Scientific Imagination as locus of Theology

Abstract

Christian theology is not an isolated system of knowledge. The theological phenomena of revelation and inspiration are related to human knowledge of self, community and the world, yet it would be insufficient to think that their conceptual content comes only from human natural experience. This truth is expressed in the doctrine of “theological places”, which is most often associated with the Spanish Dominican Melchior Cano because of its systematic presentation. In this contribution, I present the hypothesis that science (in the modern sense) can be understood as a “theological place”, not only from the perspective of direct assimilation of concrete and detailed scientific data, but also at the level of imagination. Imagination turns out to be one of the essential components of the scientific method, of course, differently at different stages of the history of science. At the same time, today, theology itself is increasingly appealing to the imagination. In this perspective, one of the main tasks facing theology is the reception of the scientific imagination at both levels of its functioning: as a paradigm of thinking and a specific set of information that makes up the modern scientific picture of the world. Scientific imagination, not only that which comes from art, literature and philosophy, can significantly stimulate the theological imagination.

Contemporary theology, following its turn to history and narrative, is harnessing the power of human imagination more than its neo-scholastic version.1 It can be said that imagination is returning under the thatched roofs of theology departments. A major contributor to this is the increasingly popular, though not always easy, interdisciplinarity in the conduct of scientific research, including in the humanities and theology (Woźniak 2025). Imagination in theology usually draws its sources from poetry, literature, philosophy and art.2 Strangely, there are still too few references to scientific research and its results inside theology itself. The theological imagination is still insufficiently stirred by the scientific imagination,3 both with regard to the structures of thought themselves (the way of preceding) and the results of research in the empirical and exact sciences.

In this contribution, I would like to point out one of the fundamental ways in which the sciences can become a place (locus) for theological reflection.4 It is precisely about imagination. My perspective here is at the same time theological and interdisciplinary. I claim that modern science provides the human imagination with a great deal of relevant data, which create a whole picture of reality, and that it can imprint the human consciousness of self and the world. Science can become a place for theological reflection precisely in the perspective of stimulating imagination of theologians.

In this perspective, the argument undertaken manages to significantly open new perspectives in the dialogue between theology and science. Although many theological studies have been devoted to this dialogue, there is still a clear lack of observing and appreciating the results of science at the level of basic theological imagination. We therefore have quite a few interesting studies on imagination in science and theology, and at the same time there is a substantial lack of literature on the scientific aspect, the scientific moment of theological imagination. Theologians who accept the place of imagination in their work find it easier to seek inspiration in this regard in art, literature and poetry (cf. Milbank 2009, pp. 160–70) than in the sciences. The point is that in specific theological works, thinking in categories of the “image of the world”5 proposed by scientists today can positively influence and shape the theological imagination. The category of the image of the world is very important here. It is in its perspective that I see the greatest possibilities for the influence of the scientific imagination on the theological imagination (both materially and formally). In both cases, of science and theology, imagination is much more than an uncritical jumble of images randomly fused into each other. In fact, both in the sciences and in theology it is a resultant derivative of the synthesis of a huge research body analyzed critically.

In order to sketch an argument for the thesis, I will make the following analyses: firstly, I will point to possible concrete points where the given sciences and their assimilation can contribute to the essential and homogeneous development of theology itself. At this stage, I will limit myself to the classic vision of the influence of the exact sciences on theology. Imagination is understood here in the colloquial sense of an image of the world, which consists of many data and procedures, and which can and should be assimilated into theology. Secondly I will outline, following Michael Heller, the role and place of imagination in the history of modern science—this moment of my reflection is essential for the entire argument presented here; thirdly, I will address Heller’s hypothesis of mathematics as an approximation to pure rationality, asking the question of whether such an account can in any way be applied to theology. Finally, fourthly, in form of an appendix, I will present Torrance’s intuition, according to which some theological solutions may precede their equivalents discovered much later by science, addressing, in this way, a question of theology as the place (locus) of the science.

It is necessary to add, tentatively, how I understand theology and science. In the most general terms, I understand theology as rational discourse, the subject of which is the form and content of Revelation. What is of essential importance here, is that theology conceived in such a manner proceeds according to the principle of analogy (cf. Mondin 2013; Przywara 2014), which admits to its formation not only the truths contained in Revelation, but also those resulting from the natural functioning of human cognitive abilities, based on scientific methodology (unity of empirical moment, theory and mathematical formalization). In this regard, I refer specifically to the biblical wisdom tradition, in which close observation of the world is an essential component not only of wise living, but also of theological thinking. Today, such wise observation of the world must consider the approach to the structures of reality proper to science. From this perspective we can assume, with David Tracy, that theological imagination is, basically and organically, an analogical one (Tracy 1998).

On the other hand, by sciences, I mean here those disciplines that are distinguished by empirical research and the use of mathematical formalizations. These are, therefore, a phenomenon that is today referred to as the “empirical sciences” (e.g., physics, biology, but also sociology) and “exact” science (mathematics). It should be noted here that providing a unified, unambiguous and global definition of science is largely impossible today. For now, we are left with a descriptive, functional approach (cf. more in Tyson 2022, pp. 24–26).

My contribution belongs to a long history of reflection on the so-called locis theologicis. The term is most closely associated with the Spanish theologian Melchior Cano and his posthumous work with a similar title De loci theologici published in Salamanca in 1563. This work, with a clear methodological tinge and characterized by Renaissance flair, is situated in a long line of reflection on theological cognition and its nature, structure, scope and possibilities. It perpetuates the openness of theology to data coming from outside its own constitutive sources. In this respect, it is an expression of the search for the unity of knowledge, while preserving the differences and hierarchies that constitute it. Such an agenda remains relevant today, perhaps more so than before. It remains valid for theology as well. It is worth recalling in this regard an important statement by Thomas F. Torrance, which can serve as a motto for further reflection: “Certainly the task of Modern theology clearly lies in a unitary movement of thought in which the ontological and dynamic approaches are brought together. If so, we must set ourselves to the task of developing appropriate logical tools and an apposite theological language for this purpose—a task not altogether unlike that on which contemporary physicists and biologists are engaged. This will require us to work in close association with them, however, in clarifying the different metaphysical and logical levels of thought within each science and exploring how they are and must be coordinated within the same universe of knowledge” (Torrance 2005, p. 51).

1. Scientific Imagination in Theology: Classical Perspective

At the very beginning, one has to underline that imagination does not mean a hectic, smooth flow of emotions. The imagination that interests us here is not, as in the case of its general or artistic understanding, the ability to indulge in and create fiction. Understood in this way, it would mean intellectual error, conversio ad phantasmata, constant submission to Descartes’ “malignant demon” or Bacon’s “idols of the cave.”6 Such a possibility is ruled out by the history of science as we will see it in the next paragraph. On the contrary, imagination, as I understand it here, is a function of reliable cognition. Constantly fed by and referenced to data, it is a creative principle of association and synthesis.7 Imagination is neither blind to reality nor arbitrarily free from it. It is the ability to create images, hypotheses, experiments, theories, and models of reality—the power “to integrate sensory data into forms or wholes that are not simply given” (Wolfe 2024, p. 97). There is a fairly general agreement among experts on its importance for the sciences (see Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Bachelard 1994; Einstein 1999; Popper 2002; Gould 2002; Penrose 2004; Lehrer 2012).

Imagination as the ability to create models and syntheses and images is not only an important moment of reflection in empirical and exact sciences, but also an important moment in humanities and theology. The latter contains a whole set of tools and ideas that allow us to imagine the world around us. Wolfe argues “that in experiencing the presence of God, people of faith often experience the world similarly as they would experience a work of art: as disclosive of an unseen depth. The faculty enabling them to do so is the imagination. This claim is more multifaceted than it may appear because the role of the viewer’s, hearer’s or reader’s imagination in the interpretation of a work of art is endlessly complex. The active and unpredictable engagement of his or her imagination responds to the deliberate incompleteness or incoherence of the perceptual material presented. In the case of visual art (to which the following analysis restricts itself), this incompleteness and incoherence relate, above all, to the spatiality and materiality of the perceptual field that the artwork presents to the viewer” (Wolfe 2024, p. 103). Wolfe rightly connects imagination with the lack of knowledge, with the perception of the invisible, the unnoticed, perhaps even the unobservable. Such imagination turns out to be important both in the sciences and in theology. While Wolfe describes imagination in the relationship between theology and art, there is therefore a need to take scientific imagination into greater consideration in the formation of the theological imagination. Since theology, as Wolfe argues, offers “a potent way of imagining the world even as it brings us to the limits of our capacity to imagine”, and on the other hand science itself also opens itself to the invisible and distant through imagination (McMullin 1996, pp. 240–48), a broader and stronger fusion of the theological data with the scientific data is needed today, and the issue of imagination can play a vital moment in such a fusion.

Let us assume that the important constitutive moments of the scientific imagination are, primo, certain rules of conduct that are supposed to lead to intersubjectively meaningful and communicable knowledge, and, secundo, a certain set of data that make up what could be called a scientific picture of the world. In both cases, we are dealing not so much with something definitively closed and defined, but with a kind of approximation, constituting a fixed object of reference. Neither in its methods nor in its results does science claim to be an absolute, sole and unchangeable way of knowing reality. Despite this, however, it seeks to discover and implement clear rules of thinking and research conduct, and to present a coherent set of beliefs in the form of simplified but adequate model (or a whole set of models) of reality, resulting from the application of these rules. In this view, by scientific imagination we would mean the combination of clear and reasonably unambiguous research procedures and their results in the form of a concrete picture of reality. I would argue that in both cases, the sciences have much to offer the theological imagination.

Primo, at the methodological level, and with the line of demarcation appropriate to that level, theology should constantly learn from the sciences in terms of transparency, clarity of argument, procedural order, calibration of the generally understood method to the specific object of research, accuracy and consistency, and, in general, accountability for its own methodology. Science and theology do not represent two types of rationality. Both strive for reliable rational cognition and transparent denunciation of their gains. If we consider that they both have different scopes of competence and assume that they both refer to reality (the world and Revelation as datum), and that at the same time they do not enter each other’s spheres of competence, then it must also be assumed that they both use the same ability to know, the same reason, the same rationality. Truth and rationality, and reason itself in its unity, contain many forms, strategies and techniques of cognition. Recall, moreover, that the marriage of mathematical formalisms and empirical research is not indifferent or alien to theology but is an important point of reference for it. Today, moreover, theology itself uses versions of empirical-formalist methods, as evidenced, for example, by Lluís Oviedo Torró (2022), N. Murphy (2006), Alexandre Ganoczy (2008), Leonardo Paris (2012, 2017), Strzelczyk and Vetulani (2016) or Peterson et al. (2024). Thus, although the original object of theological research itself is not possible to study by means of an empirical method (Rahner 1975, pp. 95–97), a significant amount of theological content can already be subjected to such research, even if it cannot be thoroughly described by empirics alone. After all, theology deals with God and the world in relation to God. It therefore shares a common reason with the sciences. To the extent that theology deals with the world in its relation to God, data drawn from science will be an important point of reference for it. Science, although it cannot study the world in this respect (in relation to God), can study it in itself and additionally provide valuable information to theology.

Methodological inspiration drawn in theology from the way science conducts its research can be seen in an important document by John Paul II to the director of the Vatican observatory, George Coyne. There the pope expresses the important conviction that modern science can help theology by making a correction inside its view of the world: “science can purify religion from error and superstition” (John Paul II 1988). Such a papal opinion inscribes dialogue with the sciences into the very genetic code of theology.8 While the latter has always been de facto an attempt to express the truth of Revelation in context, the changing context, including the scientific one, remains significantly important to it. It does not modify what is essential to Revelation and in some way supra-contextual or context-creating (for such is God’s creative action itself) but allows better expression of God’s truth in adequate language.

Scottish theologian Torrance (Torrance 1980), in a similar vein, expresses a strong conviction that, in the current cultural context, marked by the postmodern confusion of truth, the contact of theology with what scientists do is indispensable. Theology, he believes, can, thanks to the sciences, become more grounded in reality, and more properly and radically pose the question of truth and objective order. In the context of the “weak rationality” inherent in postmodern critical thinkers, it is the sciences that maintain a constant reference to truth and reality. In their pursuit of them, already expressed in their very methodological foundations, they provide an incentive for theology to think in a manner reliably rooted in truth and reality. If their methodologies cannot be universal and directly applied in theology, at least in their methodological quest for objectivity they have much to say to other fields of knowledge.

Secundo, it is about the possible impact of scientific imagination on theology in a material perspective. The multiplicity of research, methodologies and results of scientists’ explorations leads to a certain set of convictions, which can be described as the scientific picture of the world. Despite the multiplicity of data and research fields, there seems to be some consensus in science today about the basic features of reality. Denis Edwards (2010, pp. 1–11), following William Stoeger, enumerates four such characteristics that make up the picture of reality: (a) the cosmos evolves at all its levels and dimensions, (b) its constitutive element is relationship, (c) the natural processes occurring in it are characterized by their own integrity and (d) as a whole, the cosmos is a directional reality (a directional universe). There is no doubt that these four points reveal the cosmos as a dynamic reality. It is in the perspective of this dynamism that they have much to offer theology. Compounding the modern scientific imagination, they should inspire theologians who have classically preferred a rather static view of reality.

It is worth noting here the monograph by Sławomir Kołata on the subject of modeling in Trinitarian theology (Kołata 2017). Kołata divides possible models into two groups: impersonal and personal. From our point of view, the author’s description of impersonal models constructed by reference to exact and empirical sciences (mathematics, geometry, theory of evolution, physics of light, quantum theory) is interesting (Kołata 2017, pp. 64–123). Kołata considers both the proposals of other authors and provides his own. The whole argument clearly indicates the creative role of imagination in extrapolation and modeling of theological theories. Extrapolation and application of scientific theories to theology is undoubtedly a factor of the activity of learned imagination, which skillfully crosses the demarcation boundaries of individual fields, striving for conceptual and imaginative interdisciplinary translation of data. What is more, Kołata ultimately seeks the unification of the discussed models on the basis of articulating their complementarity (Kołata 2017, pp. 183–203). The author thus performs a double task: he points to historical attempts to grasp theological problems using models resulting from observations of nature and then asks about their consolidation and coherence. His analyses clearly indicate the creative role of mathematical and natural imagination in theology. The very association of theological problems with solutions from exact and natural sciences determines an important moment of the role of scientific imagination in theology. Just as in this respect modeling in theology is based on scientific models, so too does scientific imagination stimulate theological imagination.

The assimilation of the indicated perspectives should enrich the imagination of theologians. To the extent that they create a general image of the world in becoming, in principle, on each of its dimensions of existence, they also become a specific and significant point of reference for all theological reflection, which should be permeated with them, just as once, during the editing of the narratives of creation scattered in various places in the Old Testament, the ancient imagination modeled, in a certain significant way, the imagination of the inspired authors. Such a relationship is becoming even more desirable today. This occurs, first of all, because there is an undeniable qualitative difference between the mythical imagination of the ancients and the contemporary one formatted by data resulting from the methodological search for truth in the sciences. If, therefore, the ancient, inspired authors considered it beneficial and necessary to use whole sections of mythical narratives about beginnings and to incorporate them into the sacred text, how much more should the modern theologian consider it imperative to apply the data of science, its worldview, and its imagination in building a theological worldview, of course, in compliance with the rules of disciplinary demarcation. More so since these data seem to correspond more closely to the content of Revelation itself as interpreted in tradition.

As one can see, the sciences and their new imagination have much to say to theology, and the latter can learn much from science. According to the above intuitions, confirmed by the Church’s Magisterium, theologians should look more closely at the very method of the sciences, as well as its material results. Such scrutiny by theologians of the new scientific imagination can contribute to a significant purification of theology and its normal way of proceeding, and perhaps even to the development of its renewed form. In such an interaction of theology with the sciences, I see the most interesting, fertile and necessary expression of the conviction of the status of science as a theological place.

This is the classical perspective of the interaction of theology and science at the level of imagination. It is primarily about the reception in theology of what could be roughly called the scientific image of the world, that is, a certain amount of data that determine and define today the understanding of reality studied by empirical and exact sciences. These data provide theology with analogous, imaginative models that allow for a better understanding and presentation of its own claims. Science thus becomes a reservoir, a place of theological knowledge (locus theologicus): scientific data carrying a certain image of reality in themselves significantly stimulate the theological imagination. Let us note that imagination is understood colloquially in this classical model: it means as much as a certain image of reality resulting from the connection of data and influencing research methods.

However, should not this classical, simple and colloquial understanding of imagination itself be subject to evolution? This question opens a new field of research for us. Our guide will be Michał Heller and his narrative about the history of modern science and the transformation of the understanding of imagination that has taken place in it.

2. Science and Imagination in Michał Heller’s Historical Narration

In her enlightening and extravagant essay on science, its essence, methods and forms, and its place in society, Nancy Cartwright states that “science produces remarkable and reliable outputs. But not primarily by ingenious experiments and brilliant theory. Rather by learning, painstakingly, on each occasion, how to discover or create and then deploy together a panoply of different kinds of highly specific scientific products to get the job done. Every product of science—whether a piece of technology, a theory in physics, a model of the economy or a method for field research—depends on huge networks of other products to make sense of it and support it. Each takes imagination, finesse and attention to detail, and each must be done with care, to the very highest scientific standards, so that it can do the immediate job we expect of it and because so much else in science depends on it” (Cartwright 2022, p. 17). As can be seen, the author sees the phenomenon of science quite multidimensionally. In her narrative, science presupposes, what is of special interest to us here, the reference and use of imagination. It belongs to its domain and at the level of its essence and procedures.9

A valuable tool for a quick orientation on the issue of the meaning, role and place of imagination in science is Michael Heller’s essay Mathematics and Imagination in the Theory of Relativity (Heller 1995, pp. 49–66). In its essence and scope, it is a kind of historic panorama of the relationship between science and imagination at important moments in the history of science.

Heller, following Kuhn, notes two important moments of paradigm shifts in the practice of science (Kuhn 1977, pp. 31–65). The first is the shift from the causal model to the mechanistic model (or imaginary model, Heller 1995, p. 57), and the second from mechanics to mathematical formalism. The starting point of the entire development is Aristotelian theory, which accepts the explanation of the world of phenomena by means of four causes10: material, formal, efficient and final (Heller 1995, pp. 51–53). It was this theory that gave rise to the pre-modern understanding of science (cf. Lindberg 1999, p. 52). Heller maintains that, at least until Newton, science was linked to imagination. It is Newton who, in his advocacy of formal solutions, makes the important gesture of moving away from imaginative models to formal-mathematical models. What seemed to many of Newton’s contemporaries to be the main weakness of his theory, that is, the lack of a mechanistic, causal, imaginative explanation, turned out to be the opening of a new path, the discovery that it is not so much imagination but mathematical formalism that expresses how reality functions. Newton managed to maintain and be faithful to his belief that gravity can be treated as a “mathematical force” (Heller 1995, p. 57). This is where Heller finds clear evidence of his brilliance. “The success of Newtonian theory meant that the genius ploy to treat attraction as a mathematical force soon became scientific canon’ (Heller 1995, p. 59). This is all true, even if “in Newton’s times mathematics was a discipline that was eminently service-oriented. It developed to a large extent only insofar as it was needed by physics. It was therefore treated as a tool, and no one asks about the reasons for tools, they just use them. In this situation, mathematics could only fulfill explanatory functions with great difficulty. And it is here that Newton’s genius and courage (courage is always part of genius) are revealed: he despite everything, relied not on imagination, but on mathematics” (Heller 1995, p. 62).

What happened here Heller describes as follows: “Descartes appealed to the imagination, Newton told us to count and measure. Imagination undoubtedly remains a very useful feature in the study of Newtonian-type theories, but in the theory itself it ceases to play a significant role. […] One could briefly say that the Newton-Einstein method consists in giving up any imaginary structures as elements of a scientific theory and in inventing such a mathematical structure that would include all the experimental results known so far in a given field and would be able to suggest projects of new experiments and correctly predict their results. It is surprising (above all to the creators of scientific theories themselves) that this method not only works but works so effectively. Every philosopher of science will admit that today it has completely displaced all its rivals” (Heller 1995, p. 61). As can be seen, Heller’s historical study of the changing cognitive strategy over time leads him to conclude that for “theoretical physics there is no other way but the ‘royal road of mathematics’” (Heller 1998, p. 13). Science practiced in the Newton-Einstein paradigm leaves behind mechanistic imaginary models and replaces them with mathematical explanations. Moreover, the world of mathematics today turns out to be not only larger and more adequate than the world of imagination, but also richer than the world of physics (Heller 1995, p. 64). That is ultimately why “the achievements of modern science are a constant victory of mathematics over imagination” (Heller 1995, p. 169).

Heller’s historical narrative of imagination in science, however, does not end with the assertion that the Newton-Einstein model marks its transcendence in favor of explanation by mathematical structures. Heller reminds us that Einstein’s important historical achievement was to note that time, space and gravity must not be treated as independent elements of mechanics and, therefore, must be combined so that “the whole can be identified with a certain mathematical structure” (Heller 1995, p. 64). Paradoxically, this structure turned out to be a geometrical structure. At the same time, as the Polish philosopher and scientist reminds us, “geometry is one of the few mathematical disciplines that has largely retained its imaginative character” (Heller 1995, p. 65). Moreover, the development of geometry has contributed to and led to the development of human imagination, according to Heller. Thus, we are dealing here with a certain paradox and reinforcement. First of all, imagination, which seemed to have lost its importance in science, is returning to it with all its momentum. However, it is not the same imagination as in the case of mechanistic theory, but the mathematical imagination, the imagination of mathematical geometry, which is shaping more and more common human imagination. Heller draws the following and extremely important conclusion from this story: “It is not physics that returns to the imagination, but the imagination that evolves with the development of mathematical methods of physics. Mathematical structures are extremely rational. Imagination trained in the art of precision adapts to them easily. There is no better explanation than in terms of “pure rationality”. At least that is what we think today. But the history of science continues. What other possibilities does it hold? We should learn one thing from history: never trust your imagination to make predictions. The future holds many a shock” (Heller 1995, p. 67).

With erudition and acerbity, Heller showed in a simple and convincing way how science gradually moved away from the popular imagination and replaced it with mathematics, only to return to it again, this time making significant changes and transformations within it. There is no doubt that the whole story told by Heller stimulates the imagination and directs it, including that of a theologian. Heller has shown that “instructed” imagination (what one could call a kind of “docta imaginatio”11) is fundamentally important in science. The adventurous history of developing science leads to the specialization of imagination, to its purification. Even from this perspective, the history of imagination in the sciences is an important point of reference for theology itself and the imagination proper to it. The new imagination of the sciences, obtained after many attempts, can indeed subtly stimulate the theological imagination at the very methodological level.

I’m thinking in particular of Heller’s understanding of mathematics as a corrective and catalyst for a new imagination in science. From this perspective, it falls to note that in Heller’s description, mathematics not only becomes the universal language of reality, but also a form of rationality itself. It is a certain version of the visibility of rationality. Reality can be viewed by mathematics, it is no longer just only one of many tools for viewing it. Heller stresses that such intuition contributed to both Newton’s and Einstein’s theories. Can the same be said of theology? We now need to consider this issue in more detail from the perspective of its possible application in theology.

3. Qauestio Disputata: Mathematics in Theology?

Let me formulate a question, referring to Heller’s findings relating to mathematics and its role in understanding and doing science today. Can formalized explanations be proposed in theology? Heller boldly states that “it turns out that a specific physical problem always leads in a natural way to some mathematical structure. In this way, mathematics serves as a logical framework that allows us to distinguish those physical quantities that play an important role in a given problem from those that are irrelevant. Thanks to this, we can concentrate on physics” (Heller 1995, p. 62). Can a similar translation as the one observed by Heller between physics and theology take place between theology and mathematics? Would this relationship with mathematics be natural only in the case of physics? Do theological problems “lead to some mathematical structures”? If mathematics forms a new concept of scientific imagination, does this fact have any influence on the dialogue between theology and the sciences at the level of imagination? Does the new understanding of imagination in the sciences, which Heller writes about, have any application in the perspective of theological research?

If Heller, who shows a constant tendency toward mathematical Platonism, is right, and mathematics is the purest form of rationality we know or “rationality in pure form” (Heller 1995, p. 63), then the answer should be positive.12 However, if we took mathematics as the primary language of theology, wouldn’t we risk reducing the world viewed through theology to what we today consider to be a pure form of rationality? Wouldn’t that lead to a reduction of mystery? At the same time, on the other hand, wouldn’t the adoption of mathematics as a possible language for theology lead to some existential impoverishment of theology itself, which must be rooted not only in the world of objective inferences, but also in the world of human subjective and communal experience? Besides, some believe that theology today should take refuge in the world of poetry, that it is the poem that can save its essence from the horrors of history (Lipszyc 2015) and the insensitive objectivity of the cold logic of the sciences. Arguably, a lot of prudence and a firm rejection of all extremes are needed here. Theology needs poetry, narrative, but also strict definitions and a language capable of coherently expressing its beliefs. In learning about the world, it would be a mistake to separate, or forcibly reduce, the richness of the multitude of languages by which the one and only rationality given to us is expressed in many ways. If only because there are very important genetic links between the sciences and the humanities (Heller and Krajewski 2014).

While I understand that Heller is not postulating some absolutization of mathematics, he is puzzled by why it is so useful for describing reality, and still prior to any empirical experience. It is interesting that in his argument Heller does not consider the explanation of this fact that underlies Kant’s critical philosophy although he refers to it indirectly when writing about “a pure form of rationality”. As is well known, the philosopher from Königsberg fastened the possibility of “pure mathematics” (Kant 2004, pp. 32–45) and “pure natural science” on the principle of embedding its structures in the cognitive subject itself. The forms of pure natural mathematics were, in his view, to be universal and common to all human beings. Such an approach disabsolutizes mathematics by relativizing it, i.e., linking it to the subject. And while it is not a definitive explanation and trumpets reductionism and presuppositionalism, it points to an important clue in understanding mathematics as a Hellerian form of “pure rationality,” namely, that it is always already somehow linked to the subject. In turn, the subject itself is part of the reality it comes to know.

Either way, the necessary condition for applying mathematics, as a “pure form of rationality”, to theology is the awareness that mathematical explanations are not absolute. Heller himself remembers that mathematical structures “only approximately correspond to the structure of the world” (Heller 1995, p. 63). Thus, the rational exposition of the data of theology by means of useful mathematical formulas should not claim exclusiveness.

Keeping this in mind, a question parallel to the questions posed by Heller in the space of physics arises in theology: which known mathematical structures, theories and systems could help express the truths of faith, such as the Trinitarian nature of God (the relationship of unity and multiplicity), creation, incarnation (the relationship of otherness and identity), the eucharist (the essence of transformation, the link between essence and phenomenon) and its meaningful and essentials parts?

In answering these questions, one must always keep in mind that while mathematics can be considered a system richer than physical reality itself, the case is different for theology. Theologically speaking, rationality is not something above God, but, as Christian tradition maintains, it expresses His own way of existence, which is analogously and contingently reflected in the created order. Mathematics can be richer than physical reality because it is a certain way of capturing the inner logic (Logos) of the life of the Triune God.13 Precisely for this reason, it can be applied to theology, although its “predictive power” (see Krajewski 2016a, pp. 111–14) may be limited and narrowed in its case due to the primary object of theology, which is the Triune God as the source of rationality. Hence, in answering the theological questions cited above, theo-mathematics will have to be vigilant not to at any point subordinate what theology sees to what mathematics sees today. Arguably, mathematics itself could gain something from attempting to answer the above questions.14 Be that as it may, the above questions remain legitimate and interesting, especially on the subject of seeking, in mathematics, certain structures, perhaps not obvious to empirical experience, by means of which theological experience based on the set of data called Revelation could be better described.

Let me emphasize again: the application of mathematics to theology cannot mean narrowing the perspective of the supernaturality of theological claims. Theological truths (especially such as the Trinity, the incarnation, and grace) cannot be deduced from pure reason15 or from a pure form of rationality, which as we know, Heller contemplates in mathematics, conceived as a set of mathematical structures. The possible application of mathematics to theology must not be about explanation, especially when one understands it as giving the ultimate raison d’être or as “reducing of a fragment of the physical world to a fragment of the world of mathematics” (Heller 1995, p. 63). Closer to theology and its requirements, however, exists, already, another “definition” of explanation offered by Heller as a “translation of a given problem into a mathematical structure”.

Viewed in this way, mathematics could serve theology to expose, express or bring to light the logical coherence of the truths of faith. No theory of mathematics or physics or any other science explains existence. Mathematics, at least in its formality, is not the ground of being. The truths of faith are not deducible from pure rationality (Thomas Aquinas), which does not mean that they are not rational. Once revealed, they can be rationally investigated and, at least, expressed, if only by means of paradox (cf. Wołowski 2021; 2023, p. 313). The question of the possibility of using mathematics in theology, therefore, is not so much about laying a rational foundation for the truths of faith, but about rational expression of their essence and cognitive content.

Such possibility of rational expression is necessary for the act of faith by its nature, and is therefore also necessary for theology itself. If the complex history of science leads us today to occlude, in and through mathematics, the pure form of rationality, then should it not be included in theology, just as Aristotelian theory once was, perhaps with less success, mechanistic theory? Mechanistic vision of reality and its version of theology failed perhaps for the same reason that in Heller’s story Newton brilliantly transcends it, just as Einstein transcends Newton while nevertheless retaining the same formal–mathematical paradigm. Theology cannot remain blind to the fundamental discovery of modern science which articulates mathematics as a “pure form of rationality”. Just as it once entered into an alliance with Aristotelianism and was able—less successfully—to leave that alliance for the sake of entering into another one, this time with a more modern explanation in the form of mechanistic theory, so today it should think deeply about some implementation of the mathematical–formal paradigm. I write about some implementation because it cannot be about establishing mathematics as the only language for theology.

The history of theology has already known moments when some form of mathematical thinking was discovered, and attempts were made to apply it to theology. Three such moments come to mind.

The figure and work of Nicholas of Cusa, in particular, should be recalled here. Indirectly, I have already referred creatively to his thought when writing about “instructed imagination”, a notion that copies his understanding of knowledge and transfers it to the issue of interest here. Nicholas, as is well known, is one of those philosophers and theologians who realized the limitations of the human cognitive adventure. Apophatic awareness, however, is not his last word. The work that continues the discoveries from the Docta ignorantia is the philosophical–theological–mathematical treatise De coniecturis. Its content, de facto, is a description of the benefits of mathematical thinking in the space of philosophy and theology. Cusanus does not engage in it with biblical exegesis or considerations from the history of doctrine but seeks mathematical structures that open the way to God in terms of pure reason. His program is largely based on a marriage of the themes and intuitions of Pythagorism and Neoplatonism, a mathematical and geometrical exposition of the content of the convictions of reason and faith. Cusanus does not deduce the truths of faith from mathematics; rather, he uses it to point out their logical, mathematical, and geometrical consistency.

The second moment is an interesting, though little known, program of practicing and presenting theology by means of the “graphographic method” (metoda wykresograficzna) proposed by the Polish patrologist Franciszek Drączkowski. The systematic vision of theological research is born in his thought under the influence of detailed study of the Church Fathers and their language. Drączkowski defines his method as “a way of presenting the truths of faith by means of parallel approaches, that is, verbal and graphic-image approaches” (Drączkowski 2017, p. 119). His theology in geometric–mathematical terms assumes that “individual diagrams, composed of geometric figures, show the truths of faith under discussion in a clear, simple and understandable way. A further advantage of visual forms, operating with a drawing composed of geometric figures, is the graphic shorthand, which also facilitates memorization. A drawing visually imagines what takes up several pages in a book. The introduction of diagrams to denote spiritual realities makes perceptible what is abstract and difficult to imagine” (Drączkowski 2017, p. 127). Drączkowski’s method relates to mathematics and geometry only rudimentarily. It is not so much concerned with the application of mathematics or geometry to theology as with depicting theological themes with geometric figures. Assuming this significant methodological deficit, it should be noted that Drączkowski’s intuition about the possibility of presenting theological data with geometric figures remains valid and interesting. However, it requires further work and significant mathematical deepening.

The third moment is linked to the current rise and exuberant development of analytic theology. It seems that analytic theology and its firm reliance on formalizations may prove to be the bridge leading to the stronger alliance of theology and mathematics and logics today. Rea characterizes the style as including the following points: “P1. Write as if philosophical positions and conclusions can be adequately formulated in sentences that can be formalized and logically manipulated. P2. Prioritize precision, clarity, and logical coherence. P3. Avoid substantive (non-decorative) use of metaphor and other tropes whose semantic content outstrips their propositional content. P4. Work as much as possible with well-understood primitive concepts, and concepts that can be analyzed in terms of those. P5. Treat conceptual analysis (insofar as possible) as a source of evidence” (Rea 2009, pp. 5–6). P1 is important here. The analytical method in theology presupposes the possibility of using formalizations of reality. Although Rea does not specify exactly which formalizations he means, it is mathematical formalism itself that comes to mind. Such an approach is ultimately based on a certain, classical understanding of mathematics: “Just as universal-kind concepts can yield cognition of relevant necessary truths in virtue of the God-given immaterial abstractive power of the human mind, so mathematical concepts can yield cognition of relevant necessary truths” (Cleveland 2021, p. 176; cf. Maurer 1993, pp. 43–61). It should be remembered that analytic philosophy and theology are not a branch of mathematics. What they have in common with mathematics is an attempt to formalize issues. Despite this, there is no doubt at all that it is analytic theology, based on the achievements of analytic philosophy, which will be crucial in developing bridges between theology and mathematics.

Furthermore, one must conclude, following Heller, that even if the use of mathematics in theology turns out to be possible only in part, one thing remains certain; mathematics can indeed help to purify and shape theology. It is precisely for this reason that theology needs a reliable dialogue with it.

4. Excursus: Possible and Important vice versa: Theological Imagination in Science?

What was said until now raises the question of reciprocity. Since theology can and should enter into fruitful cooperation with science, can it also be the case that science can benefit from a relationship with theology? It seems that, with all methodological boundaries and subject demarcations preserved, the sciences can gain, in the space inherent in theology, some new and interesting fields of research. Just as the scientific imagination should shape theology, theology too has many relevant places that may prove to be interesting representations of reality for the sciences themselves. Such truths of the faith as creation from nothingness, the incarnation, and especially the Trinity provide, both in their dogmatic formulations and their tumultuous history of emergence, much data for reflection.

The history of theology provides examples of the creative influence of the truths of faith on the philosophical and scientific imagination. It is appropriate to mention here two that have already been fairly well researched and described. These are the history of the concepts of time and space in early philosophical and theological reflection, and the concept of relation and its increasingly decisive role in understanding the mysteries of the world.

The first case has been the subject of research and inquiry by Scottish scientist and theologian Thomas F. Torrance on many occasions. It is about the significant change that took place in the fourth century in the scientific imagination of antiquity for the sake of and inspired by the dogmas of creation and (especially) the incarnation. Torrance sees in Nicean theology (this is the theology created for the purpose of elaborating and clarifying the content of the Creed from the so-called Council of Nicaea I in 325), a great creative potential in taking up old issues related to the classical understanding of reality anew.

Christian theologians proclaiming the descent of the second person of the Trinity into the world and its incarnation had to, in his opinion, quickly realize that such a belief meant, de facto, a whole set of problems linked to issues of time and space as the ancients understood them. Both creation and, especially, incarnation imply God’s being in the temporal and spatial world. The very act of incarnation, captured in the Creed by the verb “descend,” even evokes a kind of odyssey, God’s journey from eternity and spacelessness into the temporal and spatial world. If such events were somehow reconcilable with ancient mentality, especially that mythical, pre-philosophical version of it, such reconciliation was already impossible from the perspective of gospel-based theology, and for two interrelated reasons: the ancient concept of time and space and the Christian concept of God. The ancients imagined that space was a kind of container for things that had to be in certain specific places that bounded them. “On the whole Greek science and philosophy had come to concentrate upon the determinate and finite, for that alone was conceivable, and so operated with a notion of space as delimited place defined in terms of a containing vessel. If there were an actual (as distinct from a mathematical) infinite it could only be the limitless, empty void beyond the cosmos, but although some such notion was advocated by Pythagoreans and Atomists alike, Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoic thought deemed it unthinkable and unintelligible. Thus the finite, the intelligible and the limits of the container were all bound up together in their thought” (Torrance 2005, p. 23). At the same time, Christian theologians already knew that God is infinite, and that He is not immersed in the container of time and space, which—thanks to His free creation of the world ex nihilo—also comes from Him.

According to Torrance, Nicene theology, especially St. Athanasius, whose achievements are preserved and developed by Damscius and Philoponus and forgotten in late Byzantine theology and in the West (Torrance 2005, p. 25), solves this problem on the basis of rejecting the ancient concept of time and space, and their new articulation, one in which they could express the truth of the Christian faith, namely, that both time and space come from God on the basis of the creative act, and that God can act in them without losing his transcendence. “The essential key”—affirms Torrance—“was found in the relation of the homoousion to the creation, that is, in the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ, who shares with us our creaturely existence in this world and is of one substance with the Father, is He through whom all things, including space and time, came to be. That is to say, Nicene theology rejected an approach to the questions of space and time from any point of absolute rest, but adopted an exclusive approach from the living and active Self-Word through whom all things, visible and invisible, were created out of nothing, who leaves nothing void of Himself, and who orders and holds the entire universe together by binding it into such a relation to God that it is preserved from breaking up into nothingness or dropping out of existence, while at the same time imparting to it light and rationality. He it is who by Incarnation has come into our spatial realm although He was not far off before. He is fully present with us in space and time and yet remains present with the Father. He was certainly ‘outside’ all things in respect of His essence, but ‘in’ all things and events in respect of His power. Yet He did not activate the body He assumed from us in such a way as to cease to deploy Himself actively throughout the universe in all its dimensions. Since He shared with us our physical space, while remaining what He ever was, the spatial ingredient in the concept of the Incarnation must be interpreted from the side of His active and controlling occupation of bodily existence and place. Space is here a predicate of the Occupant, is determined by His agency, and is to be understood in accordance with His nature. He cannot, therefore, have the same space-relation with the Father as we creatures have, otherwise He would be quite incapable of God” (Torrance 2005, pp. 14–15).

Such an approach leads Torrance to draw important conclusions about the transformation of the meaning of the concept of space in Athanasius. The Scottish theologian argues that the event of the incarnation leads to the rejection of the classical concept of space and the development of a new view of it. The dominant emphasis of this new account is its relationality, built on the role and place of Christ in natural history and sacred history, which can no longer, because of the Incarnation, be completely separated. Torrance affirms that “the concept of space in terms of the ultimate immobile limit of the container independent of time, all fall away, and instead there emerges a concept of space in terms of the ontological and dynamic relations between God and the physical universe established in creation and incarnation. Space is here a differential concept that is essentially open-ended, for it is defined in accordance with the interaction between God and man, eternal and contingent happening. It is treated as a sort of coordinate system (to use a later expression) between two horizontal dimensions, space and time, and one vertical dimension, relation to God. In this kind of coordination, space and time are given a sort of trans-worldly aspect in which they are open to the transcendent ground of the order they bear within nature. This means that the concept of space which we use in the Nicene Creed is one that is relatively closed, so to speak, on our side where it has to do with physical existence but is one which is infinitely open on God’s side” (Torrance 2005, p. 18, cf. p. 2416). Let us just note that Torrance (2005, p. 17) sees in the Nicaean thought of Athanasius a kind of new approach, a paradigm (paradeigma), whose essential feature is the fusion of the dimensions of reality by analogy. The focal point of such fusion, its condition of possibility, is the incarnation, in which “heaven and earth merge” human affairs with the divine, the sensual order with the rational order.

All this historical argument about Nicene theology is needed by Torrance to demonstrate that proper theology never separates Revealed knowledge from natural knowledge. An example of the fruitfulness of combining two visions of reality is precisely the history of the understanding of space and time. In this regard, Torrance’s narrative allows us to conclude that Athanasius’ theological imagination led him to a critical and in-depth reflection on space, the fruits of which anticipate the later development of its understanding in modern science (cf. Torrance 2005, p. 58), for this is what Torrance’s claim boils down to—that Athanasius abandoned the ancient understanding of space as a container in favor of understanding it in relational terms. A good and critical theological imagination, which consists of various truths of faith and methodological rules of reading Scripture, can thus offer vital data to science itself, and even anticipate its later development. It is important to realize that Torrance’s description that his historical narrative of events in the history of ideas is approximate and to some extent intuitive. Torrance does not claim that Athanasius preceded Einstein, but that theological data enabled him to propose a new understanding of reality that proved, centuries later, to be quite consistent with the foundations of modern physics. And while Torrance’s arguments should be critically examined by specialists in patristic theology, it is difficult to admit that this author does not provide us with valuable insight.

This brings us naturally to the second of the issues mentioned, which is the concept of relationships. Torrance argued that the Nicene faith led to a new concept of time and space. This novelty consisted of a relational view of them. Recent research in the field of fourth-century Trinitarian theology, especially Cappadocian pro-nicaeanism, reveals that the relational revolution took place not only at the level of understanding the basic physical dimensions of the world, but also, and above all, at a much deeper level because, within metaphysics itself, the basic theory of being as being.

Speaking of such a situation, Giulio Maspero notes that “Christian thought has in stages come to acknowledge that the one and only God in three Persons not only has relations but is also three eternal Relations. Greek metaphysics has thus been extended through this sense of who, that is, in the personal sense, becoming a relational and Trinitarian ontology and a relational ontology precisely because it is a Trinitarian one” (Maspero 2023, p. 7). A little further on, the Italian theologian gives a definition of what he calls Trinitarian ontology concluding that: “what is meant by the expression Trinitarian ontology is precisely the ontology of relation as it is conceived through Trinitarian revelation. Indeed, an analysis of the Greek tradition shows that the dogmatic development of the fourth century could actually be reread as the history of the birth of a new ontology of relation, one that surpasses classical Greek metaphysics” (Maspero 2023, p. 9).

Maspero bases his theses on careful analyses of Greek theologians of the fourth century, which lead him to believe that the Cappadocians, especially Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, incorporated the reality of relation in divine, Trinitarian immanence itself, thus making breakthroughs in the perspective of classical metaphysics, in which relation had only the status of accidentality (Maspero 2023, p. 161). In their Trinitarian theology, relation ceases to be accidental (Maspero 2023, p. 162), which ultimately means that “in speaking of the unity of the one and triune God we cannot set the personal dimension in opposition to that of substance” (Maspero 2023, p. 163). At the same time, Maspero stresses that this new ontology is not a rejection of the classical metaphysics of substance, by replacing it with the category of relation, but a kind of extension of its classical form (Maspero 2023, p. 164). Instead, the novelty lies in the fact that relation does not so much replace substance so much as it becomes an internal and essential dimension of it.

Having made these important discoveries and observations, Maspero moves on to sketch the epistemological implications of the Cappadocian metaphysical breakthrough. The new metaphysics leads, in his view, to the formation of a new epistemology. “Key to this new epistemological perspective is relation, which had been metaphysically reshaped by the Cappadocians. In fact, the fundamental aporia of the Greek world consisted in affirming the relationality of the epistêmê, which is the authentic path to truth insofar as it sought the metaphysical foundation of the world but in denying the relational dimension of the first principle. This left science itself suspended in the void, a path taken by the Sophists and the Skeptics, or introduced a separation between divine and human thought, which ended up making the human equivocal with respect to its divine foundation, as Plato, Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists did. In order to reach the fullness of truth, the human being had to renounce being human, as the path from Aristotelian nous to Plotinian mysticism illustrates” (Maspero 2023, p. 213). The Trinitarian ontology of relations was capable of transcending the pointed aporia. Moreover, it turns out that the Cappadocian discoveries within the ontology of relations apply not only to the realm of the divine, but also to the space of created entities (Maspero 2023, p. 220; cf. Maspero 2016, 2018). Trinitarian ontology offers a perspective not so much beyond physics (meta-physical) but rather as ‘ana-physical’ (Maspero 2023, p. 221).

From this epistemological perspective, one can see how important the metaphysical breakthrough operated by Cappadocians was. What they discovered within the framework of their Trinitarian theology, faithful to the message of the Gospel, turned out to be the key to solving the ancient metaphysical and epistemological aporias. At the same time, relation’s ideological position being changed from the space of accidentality to the category of substance begins to conceptually concern the grasp of the totality of reality. In his work, Maspero has provided convincing historical evidence in this regard under the claims of authors such as Ratzinger and Zizioulas, and the aforementioned Torrance. Relation becomes the chief category of metaphysics, but also of science. The Cappadocian metaphysical breakthrough thus anticipates a development that will take place in modern science, whose vision of reality is increasingly based on the role and importance of the category of relation.

Greatly instructive and critical material in this regard is provided by the collective study of the common points of theology and science in the perspective of the concept of relations. The very editor of the aforementioned collection of essays states meaningfully at the beginning of the book that “The history of twentieth-century physics can be read as the story of the discovery of many levels of intrinsic relationality present in the structure of the universe” (Polkinghorne 210, p. vii). It is hard not to see, in light of the arguments presented above, that there is some golden thread—even if it is a very fine one—connecting the theological imagination of fourth-century authors and modern scholars. Are these examples not enough to hypothesize a possible contribution of the theological imagination to the scientific imagination? Could the optional—for obvious reasons—reading of classical theological texts and scientists’ familiarity with the lines of doctrinal development not point them imaginatively to certain models of understanding reality that could prove relevant in solving contemporary problems? The provided examples indicate that the answer to both questions is positive.

5. Conclusions: Toward Mutual Locality Between Theology and Science

The above reflections lead us to draw general conclusions that could contribute to further discussion.

Firstly, imagination, as Heller shows, has its own history and its own place inside the phenomenon of science. Heller has allowed us to see not only the changing history of the understanding of imagination, but also the very basic fact that it permanently accompanies scientific reflection.

Secondly, the evolution of imagination in science has led to its refinement and methodological specialization. As a result of it, imagination can no longer be understood as arbitrary fantasizing. Imagination in modern science, Heller argues, is indeed combined with geometry and mathematics, and is thus based on reliable knowledge. The evolution of imagination has thus proceeded from thinking in mechanistic terms to reasoning in geometrical terms. The specialization of methods and their calibration has led to a purification of imagination in science.

Thirdly, the evolution of imagination in science, noted by Heller, which is, de facto, its elaboration and shaping according to the principles of mathematical thinking, has great significance for theology. Although science is not its own source for theology it remains an important point of reference for it. Referring to Melchior Cano’s terminology, it is one of the new “theological places”.

Fourthly, the scientific imagination, refined by mathematics and geometry, is indeed important for theology, and this on two parallel and interrelated levels: methodological and material. If the scientific imagination consists of rudimental methodological rules calibrated to adequately learning the truth and concrete data resulting from research, data that form a certain picture of reality, then theology can benefit from the appropriation of both moments to its own reflection. The first of these moments, the methodological one, may be particularly important. It is not a matter of direct importation of methods, forbidden by the principle of demarcation, but a constant striving for ever greater clarity and transparency in theological procedures and claims.

Fifthly, it should be noted that there is a possibility of a positive influence of theology on the scientific imagination. The interdisciplinary locality, such as that described by Cano in his loci alieni, should be mutual and reciprocal. History shows that theology, in its theoretical form, can anticipate later developments in science. Hence, the development of doctrine can provide scientists with important material in planning their own research. The fact that theology can also be a place of inspiration for sciences is ultimately based on the fundamental conviction of the unity of the world and the intellect which discovers and knows it.

Sound theology has always looked at God with one eye and the world with the other. The subject of theological development has always been the relationship between God and the world. Precisely because of this, it can ultimately draw on the reliable maturity of the sciences and can itself contribute to its development. In this regard, the fact is that the relationship between the emergence of modern sciences and specific developments within theology itself is not indifferent. But this is already a story for another study (cf. Jaki 1988; Funkenstein 1989).