Mark and Rex examine whether theology should be considered a science. The pair surveys the historical and linguistic issues surrounding the question.

TRANSCRIPT

0:01

Hey, welcome to Jessup think I'm one of your hosts, Mark Moore

0:04

and Mark's co hosts Rex Gurney.

0:07

There we go. And today I'm really excited about this episode, I could have talked for five hours on this episode. Maybe even more, there'll be subsequent episodes that come out of this episode, I feel sounds good already. I can already see it happening. But we're gonna be we're excited to look at theology as a science and kind of pose like, Can theology be considered a scientific endeavor? Should it be considered scientific endeavor? What does that even mean? And what the implications

0:35

are? If it is,

0:38

so we really hope you engage in this, there's going to be some German names. There, there is going to be some even spelling and

0:45

spelling tests at

0:48

the end. So hope you enjoy. So I've been working on a journal article, actually, uh huh. And it was a position paper. So I was invited to write this. Write the article, and it was covering a question that I thought was interesting. And so to kind of bring it up on the, on the show, get your thoughts on this, but the question was, whether the study of theology could be considered or should be considered a scientific endeavor. And so I was I was intrigued by that, you know, I'm not a scientist by any means. And Rmi. Yeah. Hey, very cool. That's close. It

1:36

totally has skipped a generation, if not more. There we go.

1:40

Yeah, I could, I could probably even say I didn't go very far in science at all. In schooling,

1:46

it was really bad. My father was a chemist, and I got a D high school chemistry to class did you have to hide that? Well, I went to him for help wives. And he just looks at me and he takes his old college textbook out, blows the dust off of it, and just slams it down in front of me. And I go, this is not helping me. But I know I need to be an English major.

2:07

Right? Yeah, that's, that's I had two key moments in my life. And it was physics, and then calculus. And when I was in both classes at the same time, in my senior year in high school, and I was like, yep, this isn't for me. This is not my world. I'm gonna go. Right? That's right. Yeah. So yeah, we get we get English and theology and history. That's why we get, but

2:33

the very fact that we can even do this podcast is because there are people that actually pass calculus, right.

2:38

Physics and Exactly. So we are indebted to them. Yes, that's right. We support him. 100%. Exactly. But when you when you kind of hear that question, what are maybe some first things that come to your mind? Like, can should the study of theology be considered a scientific endeavor?

2:54

Well, I'm actually I think it opens up some broader questions in the role of science and faith and in the academy right now, pretty much right, you know, used to be even land grant universities, even state universities back in the day would have theology departments that didn't last very long, but in the 1800s, they would Yeah. And now you rarely will find the theology department in anything but perhaps some faith based colleges. And what you will find a religious studies departments, yes, you can study religion as a social science. But theology is not considered in the realm of whatever sciences, I don't know, if science deals with what's real, then apparently, theology, people's mind doesn't deal with what's real. airgo It's not a science airgo. Right. And that, that just opens up all sorts of things about what you can teach, and even public schools in high school now. So this has a lot of really broad implications.

3:58

Yeah, it does. And it's kind of it's kind of interesting. I, you know, when I meet different people, in different areas of my life, you know, outside of the school, you know, I'm like,