as instruction or teaching or body of knowledge. But the facts into which Christian teaching inquires are brought from an arena that is thought by some to be blocked out from scientific investigation: religious consciousness, moral awareness, the life of the spirit, and the history of revelation.

This is an important distinction. There are some questions that natural science simply cannot answer. Science can tell you much about the growth and development of an unborn child, but it cannot answer the moral question of whether or not killing that child is wrong. For that matter, science cannot answer the question of whether killing anybody is wrong. Morality is not what natural science answers.

So then what of God? There are questions about God that natural science cannot answer. How can the natural examine the supernatural? Biology cannot examine God. He has no anatomy, no taxonomy. Chemistry cannot examine God. God has no magnetic moment, you cannot measure his pH, there is no conceivable way to procure an x-ray structure of the transcendent One. Physics? God has no mass, no dimensions, no measurable quantities. Sociology? Psychology? You can observe those who follow God, but those sciences study men. To try to compare the mind of men to the mind of God would be like trying to compare the mind of a dog to the mind of a man. There might be some minor similarities, but the differences are just too great.

No scientific inquiry proceeds without axioms and postulates that do not admit of empirical demonstration. Geometric inquiry, for instance, depends upon the postulate of parallels, but that postulate is far from being finally demonstrable. The view that scientific inquiry is independent of all authority is itself quite distorted. Theology is that sort of science that proceeds with a specific postulate: historical revelation.

Theology has a definite object to investigate, namely, the understanding of God as known in the Christian community. There is no doubt that such an understanding exists, and that it is capable of being inquired into. It is a historical fact that the modern university since the thirteenth century has been spawned in large part by the inductive and deductive methods developed by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian inquiry concerning God. There is no reason one cannot take as a subject of scientific investigation the modes of awareness of God that recur in Christian communities: the belief in God, that God exists, that God is triune, and that God pardons sin.

Of course, that truly depends on what type of scientific investigation you are referring to. Again, the natural sciences are inadequate to answer such questions.

There is another important observation here, that the modern university owes its existence to Christianity. A great number of scientists, until the time of the Enlightenment, were Christians. Even then, many still were. Many of the oldest universities in America began as seminaries for the training of clergy. To say that science and faith must be enemies is to be ignorant of history.

No botanist claims to provide the basic order by which plant life lives. Rather, the botanist ascertains an order that is already present in the nature of the facts themselves. Similarly the theologian is not the master of the facts, but their servent. The theologian cannot construct a system of Christian teaching to suit his or her fancy, any more than the geologist can rearrange the strata of rocks according to aesthetic whim or personal desire. Christian theology simply wishes to set forth that understanding of God that is known in the Christian community in a way that is fitting to its own proper order, harmonizing that wide body of facts and data so as to preserve their intrinsic relation to one another.

Some might observe that others do attempt to set up their own system of theology. However, there must be contrast between those disputes of theology that come from how to interpret the "evidence," such as history, tradition, and revelation, and those disputes that come from ignoring or fabricating such evidence.

A good analogy would be to compare string theory to, say, phlogiston theory. There are competing ideas of multiple dimensions and how to account for gravity and so on floating around, but they will center on how to interpret the evidence that is available to us and how to acquire new evidence. Phlogiston theory, on the other hand, may offer a way to interpret some of the evidence available, but holding to it requires ignoring great portions of evidence that is also present.

I have much more to say on these matters, but it shall have to wait for another posting. In the meantime, this is enough to consider.