Alexei Nesteruk

The paper discusses the philosophical sense of the dialogue between science and theology. It starts with the recognition that the foundation of both science and theology originates in human beings, having an ambiguous position in the universe that cannot be explicated on metaphysical grounds but can be interpreted theologically. The dialogue between science and theology demonstrates that the difference in hermeneutics of representation of the world in the phenomenality of objects and the inaugural events of human life and religious experience pertains to the basic characteristic of the human condition and that the intended overcoming of this difference under the guise of the ‘dialogue’ represents, in fact, an exis- tentially untenable enterprise. The paradoxical position of humanity in the world (being an object in the world and subject for the world) is treated as being the cause in the split between science and theology. Since, according to modern philosophy, no reconciliation between two opposites in the hermeneutics of the subject is possible, the whole issue of the facticity of human subjectivity as the sense-bestow- ing centre of being acquires theological dimensions, requiring new developments in both theology and philosophy. The intended overcoming of the unknowability of man by himself, tacitly attempted through the ‘reconciliation’ of science and theology (guided by a purpose to ground man in some metaphysical substance), is not ontologically achievable, but demonstrates the working of formal purposefulness (in the sense of Kant). Then the dialogue between theology and science can be considered a teleological activity representing an open-ended hermeneutics of the human condition.

Introduction

In any possible discussion of the relationship between theology and science (if theology is understood as experience of God through life and the physical sciences as explorations of the world within the already given life) there a question arises: What is the model that could best describe the relation between the experiential aspects of life and the knowledge of the world that positions humanity as one thing among others? In other words, if the Divine is perceived as the realm of the transcendent out of which life originates, whereas the operational realm of the physical sciences is related to the created world, the mediation between theology and science shouldde facto become an outward scientific explication of the meaning of the human condition in communion with the giver of life. This is a different perspective on the