Theology, Reason and Science - Some History

In my previous Knowledge Series post, I discussed how Faith -- holding something to be True without the need to prove it -- is the basis for Reason.  Most of my discussion at that time was about how science uses Reason, together with Faith in a few things, to make Truth claims.  So, last time, the primary focus was on Science as a path to Truth.

This time, I want to discuss Religion and its relationship to Reason, and briefly to Science.  To do so, I need to get into a little history and introduce the idea of Theology.


In what we think of as Western culture, the search for Knowledge and Truth go back to the beginning of recorded thought. What we now think of as religions certainly had, as one of their functions, the delivery of Knowledge -- the explanation of how and why things happened and a description of what things Really were.  However, until the rise of what we now call Philosophy, Reason -- by our current definition --  was not required to support the Truth being described by those belief systems.

Around the time of Socrates (born in 469 BC) it is clear, however, that the Greek world had given rise to the idea of a "philosophy" -- a "love of knowledge" or "love of truth" -- and that philosophy in its nascent form said that Reason had to be applied in order to arrive at Truth.  This method of seeking Truth is probably the key inheritance we have received from Socrates and those who followed him.

Of course, at the time, the idea of "science" did not exist yet.  It would not exist for more than 2000 years, in fact.  What we might have thought of as "science" was more correctly called "natural philosophy" because it dealt with trying to find truths about the natural world.  Socrates, apparently, tried his hand at this sort of philosophy early in his life, failed at it, and moved on to a different branch.  Still, there were people at the time trying to apply reason to the study of the natural world, and then there were people like Socrates who were applying reason to less substantial things - truth, love, honor -- that sort of human endeavor.

OK, the first part of the history lesson is almost over.  I apologize that this is a very abbreviated and necessarily simplified history, but I need to tie it to the next part.  Because the next part deals with Christianity.

By the time Christianity came into existence, this approach of applying Reason to reach Truth was pretty well entrenched in the learned culture of the West.  I am not saying it wasn't at all in existence before Socrates, but certainly Socrates and his followers had tremendous influence by the time the first Christian churches were founded.

This meant that a reliance on Reason to support Truth statements was already inherent in the culture in which Christianity spread.  Thus was born, as part of the Christian belief system, Theology.

Theology, you see, is not simply a list of the things people of a particular Christian denomination hold to be true.  That, unfortunately, is how the word is quite commonly misused these days.  No, Theology is something quite different.

Theology is the application of reason to explain truth, given the faith statements which form the basis of Christianity, together with the theological material which has come before.

Compare this to today's view of science, modified to include my last post's view of faith statements:

Science is the application of reason to explain truth, given the faith statements which form the basis of science, together with the established science which has come before.

Undoubtedly you can see the parallels there.  Of course they are there.  Clearly, I was leading to this point.  Why was I doing this?

Long before the first professional scientist lived, there were professional theologians.  The early church was built by them.  The most famous and influential Christian who ever lived (perhaps excluding the Apostle Paul; let's not argue that point now) was Augustine of Hippo.  He deserves his own post or two, but for now I will merely talk about him as he relates to Theology.

Augustine was born to a Christian mother and a pagan mother, and for a very long time he rejected Christianity.  But he was determined that Reason would guide his path to the Truth.  Once he became a Christian, he applied his Reason very thoroughly.  Augustine laid down many of the theological doctrines which exist in Christianity today, by applying Reason to all manner of issues.

One key teaching of Augustine is that there were two "Books" of Truth.  The Book of Scripture, and the Book of Nature.  Both books, he said, demonstrated the Truth of God's Creation.  And, very importantly, whenever a conflict appeared to exist between the two, it was because people were not applying Reason properly.  In order to reconcile the two, we needed to examine, and find the flaw in, how we were reading the books.

This was obvious to him, by the way, even without considering what we'd call "science."  Augustine recognized the apparent contradictions in the stories of the scripture, and reasoned that there would be Truths explained when we understood them properly.  But when natural philosophy -- remember, the forerunner of science -- proved something to be true, Augustine was not opposed to the idea that the reading of Scripture would have to change to accommodate it.

And Augustine was not alone.  Almost 900 years later, Thomas Aquinas carried very similar beliefs about reason (as did many along the way, but Aquinas is historically and theologically very influential.)

This, friends, is the heritage of the Christian faith.  However, along the way, Theology got lost -- at least among many Christians.  Once the Reformation happened, many new branches of Christianity were so opposed to what became known as the Catholic church that they seemed willing to dismiss the centuries of reasoned thought which had grown up with the Church, in order to separate themselves from the abuses of that Church.

This was not "the fault" of the Reformation.  The Reformation and the Protestant movement did push a large segment of Christianity towards an idea that they could just read Scripture for themselves and be brought to an understanding of the Truth thereby.  While that may be true for the key teachings of the Gospel (again, let's not argue that point now) it most certainly is not true for the relationship between Augustine's Book of Scripture and Book of Nature.

Throwing out the theological baby with the corrupt bathwater allowed for the growth of denominations which do not take advantage of the benefit of theology.  They do not build on the foundation of Reason applied to Scripture which was meticulously built over time.

This leads to some interesting, and frustrating things. For example, something that might come as a surprise to many Christians and non-Christians alike:

A majority of Christians in the world belong to denominations which profess that the theory of evolution is consistent with Christian teachings.

Don't believe me?

There are 2.2 billion Christians in the world.  [Sources: Washington Post, Pew Forum]

Of those, 1.2 billion are Catholic. [Sources: Catholic Culture, Pew Forum]

Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the Catholic stance that the theory (or theories) of evolution are not in conflict with scriptural truth (see Message to the Ponfical Academy if Sciences: On Evolution).  In fact, he also supports the centuries-old recognition that "We know that the truth cannot contradict the truth. (Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus)"   (Sound like Augustine to you?  It should.)

It must be said: while Catholics alone are a majority of Christians, there are other large Christian denominations which are not Catholic, but which also acknowledge that "truth cannot contradict the truth."  These people individually (and I am one) and these denominations corporately, agree that Evolution is scientific truth, to the best knowledge humans have today.

To me, one of the sad parts about the way Christians are perceived in the world today, and particularly in the modern American culture, is due to the fact that a very vocal minority of Christians has turned away from the historical underpinnings of applying reason to religion: they have tuned away from Theology.  Certainly, they apply reason to their arguments; they are Western, after all.  But they start with a set of base assumptions which was discarded by Christianity in the distant past -- the literal interpretation of scripture for one; the weighting of scripture above nature for another -- and then apply their reason from those assumptions.

In conclusion, let me say this.  It took me a long time to learn the facts which went into this post.  It seems as if it has taken me almost as long to write these few down. Of necessity, I have had to summarize large sections of very important information.  I have probably forgotten some details.  If I took another four months to revise this, it would get longer and more accurate, but at this point I think it has the key points I wanted to make.

Hopefully those of you who are currently inclined away from Christianity (and perhaps religion in general) because of its supposed opposition to Reason and Science will give it a bit more benefit of the doubt as the Knowledge Series continues.  Hopefully those of you who are Christians will recognize how tightly the two sources for Truth -- Theology and Science -- are actually connected, as well.

And hopefully, it won't take me quite so long to formulate my next post, so that the Knowledge Series can continue.