Books: History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

J >> John William Draper >> History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

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The influences of the Averroistic philosophy were apparent in
many of these sects. That Mohammedan system, considered from a
Christian point of view, led to the heretical belief that the end
of the precepts of Christianity is the union of the soul with the
Supreme Being; that God and Nature have the same relations to
each other as the soul and the body; that there is but one
individual intelligence; and that one soul performs all the
spiritual and rational functions in all the human race. When,
subsequently, toward the time of the Reformation, the Italian
Averroists were required by the Inquisition to give an account of
themselves, they attempted to show that there is a wide
distinction between philosophical and religious truth; that
things may be philosophically true, and yet theologically false--
an exculpatory device condemned at length by the Lateran Council
in the time of Leo X.

But, in spite of auricular confession, and the Inquisition, these
heretical tendencies survived. It has been truly said that, at
the epoch of the Reformation, there lay concealed, in many parts
of Europe, persons who entertained the most virulent enmity
against Christianity. In this pernicious class were many
Aristotelians, such as Pomponatius; many philosophers and wits,
such as Bodin, Rabelais, Montaigne; many Italians, as Leo X.,
Bembo, Bruno.

Miracle-evidence began to fall into discredit during the eleventh
and twelfth centuries. The sarcasms of the Hispano-Moorish
philosophers had forcibly drawn the attention of many of the more
enlightened ecclesiastics to its illusory nature. The discovery
of the Pandects of Justinian, at Amalfi, in 1130, doubtless
exerted a very powerful influence in promoting the study of Roman
jurisprudence, and disseminating better notions as to the
character of legal or philosophical evidence. Hallam has cast
some doubt on the well-known story of this discovery, but he
admits that the celebrated copy in the Laurentian library, at
Florence, is the only one containing the entire fifty books.
Twenty years subsequently, the monk Gratian collected together
the various papal edicts, the canons of councils, the
declarations of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, in a
volume called "The Decretum," considered as the earliest
authority in canon law. In the next century Gregory IX. published
five books of Decretals, and Boniface VIII. subsequently added a
sixth. To these followed the Clementine Constitutions, a seventh
book of Decretals, and "A Book of Institutes," published
together, by Gregory XIII., in 1580, under the title of "Corpus
Juris Canonici." The canon law had gradually gained enormous
power through the control it had obtained over wills, the
guardianship of orphans, marriages, and divorces.

The rejection of miracle-evidence, and the substitution of legal
evidence in its stead, accelerated the approach of the
Reformation. No longer was it possible to admit the requirement
which, in former days, Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in
his treatise, "Cur Deus Homo," had enforced, that we must first
believe without examination, and may afterward endeavor to
understand what we have thus believed. When Cajetan said to
Luther, "Thou must believe that one single drop of Christ's blood
is sufficient to redeem the whole human race, and the remaining
quantity that was shed in the garden and on the cross was left as
a legacy to the pope, to be a treasure from which indulgences
were to be drawn," the soul of the sturdy German monk revolted
against such a monstrous assertion, nor would he have believed it
though a thousand miracles had been worked in its support. This
shameful practice of selling indulgences for the commission of
sin originated among the bishops, who, when they had need of
money for their private pleasures, obtained it in that way.
Abbots and monks, to whom this gainful commerce was denied,
raised funds by carrying about relics in solemn procession, and
charging a fee for touching them. The popes, in their pecuniary
straits, perceiving how lucrative the practice might become,
deprived the bishops of the right of making such sales, and
appropriated it to themselves, establishing agencies, chiefly
among the mendicant orders, for the traffic. Among these orders
there was a sharp competition, each boasting of the superior
value of its indulgences through its greater influence at the
court of heaven, its familiar connection with the Virgin Mary and
the saints in glory. Even against Luther himself, who had been an
Augustinian monk, a calumny was circulated that he was first
alienated from the Church by a traffic of this kind having been
conferred on the Dominicans, instead of on his own order, at the
time when Leo X. was raising funds by this means for building St.
Peter's, at Rome, A.D. 1517. and there is reason to think that
Leo himself, in the earlier stages of the Reformation, attached
weight to that allegation.

Indulgences were thus the immediate inciting cause of the
Reformation, but very soon there came into light the real
principle that was animating the controversy. It lay in the
question, Does the Bible owe its authenticity to the Church? or
does the Church owe her authenticity to the Bible? Where is the
criterion of truth?

It is not necessary for me here to relate the well known
particulars of that controversy, the desolating wars and scenes
of blood to which it gave rise: how Luther posted on the door of
the cathedral of Wittemberg ninety-five theses, and was summoned
to Rome to answer for his offense; how he appealed from the pope,
ill-informed at the time, to the pope when he should have been
better instructed; how he was condemned as a heretic, and
thereupon appealed to a general council; how, through the
disputes about purgatory, transubstantiation, auricular
confession, absolution, the fundamental idea which lay at the
bottom of the whole movement came into relief, the right of
individual judgment; how Luther was now excommunicated, A.D.
1520, and in defiance burnt the bull of excommunication and the
volumes of the canon law, which he denounced as aiming at the
subversion of all civil government, and the exaltation of the
papacy; how by this skillful manoeuvre he brought over many of
the German princes to his views; how, summoned before the
Imperial Diet at Worms, he refused to retract, and, while he was
bidden in the castle of Wartburg, his doctrines were spreading,
and a reformation under Zwingli broke out in Switzerland; how the
principle of sectarian decomposition embedded in the movement
gave rise to rivalries and dissensions between the Germans and
the Swiss, and even divided the latter among themselves under the
leadership of Zwingli and of Calvin; how the Conference of
Marburg, the Diet of Spires, and that at Augsburg, failed to
compose the troubles, and eventually the German Reformation
assumed a political organization at Smalcalde. The quarrels
between the Lutherans and the Calvinists gave hopes to Rome that
she might recover her losses.

Leo was not slow to discern that the Lutheran Reformation was
something more serious than a squabble among some monks about the
profits of indulgence-sales, and the papacy set itself seriously
at work to overcome the revolters. It instigated the frightful
wars that for so many years desolated Europe, and left
animosities which neither the Treaty of Westphalia, nor the
Council of Trent after eighteen years of debate, could compose.
No one can read without a shudder the attempts that were made to
extend the Inquisition in foreign countries. All Europe, Catholic
and Protestant, was horror- stricken at the Huguenot massacre of
St. Bartholomew's Eve (A.D. 1572). For perfidy and atrocity it
has no equal in the annals of the world.

The desperate attempt in which the papacy had been engaged to put
down its opponents by instigating civil wars, massacres, and
assassinations, proved to be altogether abortive. Nor had the
Council of Trent any better result. Ostensibly summoned to
correct, illustrate, and fix with perspicacity the doctrine of
the Church, to restore the vigor of its discipline, and to reform
the lives of its ministers, it was so manipulated that a large
majority of its members were Italians, and under the influence of
the pope. Hence the Protestants could not possibly accept its
decisions.

The issue of the Reformation was the acceptance by all the
Protestant Churches of the dogma that the Bible is a sufficient
guide for every Christian man. Tradition was rejected, and the
right of private interpretation assured. It was thought that the
criterion of truth had at length been obtained.

The authority thus imputed to the Scriptures was not restricted
to matters of a purely religious or moral kind; it extended over
philosophical facts and to the interpretation of Nature. Many
went as far as in the old times Epiphanius had done: he believed
that the Bible contained a complete system of mineralogy! The
Reformers would tolerate no science that was not in accordance
with Genesis. Among them there were many who maintained that
religion and piety could never flourish unless separated from
learning and science. The fatal maxim that the Bible contained
the sum and substance of all knowledge, useful or possible to
man--a maxim employed with such pernicious effect of old by
Tertullian and by St. Augustine, and which had so often been
enforced by papal authority--was still strictly insisted upon.
The leaders of the Reformation, Luther and Melanchthon, were
determined to banish philosophy from the Church. Luther declared
that the study of Aristotle is wholly useless; his vilification
of that Greek philosopher knew no bounds. He is, says Luther,
"truly a devil, a horrid calumniator, a wicked sycophant, a
prince of darkness, a real Apollyon, a beast, a most horrid
impostor on mankind, one in whom there is scarcely any
philosophy, a public and professed liar, a goat, a complete
epicure, this twice execrable Aristotle." The schoolmen were, so
Luther said, "locusts, caterpillars, frogs, lice." He entertained
an abhorrence for them. These opinions, though not so
emphatically expressed, were entertained by Calvin. So far as
science is concerned, nothing is owed to the Reformation. The
Procrustean bed of the Pentateuch was still before her.

In the annals of Christianity the most ill-omened day is that in
which she separated herself from science. She compelled Origen,
at that time (A.D. 231) its chief representative and supporter in
the Church, to abandon his charge in Alexandria, and retire to
Caesarea. In vain through many subsequent centuries did her
leading men spend themselves in--as the phrase then
went--"drawing forth the internal juice and marrow of the
Scriptures for the explaining of things." Universal history from
the third to the sixteenth century shows with what result. The
dark ages owe their darkness to this fatal policy. Here and
there, it is true, there were great men, such as Frederick II.
and Alphonso X., who, standing at a very elevated and general
point of view, had detected the value of learning to
civilization, and, in the midst of the dreary prospect that
ecclesiasticism had created around them, had recognized that
science alone can improve the social condition of man.

The infliction of the death-punishment for difference of opinion
was still resorted to. When Calvin caused Servetus to be burnt at
Geneva, it was obvious to every one that the spirit of
persecution was unimpaired. The offense of that philosopher lay
in his belief. This was, that the genuine doctrines of
Christianity had been lost even before the time of the Council of
Nicea; that the Holy Ghost animates the whole system of Nature,
like a soul of the world, and that, with the Christ, it will be
absorbed, at the end of all things, into the substance of the
Deity, from which they had emanated. For this he was roasted to
death over a slow fire. Was there any distinction between this
Protestant auto-da-fe and the Catholic one of Vanini, who was
burnt at Toulouse, by the Inquisition, in 1629, for his
"Dialogues concerning Nature?"

The invention of printing, the dissemination of books, had
introduced a class of dangers which the persecution of the
Inquisition could not reach. In 1559, Pope Paul IV. instituted
the Congregation of the Index Expurgatorius. "Its duty is to
examine books and manuscripts intended for publication, and to
decide whether the people may be permitted to read them; to
correct those books of which the errors are not numerous, and
which contain certain useful and salutary truths, so as to bring
them into harmony with the doctrines of the Church; to condemn
those of which the principles are heretical and pernicious; and
to grant the peculiar privilege of perusing heretical books to
certain persons. This congregation, which is sometimes held in
presence of the pope, but generally in the palace of the
Cardinal-president, has a more extensive jurisdiction than that
of the Inquisition, as it not only takes cognizance of those
books that contain doctrines contrary to the Roman Catholic
faith, but of those that concern the duties of morality, the
discipline of the Church, the interests of society. Its name is
derived from the alphabetical tables or indexes of heretical
books and authors composed by its appointment."

The Index Expurgatorius of prohibited books at first indicated
those works which it was unlawful to read; but, on this being
found insufficient, whatever was not permitted was prohibited--an
audacious attempt to prevent all knowledge, except such as suited
the purposes of the Church, from reaching the people.

The two rival divisions of the Christian Church-- Protestant and
Catholic--were thus in accord on one point: to tolerate no
science except such as they considered to be agreeable to the
Scriptures. The Catholic, being in possession of centralized
power, could make its decisions respected wherever its sway was
acknowledged, and enforce the monitions of the Index
Expurgatorius; the Protestant, whose influence was diffused among
many foci in different nations, could not act in such a direct
and resolute manner. Its mode of procedure was, by raising a
theological odium against an offender, to put him under a social
ban--a course perhaps not less effectual than the other.

As we have seen in former chapters, an antagonism between
religion and science had existed from the earliest days of
Christianity. On every occasion permitting its display it may be
detected through successive centuries. We witness it in the
downfall of the Alexandrian Museum, in the cases of Erigena and
Wiclif, in the contemptuous rejection by the heretics of the
thirteenth century of the Scriptural account of the Creation; but
it was not until the epoch of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo,
that the efforts of Science to burst from the thraldom in which
she was fettered became uncontrollable. In all countries the
political power of the Church had greatly declined; her leading
men perceived that the cloudy foundation on which she had stood
was dissolving away. Repressive measures against her antagonists,
in old times resorted to with effect, could be no longer
advantageously employed. To her interests the burning of a
philosopher here and there did more harm than good. In her great
conflict with astronomy, a conflict in which Galileo stands as
the central figure, she received an utter overthrow; and, as we
have seen, when the immortal work of Newton was printed, she
could offer no resistance, though Leibnitz affirmed, in the face
of Europe, that "Newton had robbed the Deity of some of his most
excellent attributes, and had sapped the foundation of natural
religion."

From the time of Newton to our own time, the divergence of
science from the dogmas of the Church has continually increased.
The Church declared that the earth is the central and most
important body in the universe; that the sun and moon and stars
are tributary to it. On these points she was worsted by
astronomy. She affirmed that a universal deluge had covered the
earth; that the only surviving animals were such as had been
saved in an ark. In this her error was established by geology.
She taught that there was a first man, who, some six or eight
thousand years ago, was suddenly created or called into existence
in a condition of physical and moral perfection, and from that
condition he fell. But anthropology has shown that human beings
existed far back in geological time, and in a savage state but
little better than that of the brute.

Many good and well-meaning men have attempted to reconcile the
statements of Genesis with the discoveries of science, but it is
in vain. The divergence has increased so much, that it has become
an absolute opposition. One of the antagonists must give way.

May we not, then, be permitted to examine the authenticity of
this book, which, since the second century, has been put forth as
the criterion of scientific truth? To maintain itself in a
position so exalted, it must challenge human criticism.

In the early Christian ages, many of the most eminent Fathers of
the Church had serious doubts respecting the authorship of the
entire Pentateuch. I have not space, in the limited compass of
these pages, to present in detail the facts and arguments that
were then and have since been adduced. The literature of the
subject is now very extensive. I may, however, refer the reader
to the work of the pious and learned Dean Prideaux, on "The Old
and New Testament connected," a work which is one of the literary
ornaments of the last century. He will also find the subject more
recently and exhaustively discussed by Bishop Colenso. The
following paragraphs will convey a sufficiently distinct
impression of the present state of the controversy:

The Pentateuch is affirmed to have been written by Moses, under
the influence of divine inspiration. Considered thus, as a record
vouchsafed and dictated by the Almighty, it commands not only
scientific but universal consent.

But here, in the first place, it may be demanded, Who or what is
it that has put forth this great claim in its behalf?

Not the work itself. It nowhere claims the authorship of one man,
or makes the impious declaration that it is the writing of
Almighty God.

Not until after the second century was there any such extravagant
demand on human credulity. It originated, not among the higher
ranks of Christian philosophers, but among the more fervid
Fathers of the Church, whose own writings prove them to have been
unlearned and uncritical persons.

Every age, from the second century to our times, has offered men
of great ability, both Christian and Jewish, who have altogether
repudiated these claims. Their decision has been founded upon the
intrinsic evidence of the books themselves. These furnish plain
indications of at least two distinct authors, who have been
respectively termed Elohistic and Jehovistic. Hupfeld maintains
that the Jehovistic narrative bears marks of having been a second
original record, wholly independent of the Elohistic. The two
sources from which the narratives have been derived are, in many
respects, contradictory of each other. Moreover, it is asserted
that the books of the Pentateuch are never ascribed to Moses in
the inscriptions of Hebrew manuscripts, or in printed copies of
the Hebrew Bible, nor are they styled "Books of Moses" in the
Septuagint or Vulgate, but only in modern translations.

It is clear that they cannot be imputed to the sole authorship of
Moses, since they record his death. It is clear that they were
not written until many hundred years after that event, since they
contain references to facts which did not occur until after the
establishment of the government of kings among the Jews.

No man may dare to impute them to the inspiration of Almighty
God--their inconsistencies, incongruities, contradictions, and
impossibilities, as exposed by many learned and pious moderns,
both German and English, are so great. It is the decision of
these critics that Genesis is a narrative based upon legends;
that Exodus is not historically true; that the whole Pentateuch
is unhistoric and non-Mosaic; it contains the most extraordinary
contradictions and impossibilities, sufficient to involve the
credibility of the whole--imperfections so many and so
conspicuous that they would destroy the authenticity of any
modern historical work.

Hengstenberg, in his "Dissertations on the Genuineness of the
Pentateuch," says: "It is the unavoidable fate of a spurious
historical work of any length to be involved in contradictions.
This must be the case to a very great extent with the Pentateuch,
if it be not genuine. If the Pentateuch is spurious, its
histories and laws have been fabricated in successive portions,
and were committed to writing in the course of many centuries by
different individuals. From such a mode of origination, a mass of
contradictions is inseparable, and the improving hand of a later
editor could never be capable of entirely obliterating them."

To the above conclusions I may add that we are expressly told by
Ezra (Esdras ii. 14) that he himself, aided by five other
persons, wrote these books in the space of forty days. He says
that at the time of the Babylonian captivity the ancient sacred
writings of the Jews were burnt, and gives a particular detail of
the circumstances under which these were composed. He sets forth
that he undertook to write all that had been done in the world
since the beginning. It may be said that the books of Esdras are
apocryphal, but in return it may be demanded, Has that conclusion
been reached on evidence that will withstand modern criticism? In
the early ages of Christianity, when the story of the fall of man
was not considered as essential to the Christian system, and the
doctrine of the atonement had not attained that precision which
Anselm eventually gave it, it was very generally admitted by the
Fathers of the Church that Ezra probably did so compose the
Pentateuch. Thus St. Jerome says, "Sive Mosem dicere volueris
auctorem Pentateuchi, sive Esdram ejusdem instauratorem operis,
non recuso." Clemens Alexandrinus says that when these books had
been destroyed in the captivity of Nebuchadnezzar, Esdras, having
become inspired prophetically, reproduced them. Irenaeus says the
same.

The incidents contained in Genesis, from the first to the tenth
chapters inclusive (chapters which, in their bearing upon
science, are of more importance than other portions of the
Pentateuch), have been obviously compiled from short, fragmentary
legends of various authorship. To the critical eye they all,
however, present peculiarities which demonstrate that they were
written on the banks of the Euphrates, and not in the Desert of
Arabia. They contain many Chaldaisms. An Egyptian would not speak
of the Mediterranean Sea as being west of him, an Assyrian would.
Their scenery and machinery, if such expressions may with
propriety be used, are altogether Assyrian, not Egyptian. They
were such records as one might expect to meet with in the
cuneiform impressions of the tile libraries of the Mesopotamian
kings. It is affirmed that one such legend, that of the Deluge,
has already been exhumed, and it is not beyond the bounds of
probability that the remainder may in like manner be obtained.

From such Assyrian sources, the legends of the creation of the
earth and heaven, the garden of Eden, the making of man from
clay, and of woman from one of his ribs, the temptation by the
serpent, the naming of animals, the cherubim and flaming sword,
the Deluge and the ark, the drying up of the waters by the wind,
the building of the Tower of Babel, and the confusion of tongues,
were obtained by Ezra. He commences abruptly the proper history
of the Jews in the eleventh chapter. At that point his universal
history ceases; he occupies himself with the story of one family,
the descendants of Shem.

It is of this restriction that the Duke of Argyll, in his book on
"Primeval Man," very graphically says:

In the genealogy of the family of Shem we have a list of names
which are names, and nothing more to us. It is a genealogy which
neither does, nor pretends to do, more than to trace the order of
succession among a few families only, out of the millions then
already existing in the world. Nothing but this order of
succession is given, nor is it at all certain that this order is
consecutive or complete. Nothing is told us of all that lay
behind that curtain of thick darkness, in front of which these
names are made to pass; and yet there are, as it were, momentary
liftings, through which we have glimpses of great movements which
were going on, and had been long going on beyond. No shapes are
distinctly seen. Even the direction of those movements can only
be guessed. But voices are heard which are as the voices of many
waters." I agree in the opinion of Hupfeld, that "the discovery
that the Pentateuch is put together out of various sources, or
original documents, is beyond all doubt not only one of the most
important and most pregnant with consequences for the
interpretation of the historical books of the Old Testament, or
rather for the whole of theology and history, but it is also one
of the most certain discoveries which have been made in the
domain of criticism and the history of literature. Whatever the
anticritical party may bring forward to the contrary, it will
maintain itself, and not retrograde again through any thing, so
long as there exists such a thing as criticism; and it will not
be easy for a reader upon the stage of culture on which we stand
in the present day, if he goes to the examination unprejudiced,
and with an uncorrupted power of appreciating the truth, to be
able to ward off its influence."

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