Method in Theology and Science: A Catholic Model

This continues my series on “method” in theology in science.  The next two posts will discuss Catholic approaches.

The Roman Catholic approach, exemplified in the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, is also sometimes said to represent a “dialogue” approach.[1]  There is of course not only one “Roman Catholic approach” to the relation between theology and science, and many Catholics working in this field would identify themselves as critical realists or assume the posture of critical realism without identifying it.[2]  Indeed, Pope John Paul II famously stated that “[s]cience can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.  Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.”[3] 

This oft-quoted statement of John Paul II was part of a longer letter to Jerry Coyne, Director of the Vatican Observatory, in preparation for a study week celebrating the three hundredth anniversary of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.[4]  The Pope stressed in that letter that the model he envisioned was one of dialogue rather than integration:

By encouraging openness between the Church and the scientific communities, we are not envisioning a disciplinary unity between theology and science like that which exists within a given scientific field or within theology proper. As dialogue and common searching continue, there will be grow towards mutual understanding and a gradual uncovering of common concerns which will provide the basis for further research and discussion. Exactly what form that will take must be left to the future. What is important, as we have already stressed, is that the dialogue should continue and grow in depth and scope. In the process we must overcome every regressive tendency to a unilateral reductionism, to fear, and to self-imposed isolation. What is critically important is that each discipline should continue to enrich, nourish and challenge the other to be more fully what it can be and to contribute to our vision of who we are and who we are becoming.[5]

Theologians, the Pope noted, can utilize the best science of their times to help them understand and articulate theological truths, but science cannot simply dictate terms to theology:

Now this is a point of delicate importance, and it has to be carefully qualified. Theology is not to incorporate indifferently each new philosophical or scientific theory. As these findings become part of the intellectual culture of the time, however, theologians must understand them and test their value in bringing out from Christian belief some of the possibilities which have not yet been realized. The hylomorphism of Aristotelian natural philosophy, for example, was adopted by the medieval theologians to help them explore the nature of the sacraments and the hypostatic union. This did not mean that the Church adjudicated the truth or falsity of the Aristotelian insight, since that is not her concern. It did mean that this was one of the rich insights offered by Greek culture, that it needed to be understood and taken seriously and tested for its value in illuminating various areas of theology. Theologians might well ask, with respect to contemporary science, philosophy and the other areas of human knowing, if they have accomplished this extraordinarily difficult process as well as did these medieval masters.[6]

Likewise, the Pope stated, the practice of natural science is neither to be equated with theology nor isolated from it:

For science develops best when its concepts and conclusions are integrated into the broader human culture and its concerns for ultimate meaning and value. Scientists cannot, therefore, hold themselves entirely aloof from the sorts of issues dealt with by philosophers and theologians. By devoting to these issues something of the energy and care they give to their research in science, they can help others realize more fully the human potentialities of their discoveries. They can also come to appreciate for themselves that these discoveries cannot be a genuine substitute for knowledge of the truly ultimate.[7]