What is “theology”? The study of reasoning about God.
“Theology is the science of faith. It is the conscious and methodical explanation and explication of divine revelation received and grasped in faith” (Karl Rahner, 1904-84).
Now often extended to mean any study associated with religion.
“Theology proper” is concerned with discussion of the being, attributes and works of God. There are many other branches of theology as categorized today e.g. Christology, pastoral theology, dogmatic theology, apologetics, ethics.
Is faith a precondition for theology? In what sense is theology a “science”?
The term and concept originated with classical Greek philosophers, notably Plato. It became associated specifically with Christianity from the Patristic period onwards, and in the Middle Ages became the first of the four “sciences” on which Western universities were founded: Theology, Arts, Medicine and Law. It is now sometimes associated with non-Christian religions, although this is debated.
What do we mean by “God”?
Since God is by definition beyond or above human thought how can we speak or reason at all about God?
- By analogy: God is father, God is mother, God is judge, God is lover, God is wisdom, God is justice, God is Creator, God is merciful, God is love, God is light.
- By extension of philosophical categories: Infinite, unchanging, Omnipotent (all powerful), Omniscient (knowing all), Omnipresent (everywhere), Eternal (without beginning or end; (vs.) outside time), Perfect, the “prime mover”, the “first cause”, the “ground of being”.
- From experience (mysticism): kind, loving, beautiful, comforting.
- By negation: ineffable (beyond expression in words), incomprehensible (beyond understanding), unknowable, unreachable, uncreated, nothing.
The “transcendent” God (God “out there”); the “immanent” God (God “inside”, experienced in prayer). Are they the same?
Does transcendence imply detached from physical reality? We have to reconcile God as completely “other” and apart, with a God who creates and thus is involved in our physical existence.
God of revelation vs God of philosophy. God of a community (people) vs God for an individual.
How does God reveal Himself? The nature of the Incarnation: Jesus as revealer vs Jesus as God. Epistemological (what we know) vs ontological (the nature of something – the thing “in itself”).
Apophatic (negative) theology
A Dialogue of Two Men, The One a Gentile, the Other a Christian, On The Hidden God (1444) Nicolaus of Cusa
G: … What do you know about the God, whom you adore?
C: I know, that everything which I know, is not God, and that everything I conceive, is no comparison to Him, but rather He excels it.
G: Therefore God is nothing.
C: He is not nothing, for even this nothing has the name nothing.
G: If He is not nothing, is He therefore something?
C: He is also not something, for something is not everything. However, God is not something rather than everything.
Also St John of the Cross (1542–91), The Cloud of Unknowing (c 1370), Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c. 1328),
Paul Tillich (1951): “God does not exist. He is being itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.”
Not only in Christian tradition:
- “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name.” — the Dao De Jing
- Brahman – Supreme Cosmic Spirit as beyond human comprehension.
- “God’s existence is absolute and it includes no composition and we comprehend only the fact that He exists, not His essence … it is clear that He has no positive attribute whatever. The negative attributes are necessary to direct the mind to the truths which we must believe.” (Maimonides, 12th Century rabbi)
Proving the existence of God
The classical (Greek) philosophers were sometimes concerned to prove the existence of God or gods, but within the Judaic and early Christian traditions the existence of God was taken for granted. In the 12th Century scholastic theologians, notably St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), were looking to develop theology within the rediscovered framework of Aristotelian philosophy and accepted the challenge of proving God’s existence. Recent theological study has again picked up the issue of whether and how the existence of God might be proved. It has also become an issue for some of an atheistic persuasion, such as the biologist Richard Dawkins.
Are faith and reason alternatives or complementary?
Does it make sense to suggest that the existence of God can be proved (or disproved)?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church: (II.31)
… the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of “converging and convincing arguments”, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth.
(This is actually a misrepresentation of current views in the philosophy of science. Natural sciences do not provide proofs but rather models, and those models are expressed in mathematics. Proofs can be derived in mathematics, but as applied to science, proof simply determines the consequences of a model – which can then be further tested by experiment. We must also remember that it has been proven [Gödel’s theorem] that any mathematical system of greater or equivalent complexity to basic arithmetic necessarily contains true propositions which cannot be proven. Hence the concept of “proof” should be used with great caution! I suspect that certainty is also an overrated concept.)
The ontological argument is based on arguments about a “being greater than which can not be conceived”. (St Anselm of Canterbury, 1033 – 1109)
The cosmological argument argues that there was a “first cause”, or “prime mover” who is identified as God. (St Thomas Aquinas, 1225 – 74)
The teleological argument argues that the universe’s order and complexity are best explained by reference to a creator god. (cf. current controversy regarding “intelligent design” vs evolution)
The anthropic argument suggests that basic facts, such as our existence, are best explained by the existence of God. (also an argument in modern cosmology)
For betting men (and women): Pascal’s wager (1662)
Pascal starts with the premise that the existence or non-existence of God is not provable by human reason, since the essence of God is “infinitely incomprehensible”. Since reason cannot decide the issue, we should decide according to our happiness – place the best bet.
Pascal contends the wise decision is to wager that God exists, since “If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing”.
The Quinquae viae, or Five Ways, are five proofs of the existence of God summarized by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae (1265–1274). These proofs take the form of philosophical arguments:
The argument of the unmoved mover (ex motu).
- Some things are moved.
- Everything that is moved is moved by a mover.
- An infinite regress of movers is impossible.
- Therefore, there is an unmoved mover from whom all motion proceeds.
- This mover is what we call God.
The argument of the first cause (ex causa).
- Some things are caused.
- Everything that is caused is caused by something else.
- An infinite regress of causation is impossible.
- Therefore, there must be an uncaused cause of all caused things.
- This causer is what we call God.
The argument of contingency (ex contingentia).
- Many things in the universe may either exist or not exist. Such things are called contingent beings.
- It is impossible for everything in the universe to be contingent, as something can’t come of nothing, and if traced back eventually there must have been one thing from which all others have occurred.
- Therefore, there must be a necessary being whose existence is not contingent on any other being(s).
- This being is what we call God.
The argument of degree (ex gradu).
- Various perfections may be found in varying degrees throughout the universe.
- These degrees of perfections assume the existence of the perfections themselves.
- The pinnacle of perfection, from which lesser degrees of perfection derive, is what we call God.
The argument of “design” (ex fine).
- All natural bodies in the world act for ends.
- These objects are in themselves unintelligent.
- To act for ends is characteristic of intelligence.
- Therefore, there exists an intelligent being which guides all natural bodies to their ends.
- This being we call God.
How does God act in the World?
- Through nature
- Through people
- Through miracles
- Through sacraments
The nature of revelation: revelation as communication of information vs. revelation as event/experience. The difference between revelation and doctrine.
God as creator/initiator. “God as watchmaker” (Deism) vs God as “providence” (continuously present and active/sustaining).
God as the “ground of being”.
God is omnipotent (“The Father Almighty…”) – God can do anything. But what does that mean? “Can God create a stone heavier than He can lift?”
God is complete; simple (incapable of division). Is God “necessarily” self-giving?
Personhood and relationship – to be truly human is to exist in relationships. To be cut off from relationships is a dehumanizing form of existence (alienation).
God as relationship – the triune God.
Christ as relationship – defined in relation to the Father, in relation to the Church, in relation to the individual.
Process theology: creation as becoming rather than being; God as “influence”.
God and the Theory of Relativity!
Most people operate with an understanding of time and causality which is not supported by modern science (Relativity and Quantum Mechanics – which themselves are proven to be contradictory). Much (most) theology has been conducted within a framework that assumes that God acts within time and is an agent of causality. St Augustine’s insight that God exists outside of time has been lost.
The Theory of Relativity proposes a view of time that is not consistent with a God who acts in time i.e. if the Theory of Relativity is correct then anything that could be conceived of as God must of necessity exist outside of time, and cannot act as an agent of causation within time. The idea of God’s “actions” must therefore be treated with extreme caution, since God is not an actor within time in the way a human being is.
Modern physics may therefore give us an improved framework for conceiving the nature of God’s action (the classical notions of cause and action do not apply to an electron either) – the quest to find ways to describe and communicate the nature of God is always developing as human science and philosophy evolves.