Sect. 48Scientific Character of TheologyScientific Character of Theology
I. A science pure and simple should be, not merely a collection of facts or truths, but a complete system organically linked together by fixed laws and reducible to objective unity. Theology fulfils these conditions in an eminent degree. Its subjective principle of cognition is one, and its subject-matter is one, viz. God, the supreme substantial unity. Created things are dealt with only in as far as they tend towards God and are factors or elements of the Divine order of things. Science, it is sometimes said, should deal only with necessary, eternal, and universal truths, not with what is contingent, temporal, and particular. This, rightly understood, would mean that science is not concerned with the transient and changeable, but with the ideas and laws that govern and connect such phenomena. In this sense also theology is eminently a science. Its primary object, God, is necessary and eternal, and rules over all things. Besides, the contingent facts of which it treats are considered in so far as they eternally exist in the all-commanding will of God, and many of them, as for instance the birth of Christ, are of lasting, nay eternal importance, and so possess as it were a universal character.
II. Theology is a distinct and separate science by reason of its peculiar principle of cognition and its peculiar subject-matter. The peculiarity of its principle of cognition makes it a science generically distinct from all other sciences. So, too, does its subject-matter, which embraces the whole supernatural order. This, however, does not prevent Theology from including in its domain many truths which also belong to the other sciences. It derives its knowledge from God’s omniscience, and therefore can throw light on everything that can be known. But the supernatural is its primary, direct, and proper subject-matter. The natural belongs to theology only in certain respects and for a special purpose, viz. in so far as what is natural is related to the supernatural order. Theology, therefore, does not deal with the subject-matter of the other sciences in the same way and with the same exhaustiveness as these sciences do. See St. Thom., Contra Gentes, l. ii., c. 4; Card. Newman, Idea of a University, p. 430.
I. A science pure and simple should be, not merely a collection of facts or truths, but a complete system organically linked together by fixed laws and reducible to objective unity. Theology fulfils these conditions in an eminent degree. Its subjective principle of cognition is one, and its subject-matter is one, viz. God, the supreme substantial unity. Created things are dealt with only in as far as they tend towards God and are factors or elements of the Divine order of things. Science, it is sometimes said, should deal only with necessary, eternal, and universal truths, not with what is contingent, temporal, and particular. This, rightly understood, would mean that science is not concerned with the transient and changeable, but with the ideas and laws that govern and connect such phenomena. In this sense also theology is eminently a science. Its primary object, God, is necessary and eternal, and rules over all things. Besides, the contingent facts of which it treats are considered in so far as they eternally exist in the all-commanding will of God, and many of them, as for instance the birth of Christ, are of lasting, nay eternal importance, and so possess as it were a universal character.
II. Theology is a distinct and separate science by reason of its peculiar principle of cognition and its peculiar subject-matter. The peculiarity of its principle of cognition makes it a science generically distinct from all other sciences. So, too, does its subject-matter, which embraces the whole supernatural order. This, however, does not prevent Theology from including in its domain many truths which also belong to the other sciences. It derives its knowledge from God’s omniscience, and therefore can throw light on everything that can be known. But the supernatural is its primary, direct, and proper subject-matter. The natural belongs to theology only in certain respects and for a special purpose, viz. in so far as what is natural is related to the supernatural order. Theology, therefore, does not deal with the subject-matter of the other sciences in the same way and with the same exhaustiveness as these sciences do. See St. Thom., Contra Gentes, l. ii., c. 4; Card. Newman, Idea of a University, p. 430.
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