Comments on: Hall 4 - Natural Law and Reason & Faith

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mutabilitie — Fri, 25 May 2007 19:29:00 +0000

You should have the Gala banquet here in Oxford — people are generally better dressed here at formal events. :o)

Re: redescriptions of natural sciences (whether ‘hard science’ or e.g. ‘hermeneutics’) is a tough one for a theologian to give fuller description of its conclusions or premises. Scotus, to take another example, brought much more rigor, clarity, and theological clarity to ‘metaphysics’ but unless you generally like Scotus, you may dislike such ‘theological accounts’, and so go with a more indirect (vague/cautious) theological redescription. A hazards with both of these approaches is that unless a theologian is really quite skilled in the ‘natural science’ and in ‘theology’, s/he won’t do either science justice or advance (contribute to) it.

So, sometimes when theologians take a (not necessarily ‘the’) Barthian line and refuse to wholly engage some other discipline or wholly reject any sort of natural theology, I wonder whether or not this is a desperate (or ‘wise’ act) act to methodologically separate the explication of doctrine from the tools of other ‘natural sciences’, which seems the reverse of Heidegger, who wants to bracket out theology from philosophy, whereas these ‘ad hoc apologetics’ theologians want to bracket out philosophy (and/or ‘natural sciences) from theology.

Gone are the days when a student studies all the arts for 15 years before doing theology (as in the pre-modern world). No one can master or know all the arts anymore–which is why (pastorally) we’ve agreed to lower level criteria for what counts as a science.

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A.D. — Fri, 25 May 2007 13:44:00 +0000

I have started to equate theology with Freud’s “other scene,” also remembering what Barth said about theology being a tremendous landscape which one could delve into. Or something like that. . . anyone know the direct quote? I’m looking for ways to fit this into Lacan as well. . . perhaps somewhere in between the Other and the Other’s Other (which of course doesn’t exist)

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Janet leslie Blumberg — Thu, 24 May 2007 23:54:00 +0000

In other words, a natural discipline is always on its own turf. Theology, once it gets beyond its various subdisciplinary turfs, is never on its own turf but on all turfs at once in a very equivocal and humbling manner…

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Janet leslie Blumberg — Thu, 24 May 2007 23:52:00 +0000

Yes, gala banquet! (Only I’m not in Philly, but Caleb and me could have one anyway…)
I’m so glad you came to this conclusion about Hall.
Just to clarify, in a way what I was saying is that theology doesn’t trump a natural science at all, because it is thinking at a different level, a meta-level, which (to me) makes it more inclusive and more integrative and therefore more tentative (because wiser) than any natural discipline needs to be.

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Davis — Thu, 24 May 2007 21:04:00 +0000

WooHoo! Gala Banquet!

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D. W. McClain — Thu, 24 May 2007 20:36:00 +0000

Thanks Mutabilitie and Janet. My problem with Hall isn’t that Theology doesn’t trump the other disciplines, but that there’s such an artificial divide between it and theology. Anyway, to answer Janet’s question about Hall, we chose to read him because 1. he’s an example of an anglican systematic theology (ha!); and 2. his stuff was online for free. However, the management at TLOU had a phone conference last night and decided that Hall sucks, and we’re quitting him. The next project will be announced at a special gala banquet. Invitations will be sent out shortly.

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Janet leslie Blumberg — Thu, 24 May 2007 19:19:00 +0000

I agree with Mutabilitie about Aquinas. And I think a deeper grasp of Aristotelian ways of knowing, such as Aquinas possessed, would help us negotiate this tricky subject of overlap between natural disciplines and theology. Can “a natural discipline fully express its subject matter?” If the discipline is a genuine disciplinary community using dialectic to approach and formalize its subject matter, and thereby is developing its own methodologies and evidence and validity standards and mode of thinking, how COULD any other discipline better express its subject matter?
Where theology, like philosophy (of which theology or “first philosophy” is the highest branch), comes in, is in being an umbrella science or an interdisciplinary and metadisciplinary way of thinking. Since the other disciplines are not addressed to knowing God, or Origins, or ultimate Ends, how could there be a conflict? The various ways of knowing are addressed to different formalities and use different styles of formalization. Rising above and beyond their spheres belongs to the metadisicplines.
P.S. Why are we reading Hall, “she said plaintively”? Let’s read von Balthazar…? No, obviously there must be a reason. But Hall is proving to be so very “modern” in a totally outdated sort of way, and he’s not very hip to the theological tradition in a longer, premodern perspective…?

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mutabilitie — Thu, 24 May 2007 18:40:00 +0000

Unfortunately, I think Aquinas is not a ‘prime’ example of a theologian who has theology ‘overcome’ some other discipline. Rather, he thinks that if a natural discipline follows its end correctly, it will not contradict conclusions of the Christian faith. The key notion is that the natural science ‘done correctly’ will co-operate with Christian Theology, given that both aim to express truth.

There are other theologians more interested in ‘re-doing’ the conclusions of lower sciences given what a theologian knows qua theologian. This latter view has less ‘trust’ that a natural discipline can fully express its subject matter. This is a topic I run into with Henry of Ghent, who basically changes the metaphysics (i.e. aristotelian categories) given his theological position on the Trinity. I’m sure there are many others like this, but it remains to be seen whether the metaphysician would ‘buy’ such a ‘redo’.