By ARTHUR HIPPLER
(Editor’s Note: Dr. Hippler is chairman of the religion department and teaches religion in the Upper School at Providence Academy, Plymouth, Minn.)
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The chemistry teacher stood by the copier and saw that the religion teacher was copying an article from the Summa. “Is theology a science?” (Ia Q.1, art. 2). The chemistry teacher made a face of amused contempt. “Theology is not a science,” she pointed out. The religion teacher responded, “Theology is not an experimental science, but it is still a body of knowledge, and that is what St. Thomas is arguing.” The chemistry teacher remained unimpressed.
This little exchange would be more common only if more religion teachers were using St. Thomas! And this is a snapshot of a problem within most Catholic schools. Religion, whether labeled as catechesis or theology, is viewed as belief or opinion, not knowledge.
Even when one consults the dictionary, science is first defined as “a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study” before it is defined as knowledge “obtained and tested through scientific method.” Webster’s even gives “theology” as an example of the first definition! Science is first “a body of knowledge” before it is “a body of knowledge derived by a certain method.”
Cardinal Newman in The Idea of the University insists that theology deserves a place in the university because it is a real body of knowledge:
“With us Catholics, as with the first race of Protestants, as with Mahometans, and all Theists, the word [God] contains . . . a theology in itself. . . . God is an Individual, Self-dependent, All-perfect, Unchangeable Being; intelligent, living, personal, and present; almighty, all-seeing, all-remembering; between whom and His creatures there is an infinite gulf; who has no origin, who is all-sufficient for Himself; who created and upholds the universe; who will judge every one of us, sooner or later, according to that Law of right and wrong which He has written on our hearts” (Discourse II).
These are all attributes that can be argued by natural reason, evident to both pagan philosophers and contemporary monotheists.
St. Thomas for his part explains how even the Revelation we receive concerning truths that are above reason is in its own way a “science.” We do not see these truths directly, for example, Trinity, Incarnation, Eucharist, but we are accepting on faith the knowledge that God and the saints possess.
This is like the way that some human sciences borrow or “believe” principles from other sciences: “thus the science of perspective proceeds from principles established by geometry, and music from principles established by arithmetic” (STh Ia Q.1, art.1).
The chemistry teacher who laughs at theology as a “science” fails to recognize that what she imparts to her students is not knowledge but faith. They do not “see” the truths in the periodic table by the light of their minds — they believe in the textbook and the teacher. Very few students will go on to do the laboratory work that would allow them to have “knowledge” about the elements. Likewise, as believers we accept truths from God by faith that in Heaven we shall know. Faith shall pass away.
When theology is no longer viewed as knowledge, high school religion classes degenerate into consciousness-raising and journal-writing. This increasing trend occasioned the Church to address the academic demands of high school religion:
“It is necessary…that religious instruction in schools appear as a scholastic discipline with the same systematic demands and the same rigor as other disciplines. It must present the Christian message and the Christian event with the same seriousness and the same depth with which other disciplines present their knowledge” (General Directory on Catechesis, n. 73).
Religion teachers who fail to heed this directive contribute to the climate of contempt that many feel for their subject matter. The chemistry teacher cannot believe for a moment that somehow religion is a “science” if the course perpetually addresses the “subjective” at the expense of the “objective,” “emotion” as the expense of “intellect.”
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