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In a tribute to John Lafayette Girardeau, Thorton C. Whaling once wrote:
Philosophy in this sense of the biblical ethics, psychology and ontology underlies the whole structure of the theology of redemption which is thus builded upon these philosophic presuppositions. Dr. Girardeau's profound interest in philosophy therefore rested upon the base of the inherently necessary service which as an ally and handmaid philosophy must render to the "queen of all the sciences."
Theology is known as “the queen of the sciences,” but there are those that have challenged that notion. Whaling continues (his tribute was published separately and in George A. Blackburn’s The Life Work of John L. Girardeau):
In selecting some specimens of Dr. Girardeau's theologizing, the first instance which falls to be mentioned is found in the field of Introductory Theology in his answer to the objection that theology cannot really be a science, because it involves an infinite and therefore an inconceivable and indefinable element, and since the thinking faculty which is the organ of science cannot handle an inconceivable element, there cannot therefore be a valid theological science.
Our theologian's reply is, that every science begins with an indemonstrable, inconceivable and indefinable element. Such is the Soul with which Metaphysics begins. Such is personality with which law begins, continues and ends. Such is life with which Medicine deals. Such is Substance, upon which all the physical sciences rest. The infinite is no more indefinable than is the Soul, Life, Substance. Further, the infinite is a datum furnished by Revelation. If the Scriptures are proven to be from God, theology may accept an infinite God as validly as the other sciences their principia.
Girardeau was elected as Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary in 1875, and delivered his inaugural address the following year titled Theology as a Science, Involving an Infinite Element. Here he addresses the question squarely:
It is now so generally admitted that theology is a science, that any elaborate attempt to establish its claims to that denomination would seem to be superfluous. It has been said that the title of science is denied to theology, “partly on the ground that the habit corresponding to it is not natural, but supernatural; and partly on the ground that it does not spring from principles of reason, nor proceed by logical deductions. It does not, in other words, find a place under the Aristotelic definition of science.” Now, even were it conceded that it professes to be a subjective and not an objective science, the first of these objections would not necessarily be fatal. For if there may be a natural habit of natural knowledge, there is no just reason why there may not be a supernatural habit of supernatural knowledge: and if reason, in its natural condition, is adapted to the scientific treatment of the former, one fails to see why reason supernaturally enlightened may not be competent to deal with the latter. Theology, however, claims to be mainly a science in the objective sense, as concerned about the theory rather than the habit of religion, and the difficulty alleged is consequently deprived of force. To the other objection it may be answered that theology does in part spring from the indestructible principles of reason, endorsed and enforced by revelation; that in so far as it arises from the dicta of a supernatural revelation, it does no more than other sciences in accepting fundamental principles already furnished; that if that be granted, it grounds itself upon data which are at least of no lower original than those supplied by reason; and that if the facts and doctrines of a divine revelation be given so as to be apprehensible, our faculties, if supernaturally illuminated, not only may, but must, by a logical necessity, proceed to arrange and classify them — in other words, to reduce them to scientific form. It may surely be allowed to a theologian to do reflectively what every intelligent man of piety, to a certain extent, does spontaneously.
His argument that theology is indeed a science, “the science of sciences,” proceeds further:
But if we are made to know God, and not to know him as infinite is not properly to know him at all; if he has laid deep in the very ground-forms of the human soul a fundamental faith adapting us to that knowledge; if he has so constructed our powers as by the very virtue of their energies to conduct us to it, and if he has been pleased more fully and explicitly to reveal it to us in his written Word what hinders that, in the employment of our reasoning powers, which were made with an adaptation to order and system, we should attempt to arrange and digest that knowledge into a theoretical and practical science of religion? If the term infinite has no corresponding reality, it is of course admitted that there can be no science which involves an infinite element; but it also follows that there can be to us no God. But if the knowledge of the infinite Being and his infinite perfections be a real and not a delusive human knowledge, it may, under proper restrictions, be made the subject of scientific treatment, both inductive and deductive. Not only does the theologian act upon this assumption, but every preacher of the gospel proceeds upon it. He reasons concerning the Infinite inductively when, for example, by a collation of infinite titles and attributes and works, he establishes the divinity of Christ or the Holy Spirit. He reasons concerning it deductively, whenever, in reply to the difficulty of the sinner that his sins are infinitely great and deserve infinite reprobation, he infers the possibility of his pardon from the infinite mercy of God, from an infinite atonement, and from the infinite ability and willingness of Jesus Christ to save. It is obvious that there is a sense in which the Infinite not only may, but does and must enter into the reasoning processes of the human mind. That being conceded, the possibility of a science of theology is granted. Soberly and reverently to reason about God is not to dishonor him; not to do it is to degrade ourselves. This is the science of sciences which the theological instructor is called to teach.
Truly, if we are made know God, and He has revealed Himself to us in His Word, and by His creation, then, as Girardeau teaches, theology — the study of God — is the highest of all sciences, and the most noble of all pursuits.
