# T.S. Khun And Theology



## Bryan (Nov 25, 2006)

I know John Frame uses T.S. Khun a lot in an apologetic way against common notions of science, but has any theologian written and books or papers where Khun's ideas are directly applied to theology as opposed to science? IE. The Reformation was a paradigm shift away from Catholicism...etc? 

Bryan
SDG


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## tewilder (Nov 25, 2006)

Bryan said:


> I know John Frame uses T.S. Khun a lot in an apologetic way against common notions of science, but has any theologian written and books or papers where Khun's ideas are directly applied to theology as opposed to science? IE. The Reformation was a paradigm shift away from Catholicism...etc?
> 
> Bryan
> SDG



Be very careful with Khun, for two reasons:

1) Khun is overrated. Philosophers of science thought of him as a popularizer, derivative of people like Lakatos. He is more a sociologist of science, talking about how scientists behave as people, than an analylist of the nature of truth, confirmation, etc. 

2) Khun is widely misinterpreted. Relativists picked up on him, treated his sociological description of scientist as through it were a critique of truth, proof, confirmation, etc. and used Khun to buttress their relativism.

In the case of people like Frame, the place they give Khun is really an index of how far they are from the primary literature and a true understanding of the philosophy of science.

Anyway, I don't think the sociology applies to the Reformation. By the time of the Reformation people were already massively disaffected from the official church and and its corruption. But when it finally became clear what the Reformers were up to, their theology was highly offensive to the humanism of Rome's greatest critics, nor did it fit with the popular religion that expressed itself in Anabaptism, or in the wave of magic and occultism that crested around 1600 (and went hand in hand with the counter-Reformation, with the Jesuits being primary conduits of occultism). 

Rome was in the end less offensive to humanism, and in most situations politically safer.


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## Bryan (Nov 27, 2006)

I try to be careful of everyone I read, and I'm still very unsure of how I feel about Khun, although I'm being as sympathetic to him as I can be at this point.

The question still remains however, if any theologian out there *has* tried to apply Khun to historical theological development. The question if they were successful (assuming someone has tried) or not is a whole other one which I am not ready to approach yet.

Bryan
SDG


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