Is Theology Becoming More Science-Like When Approaching Science? A Reconfiguration of Humanities

A minority of theologians has engaged in recent decades with the social and natural sciences. In most cases this endeavour has been motivated by a constructive program, and indeed, theology has learned from the sciences to update its message adapting to different intellectual contexts. The present chapter offers a personal perspective on how that engagement has changed theology for good, and at the same time reviews the risks and problems still looming in that program. A further step is proposed, as recent and abundant research on religion, health, and wellbeing is opening new and promising routes to enriching the interaction between science and theology in the context of a validation of the humanities, as Willem B. Drees has insisted for many years.