Window Quarterly
Vol. 3, No. 3 & 4, 1993
Copyright 1993

[Permission is granted to use, print, reproduce this article 
provided the following acknowledgment is given:  From 
Window Quarterly 3, 3/4 (1993); ACRAG c. 1993. 

***

TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF SCIENCE

by Richard Kirby, Ph.D.
Special for Window

The 20th century has been the Age of Science par excellence.  
Yet as we stand at the threshold of the 21st century, the need 
for a "spiritual civilization"- in accordance with the teachings 
of Christ: on earth, as it is in heaven - alongside 
"technological civilization" is imperative.  The 21st century 
needs to be an Age of Theology as well as an Age of Science, 
and therefore the 20th Century's intellectual achievement, the 
Philosophy of Science, needs to be followed by the 21st 
century's Theology of Science.  
	
The 20th century, the century of quantum mechanics and 
electronics, relativity theory and atomic bombs, genetic 
engineering and biological warfare, has been the most 
scientific, the most deadly, the most warlike and the most 
turbulent in history.  The 21st will have the same mix of the 
potent fruits of the Tree of Knowledge unless there is a 
concerted movement by the Church to place sound 
theological understanding at the very heart of philosophy of 
science.  In other words, there needs to be New Science for 
the New Millennium, a science worthy of Christ,  just as the 
First Millennium ended with the Renaissance looming up and 
the principle of experimentation appearing.  The Church 
must not ignore science and technology - this is the easy 
option -  but extend to these great branches of human activity 
the resources of the Gospel of redemption and the life of 
sanctification.  For a truly holy science, based on the Gospel 
and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, is a real possibility, and 
an intellectual task worthy of the coming 
century/millennium, which is just seven years away as I 
write. 
	
Historians of science are widely agreed that it was the 
Christian doctrine of Creation - faith in the Universe or 
Nature as both contingent and rational  - which paved the 
way for the modern era of science; but this does not mean 
that the actual ideals, or to speak more theologically, the 
'gods', of science, are presently derived from sound Christian 
theological understanding.  
	
For we are not stuck with our present philosophy of science 
as the only one possible.  To see how theology can contribute 
to the sanctification and redemption of science, as it 
contributed somewhat to its creation or origination, we must 
however look at some history. 
	
'Modern,' in the phrase 'modern era', does not in this 
connection mean 20th century; it means an era which was 
launched by the Renaissance of the 12th and 13th century, 
followed by the Reformation, and resulting in the birth of 
such modern nation-states as Germany - and, later, America. 
'Modern' means that which is contrasted with ancient (as in 
the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle),  and medieval (as 
in the time of Augustine, Boethius, Charlemagne and the 
Holy Roman Empire).  'Modern' means the era in which the 
high medieval synthesis  broke up, and the rule of popes and 
creeds was gradually succeeded by the principle of truth, of 
experiment, of individual conscience, of guidance by civil 
rather than ecclesiastical powers - in short, the 'modern age' 
is almost exactly the age of 'science' in the broad sense.
	
The 20th Century has been the great Age of Science. It was 
some time coming; the Age of Reason which preceded it in 
the 18th Century was followed by the Age of the Industrial 
Revolution which reached its peak in the 19th century 
foundations had been laid in the 18th century.
	
The word 'science' is simply an adaptation of the medieval 
Latin word scientia meaning knowledge. In the modern era 
(in the specifically 'scientific' sense which began to get fully 
under way by the time of Italy's Galileo Galilei  and 
England's Francis Bacon [16th- 17th century]), however, this 
scientia was particularly associated with the study of nature.  
Bacon was one of the prime movers of the experimental 
study of nature which led to the creation of the Royal 
Society, the premier society of scientific investigators of 
which Sir Isaac Newton  (born 1642, the year of Galileo's 
death) became  in due course the President.  But above all 
this new scientia  represented the new principle of 
experimental, observational truth - a principle which 
supplanted, not without upheaval - the medieval principle of 
revealed truth interpreted through the doctrines/dogmas of 
the Church, i.e. the Roman Magisterium, and therefore 
through the ecclesiastical authority which we now associate 
with the  Inquisition, the Auto-da-Fe [burning at the stake] 
and the suppression of truth and education.
	
Galileo and his version of the New Physics and the New 
Astronomy was, as is well known, silenced and forced to 
recant the 'Copernican hypothesis', the heliocentric theory of 
the universe*.  This is not to say that Galileo was 'right', 
morally, and the Church 'wrong'.  Different values were 
operating in that dispute; they still are.   And since the atomic 
bomb, science has known sin, according to Robert 
Oppenheimer.**  That was part of its coming-of-age in the 
20th century, as it discovered the dark underside of eating of 
the Tree of Knowledge.   But the way forward does not lie in 
cultivating ignorance or technophobia; what is required is to 
follow the sin of science with the redemption of science, and 
then its sanctification.  Thanks to Abraham Maslow and 
others, we have the rudiments of a "psychology of science"; 
we lack as yet a spirituality of science.  This will come when 
theologians become deeply involved in the adventure of 
scientific research - not as 'insiders", nor as 'outsiders', but as 
pastors to the knowing process itself.  This means, for 
example, a chaplaincy to laboratories - and sometimes it 
means that church communities should be deliberately 
experimental so as to learn more about the scientific outlook.
	
As science begat the Philosophy of Science, the church will 
beget the theology of Science.  This is neither a renunciation 
of scientific research, nor is it a quest for a "Scientific 
Theology' or a Theological Science (other than Christian 
Doctrine); rather,  theology of science is the exposition of the 
work of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the creation, 
redemption and sanctification of science, and therefore of 
technology.
	
For if we are to "create the 21st century", in the words of the 
Washington-based World Future Society, we need a new 
science for a new century; and this science, guided and 
empowered by that divine love and wisdom which is the life 
of the Holy Spirit,  requires a new, non-dualistic theory of 
knowledge (epistemology) in which love and science are 
unified under the canopy of the Gospel. For the 'gods of 
science' are not love but power, and ultimately the 
mechanical assumptions of contemporary science lead the 
human race towards the order of death and away from the 
order of life.  Furthermore, until the philosophy of science 
learns about the relational nature of being from the Christian 
Trinitarian doctrine, it will remain individualistic and 
separatist, leading only to frustration.
	
We need a new science for a new century; and therefore, to 
some extent, we need new theologies, new theologians.  The 
challenge of  21st century science therefore provides an 
opportunity for the theological teachers of even the 
Armenian Church to develop a new curriculum: not theology 
and science, nor science  and religion, but theology of 
science, which will lead in the end to science in Christ, a 
work of the church, a part of the mission of the people of 
God to the suffering world. n

Notes:

*For a fair-minded account of this, see the monumental 
history of astronomy by Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers.

** For more information, see The Physicists  by C.P.Snow.

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