The King of Sciences

In a previous blog, I noted that there are two major systems of thought in the Western world, Christianity and post-Enlightenment philosophy. Let me go a step further and note that advocates of each system are concerned with passing on their worldview to the next generation. In fact, they see it as the most central goal of their lives.

Of course, they both realize that their students will have to learn all sorts of other things. Christians and post-Enlightenment thinkers alike want all students to know how to read books, to compose essays, to do arithmetic and more complicated forms of mathematics, to know the elements found in nature, and to know the major events in history. But from the dawn of time until now, all serious educators have understood that they are doing more than teaching isolated facts. They are giving their students a framework with which to understand life in all its complexity. They are teaching what truths are essential and immutable, what means we can use to learn new truths and to distinguish false opinions from the truth, what code of ethics ought to guide our decisions, and what criteria we should use to discern the beautiful and the good.

Christians, therefore, have often referred to theology as the king of the sciences—science here being understood to mean “field of study.” We are not just saying that theology is the most important subject, as if it counts twice as much as history or physics or geography. Instead we mean that one has to have a correct theology if one is not to land in fundamental error in one of the other sciences. For example, if one knows about original sin, much of history becomes self-explanatory. We will understand why there have always been conflicts and always will be. We will be displeased with simplistic histories that assume that one side was all good and the other all evil. We will also dismiss hagiographies masquerading as biographies, for we know that people are more complicated than that. As a consequence we will understand history more profoundly than if we had a more optimistic view of human nature. Similarly, if we understand the created world around us not to be divine but still God’s handiwork, we will know how to approach the sciences, including biology and conservationism. Because Christianity knew that the world was not divine, they were a major force behind the growth of the natural sciences, while paganism thought it sacrilege to look too carefully at nature. But as we appreciate the freedom to explore God’s beautiful world, we treat it with respect as His creation, not adoration. In other words, we have a proper sense of what conservation of this world must entail.

But it is not just Christian theology that offers a comprehensive way of looking at the world. Post-Enlightenment thought also offers a lens through which it views all the phenomena of the world: the autonomous self. Whether that self be the neutral observer or scientist (as Modernism would emphasize) or the authenticator of the truth that appeals to himself or herself (as Post-Modernism would say) or simply a businessperson who manipulates the world for his or her own ends (as American Pragmatism in its crassest form would say), the autonomous self—unshackled from tradition, authority, and anything transcendent—is to hold sway over one’s life. Thus, the whole goal of education in the Post-Enlightenment worldview is to unchain students from anything or anyone that they may have relied upon earlier in their lives and to make them completely self-reliant. One of the chains, as you can well imagine, is Christianity, for it appeals to a transcendent Being (God) and acknowledges a transcendent truth (Christian doctrine) revealed in an authoritative book (the Bible).

Those who have gone through higher education (or are going through it now) would do well to consider to what is their “king of the sciences.” There is much that I have learned from those who look at the world from a thoroughly Post-Enlightenment view and I would not give up that education in the least. At the same time, though, as a serious Christian, I recognize the need to re-evaluate all that I have learned from the vantage point of Christian theology, the king of the sciences. Lord willing, you will see this topic touched upon in many blogs in the future.