Re: [asa] Creationism Conference (The Queen of Sciences)

Hmmm, I'm not sure sure that theology as Queen because she "excels in
dignity all the subjects which compose the other sciences, and because her
teachings are divulged in more
sublime ways" is what the Fathers or the scholastics meant. I think their
view was more epistemologically radical than simply an aesthetics of
theology's Queen-hood. Theology was Queen for them because the "sciences"
meant broadly "philosophy," and they viewed all true philosophy as that
which best conforms to revealed truth. Fides quarens intellectum starts
with fides. In the famous passages from Augustine we all like to quote, he
isn't opposing revealed knowledge and knowledge gained through sense
experience -- he's playing off an epistemology in which all true knowledge
is revealed by grace through faith.

Yes, Galileo is "modern" if "modern" ends with Descartes. So you have
Galileo-Bacon, Newton, Descartes, Locke, Hume -- and then the project of
giving sense experience a privileged status starts to collapse after Kant.
But I'm not sure Galileo would have understood what Popper, Quine, etc. were
going on about. So isn't Galileo really proto-Enlightenment?

As to not being postmodern -- well, we're all postmodern, in that we live
after Kant (and Einstein, and Darwin, and Freud). IMHO, the
"postconservative" evangelicals, the radical orthodoxy folks, and such are
doing valuable service in pointing us back to pre-Enlightenment sources
while pushing us past the Enlightenment. It will be interesting to see what
sort of integrative work they can do with the natural sciences and theology
-- their few bits on this here and there so far seem to be disappointing --
but Conor Cunningham's forthcoming book on Evolution will be interesting,
and the Interventions volume on Naturalism seems good as well (
http://www.theologyphilosophycentre.co.uk/Interventions/) IMHO, the
postconservative theological sensibility is a sweet spot through which these
old discussions can and will start to move forward.
On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 11:59 AM, Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu> wrote:

> >>> "David Opderbeck" <dopderbeck@gmail.com> 6/24/2008 11:41 AM >>> asks
> some important, relevant questions:
>
> Yes -- magesterial and foundational. And yet -- does Galileo really
> capture
> what the scholastics meant by theology as Queen? And isn't Galileo's
> reliance on sense experience not exactly as consonant with Patristic
> epistemology as he suggests? In a postmodern / critical realist
> framework,
> can we give sense experience quite the pride of place Galileo affords it?
>
> *******
>
> My answers are as follows:
>
> (1) My sense is that Galileo does fairly get at what the scholastics meant
> by thinking of science as the "handmaiden" to the "queen" of theology.
> Here
> is something specific to that point:
>
> "First I question whether there is not some equivocation in failing to
> specify the virtues which entitle sacred theology to the title of "queen."
> It might deserve that name by reason of including everything that is
> included from all the other sciences and establishing everything by better
> methods and with profounder learning. It is thus, for example, that the
> rules for measuring fields and keeping accounts are much more excellently
> contained in arithmetic and in the geometry of Euclid than in the practices
> of surveyors and accountants. Or theology might be queen because of being
> occupied with a subject which excels in dignity all the subjects which
> compose the other sciences, and because her teachings are divulged in more
> sublime ways.
>
> That the title and authority of queen belongs to theology in the first
> sense, I think, will not be affirmed by theologians who have any skill in
> the other sciences. None of these, I think, will say that geometry,
> astronomy, music, and medicine are much more excellently contained in the
> Bible than they are in the books of Archimedes, Ptolemy, Boethius, and
> Galen. Hence it seems likely that regal preeminence is given to theology in
> the second sense; that is, by reason of its subject and the miraculous
> communication of divine revelation of conclusions which could not be
> conceived by men in any other way, concerning chiefly the attainment of
> eternal blessedness. "
>
> David, I think this is a reasonable presentation of the situation facing
> Galileo. Under the traditional view, e.g, it was OK to write hexameral
> treatises in which science was used to help us understand more fully
> biblical references to nature, but not to use science to challenge
> traditional interpretations. This is consistent with what Galileo says
> here.
>
> (2) As for the role of sense experience, my own view -- which is to say, of
> course, the correct view :-) or at least the best view -- is that Galileo
> held to a model of scientific knowledge that we would call "modern", in
> that
> science for him was capable of yielding certain or virtually certain
> conclusions, based on both sense experience and reason. That is, he
> accepted the classical Aristotelian view of science as demonstrated
> knowledge, even while he rejected the Aristotelian approach of explaining
> nature in terms of forms and qualities rather than mathematics. At the
> same
> time, he pushed a "post-modern" view of biblical interpretation. Thus, the
> demonstrated conclusions of science could and should be used to help us
> determine which of the possible interpretations of a given text was
> actually
> correct. Mathematics for him was capable of only one clear meaning,
> whereas
> the Bible could mean any of several possible things -- mathematics was
> literally the language of God, as he saw it, and the fact that we mortals
> could speak that language made it possible for us to know the mind of God
> deeply, halting only at infinity which God comprehends but we cannot.
> Ordinary human language, on the other hand, was "accommodated to the rude
> and unlearned," and therefore we would cause the Bible to err if we
> insisted
> always on taking the "literal" meaning, ie, "what the bare words signify."
>
> I tell students, just to help make a point, that G held a modernist view of
> science but a post-modernist view of the Bible.
>
> In our post-modern age, we might perhaps hesitate to be so quick to use
> science to reinterpret a given text--we might perhaps have less confidence
> in science's ability to provide certain demonstrations. However, on the
> matters relevant to him (namely the motion of the earth and the structure
> of
> the heavens), I suspect we would share G's confidence in scientific
> conclusions and follow his prescription. Whether or not we hold a
> post-modern view of scientific knowledge (which I do not, although I do
> allow for some influence of social and political and philosophical and
> religious factors on science).
>
> Ted
>

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Received on Tue Jun 24 13:27:57 2008