The Parallelism of Science and Theology

In my November 27^th posting, “Approaching Polkinghorne’s Science and Theology,” I raised three utterly fundamental questions that an active reading of the title of Polkinghorne’s Science and Theology begs to see answered:

What, in Polkinghorne’s book, is science?

What, in Polkinghorne’s book, is theology?

What, in Polkinghorne’s book, is or are the relationship or relationships between science and theology? 

In today’s posting, I’ll take a first look at his answers to these questions, beginning with this concise statement (p. 18) addressing the first two in one fell swoop:

Just as the object of scientific enquiry is the physical world, so the object of theological enquiry is God.

A bit later on (p.20), Polkinghorne has a couple of things to say that bear on the question of the relationship or relationships between science and theology. First, he draws our attention to what he calls the “verisimilitudinous” nature of scientific and theological knowledge.

As with science, so even more with theology, the search for verisimilitudinous knowledge is subtle and manifold. Its character is cannot be reduced to a simple, flat description. For both disciplines, critical realism provides a concept that both acknowledges that there is a truth to be found and also recognizes that the finding of that truth is not achievable through the application of some straightforward and specifiable technique. Both disciplines are concerned with the search for motivated belief and their understandings originate in interpreted experience.

There are a number of expressions used here that need to be unpacked, including “verisimilitudinous knowledge,” “critical realism,” and “interpreted experience.” For the time being, however, I want to dwell a bit on the parallelism that Polkinghorne is drawing between science and theology. They are, he continues, alike in that: 

Both are trying to grasp the significance of their encounters with manifold reality.

That statement sits in the middle of a paragraph that deserves to be read in its entirety.

Science does not have a privileged route of access to knowledge through some superior ‘scientific method’, uniquely its own possession; theology does not have a privileged route of access to knowledge through some ineffable source of unquestionable ‘revelation’, uniquely its own possession. Both are trying to grasp the significance of their encounters with manifold reality. In the case of science, the dimension of reality concerned is that of a physical world that we transcend and that can be put to the experimental test. In the case of theology, it is the reality of God who transcends us and who can be met with only in awe and obedience. Once that distinction is understood, we can perceive the two disciplines to be intellectual cousins under the skin, despite the differences arising from their contrasting subject material.

So one relationship between science and theology is that of similarity, in that both involve an “encounter” with a reality; another is that of dissimilarity in that the two realities are quite different, the one being physical reality and the other being divine reality.

But so placing theology in a relationship of similarity with science does theology no favor, precisely because of the dissimilarity just noted. For the time being, however, I’ll content myself with the following. First, as we are not dealing now with radical skepticism, there is no reason for any argumentation here on behalf of the thesis that scientists “encounter” physical reality. (That I take to be but an alternative way of saying that scientists observe, experience, and experiment with physical reality. This in turn I take to be an essential part of the experiential and experimental method that belongs to science, i.e., empirico-mathematical science, uniquely; it certainly does not belong to mathematics.)

Second, the parallel thesis, that theologians “encounter” divine reality, or that they somehow experience the divine, is one that absolutely needs argumentation, sound argumentation, on its behalf if it is to be accepted. For while it is perfectly evident in sensory experience that physical reality exists, it is just not evident in sensory experience that divine reality exists.

I have not, in reading either Polkinghorne’s Science and Theology or his Science and the Trinity found any such argumentation. I fear that he is in the position of simply having asserted his thesis and not given it the argumentation that it requires; this does not bode well for his view of theology. As I continue, however, in my reading in and reflection on the book at hand and others, I will be on the lookout for the needed argumentation.