Hostname: page-component-857557d7f7-8wkb5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-12-08T16:16:20.562Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Aquinas's science-engaged theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2023

Ignacio Silva Open the ORCID record for Ignacio Silva [Opens in a new window]  and
Gonzalo Recio Open the ORCID record for Gonzalo Recio [Opens in a new window]
Ignacio Silva*
Affiliation:
Universidad Austral, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Gonzalo Recio
Affiliation:
Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Buenos Aires, Argentina
*
Corresponding author: Ignacio Silva; Email: iasilva@austral.edu.ar
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Science-engaged theology has emerged as a new way of conducting research within the vast field of science and religion, with the aim of, at least in one way of understanding it today, solving theological puzzles. In this article we suggest that an analysis of the diversity of approaches in which thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas engaged theological questions with the best knowledge of the natural world available at the time allows twenty-first century science-engaged theologians to move forward the discussion about the different ways of engaging theology with the contemporary natural sciences.

Keywords

Science-engaged theologyThomas AquinasThomismscience and religion

Information

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 61 , Special Issue 1: Featuring articles on The Existence and Nature of God: Contributions from Latin America , March 2025 , pp. 179 - 193
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aquinas, T (1920) Summa Theologiae, 2nd rev. edn. Dominican Fathers of the English Province (trans.). Available at https://www.newadvent.org/summa/ (accessed 27 September 2023).Google Scholar
Aquinas, T (1961) Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. 3 vols. Rowan JP (trans.). Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Available at https://isidore.co/aquinas/Metaphysics.htm (accessed 27 September 2023).Google Scholar
Aristotle (1952) Meteorologica. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Beltrán, O (2009) Teología y ciencia en la obra de Santo Tomás de Aquino. Revista teología 46, 281–299.Google Scholar
Berggren, J and Jones, A (2000) Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bianchi, L (2009) Students, masters, and ‘heterodox’ doctrines at the Parisian faculty of arts in the 1270s. Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 76, 75–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosworth, AB (1993) Aristotle, India, and the Alexander historians. Topoi 3, 407–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooke, J (1991) Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grant, E (1987) Eccentrics and epicycles in medieval cosmology. In Grant, E and Murdoch, J (eds), Mathematics and its Applications to Science and Natural Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Essays in Honor of Marshall Clagett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 189–214.Google Scholar
Harrison, P (2021) A historian's perspective on science-engaged theology. Modern Theology 37, 476–482.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
John of Damascus (1899) An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Oxford: Parker.Google Scholar
Konyndyk, K (1995) Aquinas on faith and science. Faith and Philosophy 12, 3–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livingstone, D (2011) Which science? Whose religion? In Brooke, J and Numbers, R (eds), Science and Religion around the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 278–296.Google Scholar
Maritain, J (1937) The Degrees of Knowledge. London: Geoffrey Bles.Google Scholar
Perry, J and Leidenhag, J (2021) What is science-engaged theology? Modern Theology 37, 245–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ptolemy, C (1940) Tetrabiblos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ptolemy, C (1984) Almagest. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ptolemy, C (1991 [1932]) The Geography. Toronto, ON: Dover.Google Scholar
Rutkin, HD (2019) Astrology and Theology in Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas: Fate, Divination and Providence. Copenhagen: Springer.Google Scholar
Saliba, G (1994) Early Arabic critique of Ptolemaic cosmology: a ninth-century text on the motion of the celestial spheres. Journal for the History of Astronomy 25, 115–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simplicius (2005) On Aristotle On the Heavens 2.10–14. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Van Steenberghen, F (1980) Thomas Aquinas and Radical Aristotelianism. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.Google Scholar
Wallace, W (1996) The Modelling of Nature. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.Google Scholar
Wippel, J (1977) The condemnations of 1270 and 1277 at Paris. The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7, 169–201.Google Scholar
Wippel, J (1997) Bishop Stephen Tempier and Thomas Aquinas: a separate process against Aquinas? Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 44, 117–136.Google Scholar