Why should we study theology?
Does it really give us objective knowledge about the world?
And what does it mean to call theology a science?
Aquinas asks this question, actually tries to define more generally what is a science,
and he takes there a philosophical definition from Aristotle first.
Science is basically just an organized body of knowledge developed to understand a given
subject.
So take biology.
Biologists study living things, they develop a science of living organisms.
Ethicists study human moral activity, they develop a science of ethics.
Metaphysicians study everything that exists in so far as it exists, and that's
what we call the science of being.
Those are all subjects of natural reason.
So it's a kind of a general definition of science.
So Aquinas also then asks, can we consider Christian theology as a science as well?
And if so, in what sense?
And he's talking about the study of divine revelation, the mystery of God revealed in
Christ.
Now actually his answer to this question is nuanced.
Aquinas does affirm that theology properly speaking is a science.
It's a study of the inner intelligibility of the mystery of God revealed in Christ through
the Church.
But he also notes that it differs significantly from other sciences, primarily because theology's
principles or starting points are not derived from evidential knowledge from things we ordinarily
experience or our own natural knowledge of the world.
Instead, theology's first principles are given vertically, as it were, in divine revelation
by God.
How do we know, for example, that Christ is both God and human or that God actually became
human?
Well, we know those things by the grace of faith, it's a supernatural gift
to enlighten the mind and it gives us first starting points.
And likewise, we know that God is the mystery of the Holy Trinity by the grace of faith.
So the core truths of Christianity are known and they're certain, but they're not known
by natural demonstration or philosophical argument, but by a deeper form of insight
provided by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
And actually that's part of the point.
Divine revelation is meant to take us beyond or above our merely human range of knowing
so as to introduce us into friendship and intellectual familiarity with God.
By faith and hope and charity, the human being begins to participate in the
very knowledge of God and of the saints.
Staying only within our limited range of natural understanding then would mean excluding ourselves
from the opportunity to know more about God than we could know by our own mere human powers.
So it is a science, but it's a science made possible by grace.
That's an interesting qualification, and it's rather significant.
God gives you the grace to embark on an intelligent study of God's own mystery.
Secondly, Aquinas notes that the truths of revelation given us to study are
compatible with the truths of all other forms of knowledge or the sciences we acquire naturally.
So the truths of revelation are not contrary to natural reason ever.
The things that God reveals are above nature, that's why we call them supernatural, because
super comes from the Greek for above, but there's no substitute for faith as if you
could just depend only on natural knowledge.
You need this higher knowledge and God affords us certain helps to see that revelation is
rational to believe in.
So, for example, we can study the mysteries in their internal coherence
and see the integrity of revelation.
We can examine how the mysteries illuminate the human condition and how the truth of Christianity
casts light on ordinary human experience.
We can prove some things available to reason that dovetail with revelation, like proving
the existence of God by philosophical argument, which is also a revealed truth.
And finally, God gives confirming signs, which the church traditionally calls reasons of
credibility such as miracles to manifest the truth of revelation.
So faith in the end depends on testimony.
God speaks, he reveals himself, and we create a science around the truth of that revelation
and look at its intelligibility.
But it's compatible with reason, and we have signs that it's actually rational to engage
with the revelation.
The center of this science is the knowledge of the Holy Trinity.
If we really want to understand the mystery of revelation, we have to understand who God
is and then understand everything else in light of God.
So for example, we think about the second most important mystery in Christianity--
the Incarnation--in light of the Trinity, because the mystery of the Trinity is made known in
and through the Incarnation. Who God is in himself is revealed to us because God became
human.
And that dynamic is also at work in the other doctrines of the faith.
If you study in a theological way, scientifically, you could say the sacraments or the Blessed
Virgin Mary or the grace of Jesus Christ,
these all somehow manifest the revelation of God, who God is as Trinity, and
are understood rightly in the light of God.
Even with divine revelation, we cannot perfectly comprehend in an inclusive total way who God
is, especially in this life.
But faith is a real form of knowing God.
And it's not the same thing as the vision of God or an immediate intellectual perception
of God, but it gives us light and knowledge into who God is.
So faith provides us with a kind of ultimate perspective on life, both through
theology and through the spiritual life and mysticism, which don't compete with one another,
but complement one another.
But in this sense, faith gives rise to a science open to mystery so that theology is pointing
us towards something beyond theology in our own spiritual life, it's pointing us towards
a union with God.
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