Methodological Comparison

between Contemporary Science and Orthodox Theology

fr. Răzvan Andrei Ionescu

PRELIMINARY STATEMENTS

In the scientific discourse, the scientist talks about objective facts. Honest science takes the form of a confession about what we know and about what we do not know concerning the way the world functions and is structured. This confession has to be responsible, and presupposes humility. In the theological discourse, the believer talks about his experience, a confession about the profound reality that we can touch through the liturgical experience. It is not a defense of God, because “God needs no advocate, but witnesses”. The aim of Christian theology, in general, or of Christian Apologetics, in particular, is to confess the presence of God through appropriate tools that make this presence permeable and comprehensible for all the people. I think the encounter between these two kinds of confession is the future of the dialogue between Science and Theology.

Ian Barbour, the prominent Religion and Science researcher mentions about four ways of relating science and religion: conflict, independence, dialogue and integration. His vision is complex, but reading this schema we feel tempted to see this encounter in terms of an intersection between two horizontal visions about the world, which stick to the natural level and remain a pure expression of cultural perspectives. However, theology is not horizontal, even if it has horizontal consequences. More precisely, the Orthodoxy conceives theology like a culture that does not belong to the natural created dimension of the reality. It is the culture through which God cultivates the soul of the human being as a garden to bear the fruits of His Kingdom. It is God’s culture, or the culture of Holy Spirit in the terminology of the hieromonk Rafail Noica – which I willingly assume -, a culture or a divine pedagogy that we have to deal with in the very profound of our soul. This is fundamentally a vertical culture, because it presumes the cooperation of the human being with the divine uncreated energies, and consequently it is fundamentally trans-cultural in the sense of the human culture, because it can intersect with rich fruits any human culture in the world.

The encounter between Science and Theology cannot be seen anymore like an encounter between two horizontal competitors, manifested in a convergent or divergent manner. On the contrary, the human being is placed at the intersection between the horizontal human culture, targeting the understanding here and now, and the vertical divine culture, addressed to the human being here and now, but which has in view the eternity.

What does Science mean and How does Science work?

Science is “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment” (Oxford Dictionary of English). Science is above all the knowledge interested in the safety and efficiency of its results. Albert Einstein says that scientific thinking is nothing less than the product of a continual refinement of everyday thinking.

The very beginning of the science is the Greek one. It is the first that tries to explain the natural phenomena only via intellectual tools. In the medieval period, the researcher chiefly looked for the relations between ideas (logoi) and only secondarily for testing some hypotheses through experiment. In modernity we look for quantifiable observation of the process and to experimental checking stemmed from the formulation of a work hypothesis. Science assumes not so much the inference of certain relationships in terms of finality as the pragmatic description, prediction and control of natural phenomena. Starting with Galileo Galilei, the new science is a combination of experiment and theory as well as an effort to explain natural laws by mathematical relations between measurable variables: not why the bodies move but how they do it. We start to reproduce phenomena and to test them in laboratory conditions. Contemporary science changes in paradigm comparing with the modern science. The Laplacian determinism is replaced by a better understanding and overture behind the complexity of the world, and that happens on a multi-level approach.

The scientific method is unique and invariable from Galileo’s works and those of other founders of modern science. This method is meant to be trans-subjective: every person initiated in the mechanism of the development of scientific knowledge, can apply it so as to reach coherent results, generally verifiable. The acquired data are ascertainable. It is intended to be carried out independently from any value-like factors holding onto the person’s subjectivity. The reason behind this fact is the following: nature is “believed to function according to “laws” which are independent of human desires, and scientific results are notoriously unreliable whenever the influence of human biases has not adequately controlled”[i].

Theories are arrived at through generalization. They are also called “laws of nature”. Theories are statements that have proved their efficiency to describe a determined number of phenomena. They are also susceptible to describe other phenomena whose internal logic is not yet known. And if it can be managed, the applicability field of theories gets enhanced. In order to produce theories, the data, facts obtained via the experimental way, are assembled in rather the same way as the pieces of a puzzle, highlighting the relations between them. Relying on a model (and using imagination, analogies, etc), i.e. a symbolically already existent structure, whose properties are known to the experimenter, one builds by creative imagination a scientific theory, which remains to be subsequently verified. Theories are valid as long as contradictory cases have not been identified. When such facts occur, stressing the insufficiency of a theory, the latter has to be perfected in order to respond to the new requirements. In this way, failure becomes a factor of progress. According to Thomas Kuhn, theories obey a game of dependences on a generalized pattern in the society of scientists at a certain moment and in a particular historical context. This pattern is a set of generally accepted conceptual and methodological presuppositions, which he calls paradigm.

We can characterize science in terms of experiment, observation, model, concept, theory.

What does Theology mean AND How does Theology work?

Theology is “the study of the nature of God and religious belief”, and according to Christian theology “God comes to be conceived as Father and Son” (Oxford Dictionary of English). This definition of the “ the world’s most trusted dictionary” is profoundly unsatisfactory, because: 1. we do not study the nature of God, which is incomprehensible, 2. theology is not necessarily a study, but a way of life, 3. the basic image of God for the Christians is Trinity of Persons. Theology doesn’t pre-eminently stand for knowledge in the cognitive sense, as it stands for a becoming, a personal reconstruction, a fully existential commitment. Theology, which is etymologically understood as speaking about God, develops its confession and competence through the practice of prayer, that is of speaking with God, of its unmediated meeting with Him.

We can characterize theology in terms of experience, prayer, grace, holiness, deification.

God’s discovery is often perceived in the interior of the human universe in terms of a genuine falling in love. This calls for a personal enlargement for a plounging into the deepest recesses of the self, the place where Christ dwells in a mysterious way from the moment of Baptism. The conversion to faith, metanoia, i.e. „the renewal of mind”, involves a refreshed look on the world, a new understanding: just like the restoration of an old picture makes it again pleasant to sight, the restorative conversion of the soul opens it to a refreshed look on the world, bringing a qualitative change in its life. Previously empty, the world shows itself impregnated with a loving Presence. In the light of this understanding, it is clear that it is as difficult to describe the way in which a soul makes progress through faith, in an ascension towards its unifying with God as it to methodologically characterize the way in which a boy in love with a girl is striving to conquer her heart. And it so happens because faith is not a method, a recipe, a strategy of knowledge, or an epistemological act carried on an object which lies inert at our initiatives, but a meeting between two personal realities endowed with freedom of conscience. The Holy Parents don’t hesitate to compare the conquest of the human soul by God to the lover’s effort, who through a full creativity of the reason of his heart, offers himself to his beloved, overwhelming her with his love. In this sense, the Song of Songs serves as a deep testimony.

Faith presupposes toil, all sorts of failures and falls, but its growing brings interior order into the soul, opening it more and more fully to the divine experience. The Holy Fathers speak clearly about a true pedagogy of grace: by means of it God teaches man how to walk, as a father does to his child. Peter’s walk on the sea appears in this way to be paradigmatic: the road is traveled by a growing in spiritual life and not by an exclusive relying on the senses, which make us drown. Christ’s call to people consists not in swimming with the aid of natural powers, but a stepping onto the waves of this life with the aid of grace, through the mystery of listening to spiritual paternity.

The Method OF Science and OF Theology : a comparative perspective

Why is methodology so important? Because the world’s answer to our questions is determined by the way we are asking. I propose to make a parallel between the scientific and the theological method, taking into account the similarities and the differences between them, and this through by analysis of key-concepts from both of them.

Science is developing by searching the understanding of the material universe, that is, nature - “material world organic or not-organic”, whereas theology looks for holiness as a way of structuring ourselves in the presence of God. Theology can search secondarily a possible significance of the knowledge of universe via the religious experience. The object of knowledge in sciences is the world, whereas, in theology is God, and, secondarily, the world. If science focuses on the physical universe, on the human externality accessible through senses, theology deals with the renewal of the inner man, with the transformation of internal human reality. This makes us distinguish between the science domain of competence, as being that of human externality, and the domain of theology, as that of internality. The distinction is, anyway, discretely nuanced. Just as the knowledge of the surrounding world moulds the human being’s interior, involving him in a becoming, the changing of the interior universe through a spiritual discipline yields to a new living in the world, having impact on the world’s materiality. Between the internal and the external there is an interdependence and an interrelation.

In the same context, there are certain voices willing to place theology in the zone of subjectivity and science in that of objectivity. This distinction is not absolute. Undeniably, one of the most objective aspects of the world is the fact that man is subjective. Science cannot circumscribe him, can only describe him through objectifying aspects. Science’s objectivity pays dear price for a certain simplifying vision upon the world, through the elimination of the aspects deemed to be secondary, a vision learned and assumed as such, whereas in theology the benchmarks of objectivity depend on co-working with God’s reasons encoded in the universe, reasons made apparent through the act of divine grace.

Scientific methodology allows the construction of an intellectual structure (theories, etc) for representing and understanding the world through the involvement of the human compartment called intellect. Theology looks for the experience of meeting with God, the experience in which the human being is involved as a whole. The term of theory comes from the Greek thēoria, via late Latin, meaning “contemplation”, notionally fructified in theological living, and “speculation” as well, which later, starting with the modern period, lead to the scientific connotation of the term. The latter concerns the abstract representation of a certain phenomenon, strictly developed with the aid of intellectual means.

Both science and theology propose a coherent internally-consistent image of reality. Certain people’s affirmation that the two approaches would be different, as well in the sense that the former is based on observation and the second on authority is not actually tenable. Both of them have at their centre the experience, even though qualitatively different, just as both include authority in their field of manifestation. Mystical life is fundamentally experimental and in the Church authority is built by starting from the concrete reality of the experience of the divine presence. Science, experimental as well, doesn’t exclude authority: scientific results are often accepted through an act of trust in the professional authority and probity of those belonging to the scientific community.

Christian life is essentially founded on the experience of feeling God’s grace, without which no theology can exist. I affirm, therefore, the central role of (this) experience in the Church’s life, without which theology becomes a mere manipulation of concepts in the margin of certain religious topics. In this sense, the Liturgy is the mystery par excellence of the Church’s life, and the liturgical space – the laboratory of religious experience.

Today we distinguish between experience and experimentation. “Science is longer based on experience, but on experimenting, i.e. on the implementing of a certain technical device conceived to elicit from nature accurate answers to certain questions we have decided to ask. There is, therefore at the basis of modern science what we may call a technical a priori, which is concretely informed by the manipulation of nature with the purpose of its insertion into Procust’s bed, in the pre-established system of mathematization”[ii]. The risk of a simplification through impoverishment of the image of reality, i.e. the exclusive preserving of those parameters deemed to be relevant to a certain experiment, is taken with a view to obtaining a maximum gain from the investigation.

“The parallel between the scientific experiment and mystical experience may seem surprising from the perspective of the different nature of the two acts of observations. […] But at a closer examination the differences between the two types of observation can be shown to reside only in their particular ways of approach and not in the complexity or the degree of confidence they inspire”[iii]. Both scientific experiment and mystical experience are the result of a certain personal attempt to filter the reality. Science does it through an intellectual grid of the type “logical reasoning”, a grid continually perfected through methodological development. Theology, being not as much a way of thinking, as a way of accomplishment, proposed a different filter, the heart’s one, more precisely that of the interior consciousness activated by the power of prayer. Science discovers the world as a rationally-encoded presence, making up intellectual representations by chiefly highlighting the regularities and recurrences in nature, as it employs a logical reasoning. Theology discovers the world as structured by a rationality impregnated with love, a rationality that rather makes appeal to the symbol than to the analytical categories of thinking. In the second place, the degree of confidence of both types of experience depends on a community validation: in science, as against the critical spirit of the scientific community, in theology, through reference to what we call “ecclesiastical consciousness”.

The historical development of science is intertwined with the practice of certain intellectual or material structures, called models. They work by analogy. In fact, “the enouncement of theories or laws presumes the formula: “everything takes place as if ...”. Newton made explicit use of it in his announcement of the law of universal gravitation. Later on, by observation of the movements of the Mercury planet it was shown that doesn’t obey altogether. Consequently, Newton replaced the Newtonian announcement with another one based on a totally different principle: everything happens as if (underlining mine) space were deformed by the presence of matter, the planets following trajectories determined by the curving of such a space.”[iv] In scientific modern language “everything takes place as if ” is called model. “A good model […] is not a temporary structure, but a continuous endless source of ideas for possible extensions and modifications. As a poetic metaphor, it offers suggestions for the exploration of a new field”[v].

Along with the theories that revolutionized the 20^th century physics (the theory of relativity, the quantum theory), the new physics fundamentally associates the models with understanding. It moves from the concept of the model generating theory, to that of the theory generating the model with a view to deepening the theory. Maxwell and Hertz lay at the basis of physical understanding the scientific model. Schrodinger’s understanding is intimately related to the human ability to construct conceptual models. For Einstein, “the physical understanding is achieved when close models are available. The close models have to be compatible with the evidence. The relation between the structure of the model and the empirical data has to be feasible and justifiable”. A contemporary physicist, James Cushing, insists on making a distinction between explanation and understanding/comprehension. If understanding is associated with the ability to construct a model, explanation is seen as a simple derivation of particular statements from general laws. Therefore, theory generates explanation, while the model generates comprehension[vi].

In theology, parables can be seen as a sort of theological models: “[...] the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle his accounts with his servants […]’ (Mt.18:23). ‘[...] the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard […]’ (Mt. 20:1). […] the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son […]’(Mt. 22: 2). ‘[…] the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom […]’ (Mt. 25:1). (underlining min.). Christ’s parables addressed to the crowd are unifying bridges between notions and aspects related to the most ordinary human living, fishing, wedding, sawing, harvesting and what belongs to the unfathomable highness of God’s kingdom.

We talk about inspiration and revelation in Theology, but also in Science, even they can be structurally different: “The largest part of the greatest scientific discoveries […] are closer to revelation. Generally speaking, the term is not employed in the scientific domain because we have the habit of using it in the religious one. In scientific circles we speak about intuition, accidental discoveries or about a brilliant idea that we’ve had. However, if we compare the way in which great scientific ideas occur, we can realize that they bear a remarkable resemblance to religious revelations seen from a non-mystical angle”[vii]. Also, a sort of faith is possible in science. Charles Townes considers that “science man needs faith when he sets to work; he needs ever greater faith to carry out the most difficult tasks. Why? Because he has to commit personally to believing that the universe is orderly, and that the human spirit, in fact his own spirit, is able to understand this order. Without this faith there would be no interest in a world presumably disorderly and incomprehensible. Such a world would have taken us back to the epoch of superstitions, when man thought that the universe was ruled by whimsical forces”[viii]. Also, Basarab Nicolescu considers that the belief in the structural rationality of the world is the subtle link that unifies traditional and scientific thinking.

Conclusions

The methods of Science and of Theology are different. However, the investigation of their specific competences and conceptual tools contribute to an honest mutual dialogue.