lectures

Are Doctrines Empirically Verifiable? Theology, Theory, and the Human Sciences

Cambridge University

May 6

Westminster College

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On 6th May at 1pm Prof. Simeon Zahl will give a seminar entitled ‘Are Doctrines Empirically Verifiable? Theology, Theory, and the Human Sciences’. This seminar will explore the relationship between theological doctrines and empirical science, with a focus on the human sciences. It will draw on a series of examples to argue that theological anthropology in particular has much to gain from engagement with the human sciences, particularly through surfacing and questioning psychological assumptions and other auxiliary hypotheses that theologians often make without realizing it. It will then caution that simplistic conceptions of such science as being able to prove or disprove doctrinal claims about human beings nevertheless tend to be theologically naive due to misunderstandings of how doctrinal positions function and develop in Christian theology. A light sandwich lunch will be provided from 12:30 in the Healey Room, Westminster College, Madingley Road Cambridge. Please be seated by 12:50 so that the seminar can start promptly.