Theology and Philosophy - Relative Importance
Philosophy is man understand of how life works. Theology is God’s revelation of how life works. To the question of what is more important than the other, quite a bit of deliberations are needed from man’s and realitiy’s point of view.
From realitiy’s point of view, theology is more important because if there is reality then there has to be an objective Person who has created reality (even if you were to call that objective entity as a force the implications are just the same) and that objective Person’s revelation of reality to man becomes theology.
From man’s point of view, theology is not something he first understands, it is philosophy that he understands. When he reads theology, he understands it a the point of meaning in philosophic frame. Using theology he frames his philosophy of life. So the end result nevertheless is philosophy.
Even the beginning comes in philosophy, because it is only based on his first understood philosophy that he decides on which theology he is to build his philosophy upon or whether to build his philosophy upon no theology at all. So philosophy is the beginning and the end. At this point it appears that philosophy encompasses theology so it appears to be more important.
But before we conclude about relative importance we need to delve a little further. If driven by ones first philosophy, if one decides to build one philosophy without any theological backing, then in the beginning though it looks like a unified theory is emerging later it is disproved and another unified theory to be proposed. So this process of cyclic disentions and new hypothesises keep on going which causes people to loose all confidence with philosophy. And at that point philosophy cannot trust itself any more (as in the case of Rousseau and the French Revolution or Kierkegaard and his existentialism) leads to annihilation of reason. The basic point of philosophy becomes that there is no philosophy objective enough to be trusted. Or in other words philosophy degenerates into anti-philosophy.
For theology to be comprehended there has to be philosophy for philosophy to be real and for it to have enough of a base to stand on there has to be theology. In the end, theology can exist independently, but philosophy devoid of a theological base cannot exist without disintegrating into anti-philosophy. So theology comes out stronger than philosophy.
From realitiy’s point of view, theology is more important because if there is reality then there has to be an objective Person who has created reality (even if you were to call that objective entity as a force the implications are just the same) and that objective Person’s revelation of reality to man becomes theology.
From man’s point of view, theology is not something he first understands, it is philosophy that he understands. When he reads theology, he understands it a the point of meaning in philosophic frame. Using theology he frames his philosophy of life. So the end result nevertheless is philosophy.
Even the beginning comes in philosophy, because it is only based on his first understood philosophy that he decides on which theology he is to build his philosophy upon or whether to build his philosophy upon no theology at all. So philosophy is the beginning and the end. At this point it appears that philosophy encompasses theology so it appears to be more important.
But before we conclude about relative importance we need to delve a little further. If driven by ones first philosophy, if one decides to build one philosophy without any theological backing, then in the beginning though it looks like a unified theory is emerging later it is disproved and another unified theory to be proposed. So this process of cyclic disentions and new hypothesises keep on going which causes people to loose all confidence with philosophy. And at that point philosophy cannot trust itself any more (as in the case of Rousseau and the French Revolution or Kierkegaard and his existentialism) leads to annihilation of reason. The basic point of philosophy becomes that there is no philosophy objective enough to be trusted. Or in other words philosophy degenerates into anti-philosophy.
For theology to be comprehended there has to be philosophy for philosophy to be real and for it to have enough of a base to stand on there has to be theology. In the end, theology can exist independently, but philosophy devoid of a theological base cannot exist without disintegrating into anti-philosophy. So theology comes out stronger than philosophy.