Recently the theology reading group we discussed A Christian Theology of Science: Reimagining a Theological Vision of Natural Knowledge by Paul Tyson.
Paul is a former member of our group and so were happy he could join us to discuss his book. Here is one summary.
We have come to separate natural knowledge (science) from faith and moral beliefs (religion), leading to serious difficulties in integrating knowledge and meaning, facts and values, and immanence and transcendence.
At the root of these dissonances is the difficult relationship between a naturalistic philosophy that purports to be a scientific realism and the things that make us human: transcendence, faith, meaning, and purpose. This is the result of science displacing Christian theology as Western modernity's first truth discourse. However, Christian theology contains deep resources in its approach to knowledge and reality that have not been brought to the science and religion conversation since the late nineteenth century.
You can download the beginning of the book here.
I have a great interest in the subject of this book and it stimulated and challenged my thinking.
Tyson builds on two important ideas from the historian Peter Harrison. In his book, Territories of Science and Religion, Harrison makes the case that "science" and "religion" are ill-defined entities and their definition and "territories" [the domain of their relevance and authority] have shifted over time. Second, in a 2006 article, Harrison, observes that in the late 19th century there was a "remarkable reversal" "from Christian theology interpreting the true meaning and validity of natural philosophy to science interpreting the true meaning and validity of Christian theology" (page 31).
In other words, "This is a profound shift from faith-based theocentric ontological foundationalism (TOF) to egocentric epistemological foundationalism (EEF)." (p. 32).
Thankfully, there is a ten-page glossary at the back of the book so the reader can keep refreshing their memory of how the author defines different terms. This is important as terms such as truth, theory, quality, meaning, wisdom, knowledge, and understanding are used in the sense that Plato used them, not how a modern scientist or citizen might use such terms. For example, theory (theoria) is "A vision of meaning. An inescapably imaginative and interpretive act of the meaning-discerning mind" (p.120).
I appreciated the book for giving a gentle introduction to a range of philosophical concepts, particularly metaphysics and transcendence.
The heart of the book is chapter 7, which includes several helpful diagrams, such as the one below, based on Plato's metaphysics.
This is based on four distinct categories of awareness considered by Plato. Tyson translates these into wisdom, mathematics, belief, and perception.
The central claim of the book is that modern science as a "first truth cultural discourse" has made the line between rationalism and wisdom uncrossable. In other words, modern physics has reduced metaphysics to the unreal, the realm of speculation and fantasy. We cannot know the true essence of reality, the ground of being. We can only know existence. Tyson has a very different vision. He claims that the separation of metaphysics and physics is intellectually incoherent. He cannot accept the position of some Christian scientists, such as myself, that the methodological naturalism of science is not necessarily in tension with Christian theology. He wants to imagine that Christian theology can provide a vision of natural knowledge.
Today we are a long way from Plato who considered metaphysics as the basis of physics. That is, one starts with qualities such as the character of God and from that reason towards what one thinks the world is like. This led to Aristotelian physics, which was discredited by Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. This is why scientists, Christians and non-Christians, are nervous about elevating Christian theology [a specific metaphysics] back to its pre-modern status as "the first truth discourse". It has a bad track record.
On the other hand, some atheist scientists claim physics determines metaphysics. In different words, the content of physical theories tells us what the world is really like. Science determines questions of meaning, purpose, values, and morality.
Update. (March 2024). Peter Harrison has written a helpful review of the book.
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