Re: Science and religion: two ways of knowingThanks, Shuan, for getting this topic started. Your thoughtful statement and the many other additions to this conversation are enlightening, and will be valuable for the writing I'll be doing on science and religion for the Berea College web site. I can attest to the value of _Science and Christianity: Four Views_, which Howard has referred to. I'm going through it right now. Two other four-fold models are those of John Haught, in _Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation_ (Paulist Press, 1995) and Ian Barbour, _Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (Harper, 1997).
In his introduction to _Science and Christianity..., Richard Carlson makes this point (p. 12):"What appears to divide many Christians here is not their high view of the Bible *but how they read the Bible and then apply it to questions that arise in the science-faith arena*." I think that point has been illustrated time and again on this discussion list, and it was certainly a factor that arose in discussions in the course I use to teach. It clearly has a bearing on the question of the relations between scientific ways of knowing and theological ways of knowing. If one understands theology as "rational reflection on and interpretation of the data of revelation," then is the task of theology more complicated than that of the interpretation of scientific data? Are the hermeneutical models of interpreting revelation greater in number and more divergent than those of interpreting the data of nature that the natural sciences investigate--they seem to be--and does that lead to greater divergencies in the ways theologies reflect on the data of nature?
Bob Schneider
rjschn39@bellsouth.net
----- Original Message -----
From: Howard J. Van Till
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2002 7:03 PM
Subject: Re: Science and religion: two ways of knowing
Shuan,
You might wish to look at the book, Science and Christianity: Four Views, edited by Richard F. Carlson, published by InterVarsity Press, 2000.
Your model seems quite close to the "independence" model described by Jean Pond. My contribution was called the "partnership" model.
Howard Van Till
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