II.

Theology and Science

Theologians as diverse as 13th-century Italian Saint Thomas Aquinas and 20th-century Swiss Karl Barth have held that theology is a science. Both, however, were careful to point out that sciences are of many sorts. Theology resembles a science to the extent that orderly, critical intellectual procedures are employed in the study of its subject matter, but it radically differs from the natural and even from the human sciences because its ultimate subject matter, God, is not accessible to empirical investigation. The problem of establishing a rigorous way of reasoning about God is therefore crucial in theology. Aquinas began his theological system by offering five proofs for the existence of God as a basis for all his other arguments. Barth, on the other hand, began with God's revelation or communication of himself (the word of God), believing that only thus can one avoid the danger of approaching God as a mere object of investigation. Those who follow Barth's method argue that every science has to begin with some assumptions and that the assumption of a self-communicating God is the correct starting point for theology; those who follow Aquinas's example hold that intellectual integrity demands that the theologian begin with the question of whether God exists. Clearly, in both views theology must be concerned as much with human beings and their capacities as with God. Indeed, Barth has said that theology would be more properly called “theanthropology,” because its subject matter is not God in isolation, but rather the divine and the human as they are related to each other.