Irony Of Theology And The Nature Of Religious Thought

Donald Wiebe critically examines the pervasive assumption that theology is a form of religious thought that is both compatible with and supportive of religious faith. The irony, he argues, is that theology is in fact detrimental to religion and the religious way of life.

In these essays, Donald Wiebe unveils a significant problem in the academic study of religion in colleges and universities in North America and Europe - that studies almost always exhibit a religious bias. To explore this issue, Wiebe looks at the religious and moral agendas behind the study of religion, showing that the boundaries between the objective study of religion and religious education as a tool for bettering society have become blurred. As a result, he argues, religious studies departments have fostered an environment where religion has become a learned or scholarly practice, rather than the object of academic scrutiny. This book provides a critical history of the failure of 20th- and 21st-century scholars to follow through on the 19th-century ideal of an objective scientific study of religious thought and behaviour. Although emancipated from direct ecclesiastical control and, to some extent, from sectarian theologizing, Wiebe argues that research and scholarship in the academic department of religious studies has failed to break free from religious constraints. He shows that an objective scientific study of religious thought and practice is not only possible, but the only appropriate approach to the study of religious phenomena.

For more than 30 years, historians have rejected what they call the ‘warfare thesis’ – the idea that there is an inevitable conflict between religion and science – insisting that scientists and believers can live in harmony. This book disagrees. Taking as its starting point the most famous of all such conflicts, the Galileo affair, it argues that religious and scientific communities exhibit very different attitudes to knowledge. Scripturally based religions not only claim a source of knowledge distinct from human reason. They are also bound by tradition, insist upon the certainty of their beliefs, and are resistant to radical criticism in ways in which the sciences are not. If traditionally minded believers perceive a clash between what their faith tells them and the findings of modern science, they may well do what the Church authorities did in Galileo’s time. They may attempt to close down the science, insisting that the authority of God’s word trumps that of any ‘merely human’ knowledge. Those of us who value science must take care to ensure this does not happen.

For centuries it has been discussed whether systematic theology is a scientific discipline. But it is not obvious what is meant by either "systematic theology" or "scientific discipline". Michael Agerbo Mørch presents an understanding of systematic theology as a tripartite discipline and science as a rationally justified public discourse about a given topic. Systematic theology is shown to meet the most generally accepted criteria for scientific work, since its theories can be tested and even falsified in an intersubjective setting. This can be done by the most proper tool we have for assessing and comparing scientific theories, which is coherence theory. Therefore, even though systematic theology is a distinct and normative discipline, it is not compromising for its theories because it can present its theses in a transparent way that can be checked and criticized by peers and compared to relevant alternatives. As such, the book shows that systematic theology is a scientifically strong discourse that meets accepted criteria to the same degree as other disciplines.

Most comparisons of science and religion are really comparisons of science and Christianity, or science and Islam, and so forth. In Scientific Models for Religious Knowledge, the author aims to get outside typical polarized debates between traditional, a priori theism and radical, scientistic naturalism. Instead, a new science and religion compatibility system—between a scientific study of religion and a religious epistemology—is our new, elusive problem. Moreover, we shall look at a comparison and contrast of modern science with the simple deference of the human mind to the actions of culturally postulated superhuman agents. This book pays critical attention to the contributions of scholars in the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, and the scientific study of religion. Scientific Models for Religious Knowledge is useful for readers looking to expand their learning in the philosophies of science and religion as these subjects are taught and analyzed in modern research universities.

This collection of essays provides scholars in the study of religion occasion to discuss the theoretical and methodological issues raised, to debate and expand upon them, or, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, even to refute the arguments made.

Tyler Roberts encourages scholars to abandon rigid conceptual oppositions between "secular" and "religious" to better understand how human beings actively and thoughtfully engage with their worlds and make meaning. The artificial distinction between a self-conscious and critical "academic study of religion" and an ideological and authoritarian "religion," he argues, only obscures the phenomenon. Instead, Roberts calls on intellectuals to approach the field as a site of "encounter" and "response," illuminating the agency, creativity, and critical awareness of religious actors. To respond to religion is to ask what religious behaviors and representations mean to us in our individual worlds, and scholars must confront questions of possibility and becoming that arise from testing their beliefs, imperatives, and practices. Roberts refers to the work of Hent de Vries, Eric Santner, and Stanley Cavell, each of whom exemplifies encounter and response in their writings as they traverse philosophy and religion to expose secular thinking to religious thought and practice. This approach highlights the resources religious discourse can offer to a fundamental reorientation of critical thought. In humanistic criticism after secularism, the lines separating the creative, the pious, and the critical themselves become the subject of question and experimentation.

Theology and religious studies co-exist in the majority of departments in higher education institutions within the UK, yet there has been very little debate or discussion on how these two disciplines relate to one another in this context and on a more general level. This new collection of essays aims to redress the balance and to add to fruitful discussion in this area Including essays by some of today's leading academics on the sometimes contentious relationship between religious studies - or the study of religions - and theology, this volume is international in scope, with contributions from scholars from the UK, USA, South Africa, Netherlands, Sweden and Iran. Many of the essays offer a contextualised account of the evolving relationship between the disciplines. The contributors address such issues as the place of theology within today's universities; the problem of clashing methodologies in theology and religious studies; the possibility for a 'theological religious studies'; approaching the study of religions without theology; interdisciplinary approaches for bridging the theology/religious studies divide; and the place of biblical studies in the theology/religious studies debate.