The apodictic method and the dialogue between theology and science (II)

Many present-day scientists think that religion can never come to terms with science. In sharp contrast with this widespread opinion, the authors of this paper consider that, historically, scientific reasoning and religious belief joined hands in their effort to investigate and understand reality. In fact, today’s divorce between science and religion is nothing else than the final outcome of a gradual, long-term, and deliberately assumed the process of science secularisation. However, especially during the last decades, we have all been equally confronted with the rise of a new concern of contemporary scientists, for the review of the scope of problems addressed by science, which now also comprise the themes usually traditionally addressed by theological thought. It could be argued that this recent development is being captured by Science and Religion, an emerging new field of investigation within the modern scientific epistemology, Science and Religion. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is three-fold: firstly, to briefly emphasize that one of the defining dimensions of the dialogue between science and religion dialogue is given by the discontinuity relationship, in which, the knowledge acquired through scientific reason is placed in relation to the divinely revealed one; secondly, to argue that another defining dimension of the dialogue consists in the hierarchical harmony relationship that mediates the encounter between the two, thus transgressing the discontinuity and making the theology-science dialogue possible and viable; and thirdly, to advocate for the idea that the apodictic method (based on antinomic logic) can successfully structure such a dialogue. The paper is divided into two parts: the first part addresses the problem of truth in theology and science with a particular focus on the antinomic logic, the second part aims to illustrate how the apodictic method (based on antinomic logic) effectively implements together-workingness between scientific analysis and theological teaching by applying it to the field of economic science through the theory of rational behaviour, with reference to the issue of wealth and poverty.