I’m just finishing chapter 1 of the Barth’s Dogmatics, and the discussion has looped back to a topic that Barth brought up in the first section of the Introduction:  Is Dogmatics a Science?  Barth’s argument seems to be that dogmatic theology is indeed a science:

“When the Church puts to itself the question of truth in its threefold form in a way which is objective and not arbitrary, its self examination acquires the character of a scientific undertaking which has its own place alongside other human undertakings of the same or a similar kind.” (CD I/1 5)

At this point it seems that dogmatics qualifies as a science because of it’s objective, non-arbitrary nature.  Objectivity seems to be meager qualification, at least to me.  Barth recognizes that there are good reasons for not insisting that Dogmatics is a science, but says that we should nonetheless “quietly insist” that Dogmatics is a science for three reasons

1. Theology recognizes solidarity with other human concerns for truth
2. By insisting that Dogmatics is a science, Dogmatics reminds the other sciences that their own conclusions are quasi-religious
3. By refusing to cede the concept of science to the “heathens” by separating itself from them and taking a new name.

Barth comes back to the subject several hundred pages later:

“For [the Church] realises for one thing that in its question about dogma, i.e., about the agreement of church proclamation with the Word of God, it has to tread a defined path of knowledge, a path defined by this particular problem. And then it realises, too, that it has  to submit to itself, i.e., everyone who has a share in it, an account regarding this path of knowledge.  In this twofold inner obligation to itself consists the concrete significance of its claim to be a science, which it cannot prove externally before the forum of a general concept of science.” (CD I/1 275)

So, at this point I am confused as to why Barth wants Theology to be a science:

The reasons for quietly insisting that Theology is a science quoted above all imply that theology is a science in relation to other sciences.  That is, Science is a category in which theology should fit along with other disciplines. Barth concedes, much like Radical Orthodoxy figures, that all other sciences should be subordinated under theology (CD I/1 7).  Even though categorizing Theology as a science is puts it in a peer-relation with other sciences, Theology does not share with those other sciences a common pool of data or facts, rather Barth insists that Theology is about “the agreement of church proclamation with the Word of God.” The Word of God, Barth also insists, is not a fact in the world like other facts.  In what way, then, is theology a science?  

“These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday.” - so remarked Terry Eagleton in his famous review of “The God Delusion.”  He’s right, of course, when we’re looking at Theology’s relationship to the Sciences:  That theology’s standing amongst the Sciences was slipping is perhaps what concerns Barth here at the beginning of his Dogmatics.  

I’m not sure that this should concern us, however:  If theology is, as Barth suggests, concerned with the relationship between church proclamation and the Word of God, then it is also an intramural affair - a discipline whose material arises within the church and whose audience is also the church.  If this is the case, then it seems odd to insist that Theology is science in peer-relationship with, say, physics.  So, Barth, why should theology be considered a science?