An Interactive Theology of Religious and Scientific Knowledge: An Account of the Relationship between Ayatollah Javadi Amoli’s Theory and the Problem of “Religious Science”

Ayatollah Javadi Amoli’s theory of religious science is different in character from other theories of religious science, although it has had influenced these other theories in such a way that it might be deemed a meta-theory. The theory consists in a main claim, a general argument, and two crucial conclusions. The main question is that true science is religious and divine. The reason for this claim is based on properties of discovering the truth, which consist in the following: (1) the object of true science which aims at truth is a real entity, and thus it is created by God, (2) true science is a divine inspiration, and (3) true science is religiously reliable and authoritative in virtue of its veridicality. True, reliable science is not in conflict with any other reliable methodical science. Thus, valid sources and methods should not yield conflicting results. According to this theory, since revelation (waḥy) has a high epistemic status, religious texts count as reliable epistemic sources. Therefore, if reliance on them yields knowledge of facts, the result should be compatible with reliable rational methods. Hence, it is invalid to understand religious texts without taking the results of other reliable methods of knowledge into account. Moreover, knowledge of facts via reliable rational methods without taking the results of the transmitted (naqlī) method into account is not sufficiently valid. Accordingly, rational and transmitted methods have an interactive relationship in the process of arriving at knowledge of facts in the world. The relationship does not merely hold if transmitted and rational methods yield knowledge. Even if they yield probabilistic knowledge, the interactive relationship still obtains.