Science and Theological Discourse

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth

John Polkinghorne the Physicist turned Anglican priest writes, “I believe that Christian belief is possible in a scientific age precisely because it is the search for truth, and science is one, but only one component, and in many ways quite a humble component, in that search for truth.” There are a number of concerns raised about the ability of deductive reasoning to say anything meaningful about God. I find Hauerwas dismissal of science to be unsatisfying. His critique comes from the nature of language itself, as far as I can tell. All facts are theory laden. The scientific method does not present an objective approach to reality, but rather a matrix for a certain kind of discourse. The success of science is merely the instrumental success of getting things done rather than describing things as they really are. One embarks down an epistemological dead end when one sets out to describe the world as it is. For the very act of describing is contingent upon the tools of language that are formed by one’s particular community. In the end I believe the seeming strength of these concerns fizzle. Polkinghorne points out that such concerns do not answer the reality of the success of science. I think it is quite fair to suggest that the ability of modern science to send a person to the moon or transplant organs not only reveals an effective means of discourse, but it also reveals something about the nature of reality.

Hauerwas views science as a competing story for what it means to be human. There may be some element of truth in such a statement, however I find his dismissal of science as a means of seeing the world around us to be unconvincing (I use “unconvincing” quite intentionally!). Of course he is not the only person who expresses concerns about the limitations of what the natural world can reveal about God. I find some of the more classic arguments about the limitations of natural revelation quite compelling. A first problem that I think must be recognized is the simple limitation of certain kinds of knowledge. Observation cannot reveal all kinds of knowledge. It certainly reveals a lot...but there are deficits in what one can come to know simply by trial and error. I can know a lot about you by watching you. I can know how tall you are, what you like to eat, how fast you are etc. But I can never know your name...unless you tell me (or someone else tells me). Names are quite interesting in this way. They are given and as such cannot really be known apart from someone being told. What is more significant to a personal relationship than knowing a person’s name? I will spare a prolonged reflection on why this is the case, but I think it certainly does warrant such reflection. It is of course quite significant that immediately before God redeems the people of Israel and delivers them from bondage, God reveals his personal name to Moses. In our modern bland way of talking about God I think we may have lost the centrality of the name of the LORD. There is a second classic limitation to our ability to know God through the natural realm can also be approached by the metaphor of a relationship. There is some knowledge like names that must be revealed, but a relationship is more than knowing someone’s name. I am going to use a second somewhat...”grown-up” metaphor of course this is also a biblical metaphor, the biblical euphemism of “knowing” someone. In the Bible the word used for sexual relations is that of knowing. Abraham knew is wife...and there was Isaac. Knowing in this sense requires something on the part of the two parties namely being disrobed. In a related way....knowledge of God requires more than an inquisitive spirit.
I began by saying that I thought science was an indispensable part of theological discourse today, yet I have just been arguing against its efficacy. Let me close with the reason why I see “bottom-up thinking” as an essential tool in modern theological discourse. We live in an age where “revelation” is suspect. “Bottom-up” thinking has produced results. I think it has produced results because it reveals truth about our created world. I think there is the potential that the discoveries and methods of “bottom-up thinking” can serve as a bridge to the importance of the revelation of God through the scriptures.