Science and Theology as Abductive Responses to Reality
This essay will address three of McGrath’s specific contributions to the field of science and religion which have helped lay foundations for this discourse. First, he insists that in both science and theology ‘ontology determines epistemology’. ‘The way things are’ should determine how we seek to kn...
| Published in: | Science & Christian belief |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Paternoster Press
2023
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| In: |
Science & Christian belief
Year: 2023, Volume: 35, Issue: 2, Pages: 158-165 |
| Further subjects: | B
Theology
B Charles Sanders Peirce B Ontology B Exile (Punishment) B Idealism B Realism B Thomas Aquinas B Revelation B Abduction B ALISTER McGrath B Alister McGrath B Natural Theology B Stratified Reality B ABDUCTION |
| Summary: | This essay will address three of McGrath’s specific contributions to the field of science and religion which have helped lay foundations for this discourse. First, he insists that in both science and theology ‘ontology determines epistemology’. ‘The way things are’ should determine how we seek to know those things. Second, McGrath seeks to retrieve natural theology from its Barthian exile. Natural theology, according to McGrath, does not consist in trying to prove God without reference to revelation. Instead, natural theology shows that God’s revelation comports with human reason; it consists in seeing nature as creation. This point then leads to a third observation about one of McGrath’s signature lines of reasoning: the importance of abduction in both theology and science. The fruitfulness of "seeing as" is a sort of abductive argument. The essay concludes with further comments about the relevance of abduction for McGrath’s vision of natural theology. Together these themes emphasize McGrath’s analysis of the abductive aspects of science and theology as responses to reality. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Science & Christian belief
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