THEO11 MOD1-SECTION 1: THEOLOGY AND CRITICAL REALISM

• Faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum) is the classical definition of theology as expressed by Saint Anselm of Canterbury.
• Theology is reflection on God whose purpose is for faith in said God to have further self understanding beyond faith. This is a traditional definition of theology.
• The theologies of today exist as means to inform, form, and transform people in their own journeys of faith.
• For believers, faith comes as a prerequisite for their doing of theology, however big or small that initial faith (initium fidei literally means "the beginnings of faith") might be.
• For nonbelievers, theology is a form of appreciation of the capacity of human beings to come to faith. It is by no means a form of indoctrination, in no way is it an attempt to convert people into Christianity or Catholicism.
• Theology is the intellectual articulation of spirituality. It is, among other things, the attempt to understand and express what is believed and lived. And because we believe and live our faith in specific and diverse contexts, we can expect that spirituality, and the theology that analyzes and systemizes it, will also be diverse. - Sandra Schneiders
• Religions do not arise in response to theological reflection; rather theology arises as an attempt to understand and apply religious experience. Religion as a communal and spiritual practice is prior to theology as an intellectual discipline - Richard Oxenberg
• Theology is not the basis of faith; rather, faith is the basis of Theology
• John Thanatil described two types of knowledge theology is rooted in: (1) First-order knowledge, experiential knowledge; it is 'knowledge of' instead of 'knowledge about'. (2) Second order knowledge is knowledge about, akin to someone who only knows the concept of swimming instead of actually swimming
• Theology is 'hermeneutical' in the most basic, etymological sense of the word. Theologian seeks to hear the divine message and translate it into conceptual terms for reception by our cognitive faculties.
• The goal of theological truth-making "is to enable compassionate engagement with the world in a manner that is enriching and transformative for self and other" - Mark Wallace
• Roger Haight argues that theology is a dialogue between symbols of faith and the world reality that we find ourselves in.
• motu proprio of Pope Francis (Ad theologiam promovendam), published in 2023. Theological reflection must open up to the world, "with its problems, its wound its challenges, its potential" and thus must make room for "an epistemological and methodological rethinking".
• "A theology that is alive is always grounded in spiritual experience. If it is to be complete, it needs to be lived just as much as it needs to be studied and explained." On the one hand "spirituality without theology runs the danger of becoming private or interior." On the other hand, theology "needs the correction of spirituality to remind us that the true of knowledge of God concerns the heart as much as the intellect." - Philip Sheldrake
• Metatheory in sociology is the study of extant sociological theory. The difference between sociological theory and metasociological theory is the following: Sociological theory theorizes about the social world, Metasociological theory theorizes about theories of the social world

  --Shanyang Zhao
• George Ritzer classifeis metasociological theory into three branches. These are: (Mu) Metatheorizing as a means of attaining a deeper understanding of theory, (Mp) Metatheorizing as a prelude to theory development, and (Mo) Metatheorizing as a source of overarching perspectives.
• The role of critical realism: (1) CLEAR THE GROUND by providing clarity and consistency, (2) PLAY MIDWIFE by assisting in the birthing of new ideas and perspectives.
• Critical realism was originally a philosophy of the physical sciences. As explained by Fr. Johnny Go "As an account of the sciences, critical realism focuses its task on making explicit the presuppositions of the practice of science: it analyzes the conditions for the possibility of the scientific enterprise and identifies the features of the world that make doing science possible and intelligible."
• According to the concept of intransitivity, the world that we strive to know-whether in science or any other field of knowledge-abides autonomously of our knowing." Intransitive - the world is not merely a construct.
• Intransitivity is a dual critique of both absolutism and relativism. Intransitivity critiques relativism, specifically judgmental relativism. "judgmental relativists rashly assume that the contingency of human knowing and its capacity for rational judgements are mutually exclusive."
• Intransitivity insists on reality as being independent of the human's mental constructs of it and can be judged independent of those constructs.
• Absolutism - the ideology that looks at truth about reality as applying at all times, across all places, against all social and cultural frameworks. Absolutist - our reality can only be understood in one unflinching way.
• Various forms of knowing (discipline) can examine the same reality in the intransitive world.
• Intransitivity is a perspective called epistemological relativism: that there are many ways of knowing the same intransitive reality, a "legitimate plurality of views"
• The concept of depth stratification extends our vision of the world beyond its empirical tip. As it turns out, our experiences comprise but the tip of the iceberg of reality.
• Roy Bhaskar, who founded critical realism, showed that there are various strata or levels to the world we observe and exist in.

  1. Empirical - sum total of all that is perceived.
  2. Actual - sum total of everything that occurs. Occur without perceiving them.
  3. Real - all that exists, includes causal forces, or the powers of mechanisms.
• The critical realist notion of depth stratification critiques positivism and the epistemic fallacy. Positivists are guilty of the "epistemic fallacy," which pertains to "the error of reducing ontologically real relations in the world to issues of human knowledge."
• Depth stratification affirms the idea of an intransitive world and the priority of ontology over epistemology: reality is not to be reduced to what we experience or know of it. Our notion of reality should include the non-empirical and even non-actual generative mechanisms in the world.
• Open system - the world is not akin to experimentally closed conditions of the laboratory, the world is open, where causal mechanisms operate and interact with one another, and in the process, codetermine phenomena.
• Open system is a critique of David Hume's empirical realism as represented in his belief in causality based on the "constant conjunction of events"
• Open system is a critique of determinism (as represented in Hume's constant conjunction of events.) Contra Hume, causality is not to be identified as the constant conjunction of events but rather attributed to underlying causal mechanisms that may or may not yield any outcome.
• British philosopher Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe: the laws of mechanics are rather like the rules of chess; the play is seldom determined, though nobody breaks the rules."
• Depth stratification also refers to emergent stratification: reality consists of multiple strata of causal mechanism with varying degrees of complexity and properties that are irreducible to one another.
• Emergence is a critique of reductionism, typically presumes that any higher-level phenomenon can be explained by understanding the lower-level elements that combine to produce it.
• The Ionian Enchantment

  • created by Harvard Philosopher Gerald Holton.
  • named after the sixth century BCE philosopher Thales of Miletus in Ionia who was regarded by Aristotle to be the founder of the physical sciences.
• E.O Wilson, who believes reductionism rules all knowledge.
• The idea of emergent stratification supports the conceptual plausibility of human freedom. Based on the idea of dual/multiple control across strata, although human agency is constrained by physical, biological, and social laws and is unable to change them, it can nevertheless act back on them, enabling or constraining their operations. - Fr. Johnny
• Intentional human agency is identified as a sui generis (of its own kind) type of causally efficacious mechanism that cannot be reduced to either social cause or neurophysiological cause.
• Bernard Lonergan

  • method in theology can be understood as a "set of related and recurrent operations cumulatively advancing towards and ideal goal"
  • "it is a means to an end; it sets forth two sets of rules-rules that facilitate collaboration and continuity of effort, and rules that guide the effort itself."
  • "contemporary theology is specialized, and so it is to be conceived, not as a single set of related operations, but as a series of interdependent sets."
• transcendental precepts

  • it might be helpful to follow some advice regarding how to approach the task of doing theology. - Bernard Lonergan
  • is a rule, a bit of advice, an admonition, a directive that a wise person follows because it applies always and everywhere. The transcendental aspect of this precept is this constant applicability - Denise Carmody