Theology and Religious Studies

Theology must either regress to blind faith or progress towards free philosophy.

When all is said and done, science is about things and theology is about words. Things behave in the same way everywhere, but words do not. ... Theology works in one culture alone. If you have not grown up in Polkinghorne's culture, where words such as "incarnation" and "trinity" have a profound meaning, you cannot share his vision.

It is a curious accident of history that the Christian religion became heavily involved with theology. No other religion finds it necessary to formulate elaborately precise statements about the abstract qualities and relationships of gods and humans. ...The idea that God may be approached and understood through intellectual analysis is uniquely Christian. ...It is probably not an accident that modern science grew explosively in Christian Europe and left the rest of the world behind. A thousand years of theological disputes nurtured the habit of analytical thinking that could also be applied to the analysis of natural phenomena. On the other hand, the close historical relations between theology and science have caused conflicts between science and Christianity that does not exist between science and other religions.