A while ago I took to thinking about the area of study in which I am now engaged (theology), and also the area in which I had previously been professionally occupied (science). I suppose I conceived of these as two largely separable and separate fields. Sitting next to each other in the intellectual landscape, I suppose I would have expected to find a fairly well defined boundary between them. But because I am a realist (technically a critical realist), committed to a single , overarching and knowable reality outside of me, I would expect the boundary to be a fuzzy one, allowing friendly contact and interchange. If both represent valid pursuits, then they both deal with the same reality, although from different perspectives, using different tools. They are neither enemies or rivals. Admittedly, few scientists spend much time in properly theological reflection (except the ones who do), and there are probably more than a few who would deny theology any validity at all. But that has more to do with weaknesses in the education of scientists (at least in the Anglo Saxon world) than with any real problem with theology as a discipline. It has its problems of course, but validity is not one of them. However, it turns out that there may be a bigger overlap between theology and science than I had suspected.
I was
alerted to this by having to critique a paper published in the Journal of Empirical Theology. Can there be such a thing I wondered. If theology is the
study of an ineffable and inapproachable God, then it seems unlikely that
empirical methods will have much traction. I am rather assuming that there are theologians
(Barth perhaps?) who argue that when it comes to knowing anything about God, what
is required is revelation not scientific experimentation. And while God’s self-revelation
can be examined, debated and understood (and misunderstood), this is not a task
that the methods of the natural sciences will be much help with. But theology
(rather like science) is really not one single institution or discipline, with
a single object of study from a single standpoint and a single set of tools. Given
that things are believed about God (and indeed gods) by people, there are
reasons for studying these beliefs, the people who hold them, and perhaps thereby
discover things about the God in whom
they believe. In general, those who study people develop interests in the beliefs
people have. So it is no surprise that tools have been developed to study such
things, and some of these are thoroughly empirical.
Obvious
examples are found in social and cognitive psychology, where many of the classic
approaches found in other branches of the natural sciences, are used to study things
like beliefs. The general approach can often be couched in classic hypothesis-driven
terms (observation-hypothesis-prediction-test), using standard instruments and
testing strategies to get at what is going on in people’s minds (or at least inside
their heads). Religious ideas and beliefs might simply be seen as a subset of beliefs
and ideas, examinable using exactly the same techniques. This is not a new idea;
that religious belief was nothing special is a view that Scottish arch-sceptic and
empiricist David Hume would have agreed with. Such investigations, undertaken
from a standpoint of “methodological naturalism” generate explanations for the phenomena
under investigation that do not invoke God, any more that I would have invoked His
activity to explain the eye movement phenomena that I used to study. But then
this doesn’t really sound like any kind of theology. And indeed it isn’t – it’s
psychology.
As an
aside, as a Christian believer, while I did not invoke the actions of God to
explain the things I was investigating, I was well aware that He was not
remote. He was as present in my lab as anywhere else; I am a Christian not a
Deist. I was always quite comfortable with the belief that underpinning
everything I did, indeed underpinning my very existence as well as that of the universe,
was God’s power (revealed by writer of the New Testament letter to the Hebrews;
Heb 1:3). But my job was to find immediate and natural explanations for what I
was investigating, based on natural rather than supernatural mechanisms. My
hypotheses were couched in terms of these natural mechanisms, and these were
what my experiments tested, and what my theories invoked. But God and natural
explanations are neither contradictory or mutually exclusive. They are
different, and pertain to different levels of reality. But this poses a conundrum.
I assume that there is an explanation that connects the power and working of the
God who is spirit with the existence and maintenance of this universe which is
material. I have no idea what it is, and my gut feeling is that even if God had
revealed it I would not be capable of understanding it.
But back to
empirical theology. There are models of belief and thought that originate
within an avowedly theological context and use theological concepts. These are likely
to be dependent, at least for the most part, on the revelation of God mentioned
above. Empirical methods could, I suppose, be used to study such beliefs. But
the methods themselves would have to be theologically informed, otherwise we’re
simply back in the realms of psychology. This seems to be what goes on in what
is called empirical theology. What I don’t quite understand is what it’s for.
Mind you, that applies to a lot of science which is actually at its best when
it is just about finding out stuff. It is only subsequently that it turns out that
some of the stuff is useful or important or worth lots of money. There’s a lot
of serendipity involved in even the hardest of hard sciences. There are
contexts where finding how what and how people think is important. An example
would be education where if you wanted to know whether a concept or belief was
being adequately transmitted, then there are ways of finding this out in a rigorous
manner. This is likely to be as useful in theological education as elsewhere.
But is this really theology? Who’s to say. Defining disciplines is famously
difficult. But I can conceive of investigating theological concepts and beliefs
in a thoroughly scientific manner. Whether it ever is, is a different story.
