A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

"This pious spirit not only pervaded science; it bloomed out in art, and especially in the cathedrals. In the gargoyles overhanging the walls, in the grotesques clambering about the towers or perched upon pinnacles, in the dragons prowling under archways or lurking in bosses of foliage, in the apocalyptic beasts carved upon the stalls of the choir, stained into the windows, wrought into the tapestries, illuminated in the letters and borders of psalters and missals, these marvels of creation suggested everywhere morals from the Physiologus, the Bestiaries, and the Exempla."

"Here and there among men who were free from church control we have work of a better sort. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Abd Allatif made observations upon the natural history of Egypt which showed a truly scientific spirit, and the Emperor Frederick II attempted to promote a more fruitful study of Nature; but one of these men was abhorred as a Mussulman and the other as an infidel."

"This general employment of natural science for pious purposes went on after the Reformation. Luther frequently made this use of it, and his example controlled his followers. In 1612, Wolfgang Franz, Professor of Theology at Luther's university, gave to the world his sacred history of animals, which went through many editions. It contained a very ingenious classification, describing "natural dragons," which have three rows of teeth to each jaw, and he piously adds, "the principal dragon is the Devil.""

"Near the end of the same [17th] century, Father Kircher, the great Jesuit professor at Rome, holds back the skeptical current, insists upon the orthodox view, and represents among the animals entering the ark sirens and griffins."

"Yet even among theologians we note here and there a skeptical spirit in natural science. Early in the same seventeenth century [Par F.] Eugène Roger published his Travels in Palestine. As regards the utterances of Scripture he is soundly orthodox: he prefaces his work with a map showing... the place where Samson slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, the cavern which Adam and Eve inhabited after their expulsion from paradise, the spot where Balaam's ass spoke, the place where Jacob wrestled with the angel, the steep place down which the swine possessed of devils plunged into the sea, the position of the salt statue which was once Lot's wife, the place at sea where Jonah was swallowed by the whale, and "the exact spot where St. Peter caught one hundred and fifty three fishes." As to natural history he describes and discusses with great theological acuteness the basilisk. ...about a foot and a half long, is shaped like a crocodile, and kills people with a single glance. The one which he saw was dead fortunately for him, since in the time of Pope Leo IV—as he tells us—one appeared in Rome and killed many people by merely looking at them; but the Pope destroyed it with his prayers and the sign of the cross. ...Providence has wisely and mercifully protected man by requiring the monster to cry aloud two or three times whenever it leaves its den. ...the same divine mercy has provided that the crowing of a cock will kill the basilisk. Yet even in this good and credulous missionary we see the influence of Bacon and the dawn of experimental science; for, having been told many stories regarding the salamander, he secured one, placed it alive upon the burning coals, and reports to us that the legends concerning its power to live in the fire are untrue. He also tried experiments with the chameleon..."

"In the second half of the same [17th] century Hottinger in his Theological Examination of the History of Creation breaks from the belief in the phoenix; but his skepticism is care fully kept within the limits imposed by Scripture."

"Prof. [Georg Casper] Kirchmaier [1635-1700] at the University of Wittenberg, treats phoenix and basilisk alike as old wives' fables. As to the phoenix, he denies its existence, not only because Noah took no such bird into the ark, but also because, as he pithily remarks, "birds come from eggs, not from ashes." But the unicorn he can not resign, nor will he even concede that the unicorn is a rhinoceros; he appeals to Job and to Marco Polo to prove that this animal, as usually conceived, really exists, and says, "Who would not fear to deny the existence of the unicorn, since Holy Scripture names him with distinct praises?" As to the other great animals mentioned in Scripture, he is so rationalistic as to admit that behemoth was an elephant and leviathan a whale."

"These germs of a fruitful skepticism grew, and we find Dannhauer going a step further and declaring his even in the unicorn, insisting that it was a rhinoceros—only that and nothing more."

"Still the main current continued strongly theological. In 1712 Samuel Bochart published his great work upon the animals of Holy Scripture. ...Mixed up in the book, with the principal mass drawn from Scripture, were many facts and reasonings taken from investigations by naturalists; but all were permeated by the theological spirit."

"The inquiry into Nature having thus been pursued nearly two thousand years theologically, we find by the middle of the sixteenth century some promising beginnings of a different method—the method of inquiry into Nature scientifically—the method which seeks not plausibilities but facts. At that time Edward Wotton led the way in England and Conrad Gesner on the Continent, by observations widely extended, carefully noted, and thoughtfully classified."

"This better method of interrogating Nature soon led to the formation of societies for the same purpose. In 1560 was founded an Academy for the Study of Nature at Naples, but theologians, becoming alarmed, suppressed it, and for nearly one hundred years there was no new combined effort of that sort, until in 1645 began the meetings in London of what was afterward the Royal Society. Then came the Academy of Sciences in France, and the Accademia del Cimento in Italy; others followed in all parts of the world, and a great new movement was begun."

"Fortunately, one thing prevented an open breach between theology and science: while new investigators had mainly given up the mediaeval method so dear to the Church, they had very generally retained the conception of direct creation and of design throughout creation—a design having as its main purpose the profit, instruction, enjoyment, and amusement of man. ...Science, while somewhat freed from its old limitations, became the handmaid of theology in illustrating the doctrine of creative design..."

"About the middle of the seventeenth century came a great victory of the scientific over the theologic method. At that time Francesco Redi published the results of his inquiries into the doctrine of spontaneous generation. For ages a widely accepted doctrine had been that water, filth, and carrion had received power from the Creator to generate worms, insects, and a multitude of the smaller animals; and this doctrine had been especially welcomed by St. Augustine and many of the fathers, since it relieved the Almighty of making, Adam of naming, and Noah of living in the ark with these innumerable despised species. But to this fallacy Redi put an end. ...he showed that every one of these animals came from an egg; each, therefore, must be the lineal descendant of an animal created, named, and preserved from "the beginning.""

"In the same seventeenth century... John Ray... produced a number of works on plants, fishes, and birds; but the most widely read of all was entitled The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of Creation. ...Ray argued the goodness and wisdom of God from the adaptation of the animals not only to man's uses but to their own lives and surroundings."

"Shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century the main movement culminated in the Bridge water Treatises. ...the President of the Royal Society selected eight persons... for writing and publishing a treatise on the "power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the creation." ...It was a marked advance on all that had appeared before, in matter, method, and spirit. Looking back... now we can see that it was provisional, but that it was none the less fruitful in truth, and we may well remember Darwin's remark on the stimulating effect of mistaken theories, as compared with the sterilizing effect of mistaken observations: mistaken observations lead men astray, mistaken theories suggest true theories. An effort made in so noble a spirit certainly does not deserve the ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished upon it. ...this is far from just to the conceptions of such men as Butler, Paley, and Chalmers, no matter how fully the thinking world has now outlived them."

"More and more it was seen that the number of different species was far greater than the world had hitherto imagined. Greater and greater had become the old difficulty in conceiving that, of these innumerable species, each had been specially created by the Almighty hand; that each had been brought before Adam by the Almighty to be named; and that each, in couples or in sevens, had been gathered by Noah into the ark."

"But the difficulties... were as nothing compared to those raised by the distribution of animals. Even in the first days of the Church this had aroused serious thought... St. Augustine... in his City of God he had stated the difficulty as follows: "But there is a question about all these kinds of beasts which are neither tamed by man nor spring from the earth... as to how they could find their way to the islands after that flood which destroyed every living thing not preserved in the ark. ...some islands are so remote from continental lands that it does not seem possible that any creature could reach them by swimming. ...and it cannot be denied that the transfer may have been accomplished through the agency of angels commanded or allowed to perform this labor by God.""

"This difficulty had now assumed a magnitude of which St. Augustine never dreamed. Most powerful of all agencies to increase it were the voyages of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Amerigo Vespucci, and other navigators of the period of discovery. Still more serious did it become as the great islands of the southern seas were explored. Every navigator brought home tidings of new species of animals and of races of men living in parts of the world where the theologians, relying on the statement of St. Paul that the gospel had gone into all lands, had for ages declared there could be none; until finally it overtaxed even the theological imagination to conceive of angels, in obedience to the divine command, distributing the various animals over the earth, dropping the megatherium in South America, the archeopteryx in Europe, the ornithorhynchus in Australia, and the opossum in North America."

"The first striking evidence of this new difficulty was shown by the eminent Jesuit missionary, Joseph Acosta. In his Natural and Moral History of the Indies published in 1590, he proved himself honest and lucid. Though entangled in most of the older scriptural views, he broke away from many; but the distribution of animals gave him great trouble. Having shown the futility of St Augustine's other explanations, he quaintly asks: "Who can imagine that in so long a voyage men woulde take the paines to carrie Foxes to Peru... Who woulde likewise say that they have carried Tygers and Lyons? Truly it were a thing worthy the laughing at to thinke so. It was sufficient yea very much for men driven against their willes by tempest in so long and unknowne a voyage to escape with their owne lives without busying themselves to carrie Woolves and Foxes and to nourish them at sea.""

"In 1667 Abraham Milius published at Geneva his book on The Origin of Animals and the Migrations of Peoples This book shows like that of Acosta the shock and strain to which the discovery of America subjected the received theological scheme of things. ...Milius especially grapples is the distribution of animals. ...he asks, "What of the beasts which neither fly nor swim?" ...As to fishes he says, "They are very averse to wandering from their native waters." ...he asks: "Who would like to get different sorts of lions, bears, tigers, and other ferocious and noxious creatures on board ship? Who would trust himself with them, and who would wish to plant colonies of such creatures in new desirable lands?" His conclusion is that plants and animals take their origin in the lands wherein they are found; an opinion which he supports by quoting from the two narrations in Genesis passages which imply generative force in earth and water."

"Eminent Benedictine, Dom Calmet, in his Commentary, expressed the belief that all the species of a genus had originally formed one species, and he dwelt on this view as one which enabled him to explain the possibility of gathering all animals into the ark. This idea, dangerous as it was to the fabric of orthodoxy, and involving a profound separation from the general doctrine of the Church, seems to have been abroad among thinking men, for we find in the latter half of the same century even Linnaeus inclining to consider it."

"The great Linnaeus himself, in spite of his famous declaration favoring the fixity of species, had dealt a death blow to the old theory. In his Systema Naturæ, published in the middle of the eighteenth century, he had enumerated four thousand species of animals, and the difficulties involved in the naming of each of them by Adam and in bringing them together in the ark appeared to all thinking men more and more insurmountable."

"What was more embarrassing, the number of distinct species went on increasing rapidly, indeed enormously... Already there were premonitions of the strain made upon Scripture by requiring a hundred and sixty distinct miraculous interventions of the Creator to produce the hundred and sixty species of land shells found in the little island of Madeira alone, and fourteen hundred distinct interventions to produce the actual number of distinct species of a single well-known shell."

"As new explorations were made in various parts of the world, this danger to the theological view went on increasing. The sloths in South America suggested painful questions: How could animals so sluggish have got away from the neighborhood of Mount Ararat so completely and have traveled so far? The explorations in Australia and neighboring islands made matters still worse, for there was found... a whole realm of animals differing widely from those of other parts of the earth. ...for example, how to explain the fact that the kangaroo can have been in the ark and be now only found in Australia... and, if the theory were adopted that at some period a causeway extended across the vast chasm separating Australia from the nearest mainland, why did not lions, tigers, camels, and camelopards force or find their way across it?"

"By the middle of the nineteenth century the whole theological theory of creation—though still preached everywhere as a matter of form—was clearly seen by all thinking men to be hopelessly lost: such strong men as Cardinal Wiseman in the Roman Church, Dean Buckland in the Anglican, and Hugh Miller in the Scottish Church, made heroic efforts to save something from it, but all to no purpose. Neither the powerful logic of Bishop Butler nor the nimble reasoning of Archdeacon Paley availed."

"Just as the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the center, and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man."

"We have seen thus far, how there came into the thinking of mankind upon the visible universe and its inhabitants the idea of a creation virtually instantaneous and complete. ...But while this idea was thus developed... through thousands of years, another conception... equally ancient, was developed ...the conception of all living beings as wholly or in part the result of a growth process—of an evolution. This is clearly seen in those records of Chaldaeo-Babylonian thought... a watery chaos which under divine action, brings forth the earth and its inhabitants; first the sea animals and then the land animals ...there is placed over the whole creation a solid, concave firmament; in both, light is created first, and the heavenly bodies are afterward placed "for signs and for seasons"; in both, the number seven is especially sacred, giving rise to a sacred division of time ...followed by a legend regarding "the fall of man" and a deluge, many details of which clearly passed, in slightly modified form, from the Chaldean into the Hebrew accounts."

"Since the researches of Layard, George Smith, Oppert, Schrader, [Peter] Jensen, Sayce, and their compeers, there is no longer a reasonable doubt that this ancient view of the world, elaborated if not originated in that earlier civilization, came thence as a legacy to the Hebrews..."

"The Rev. Prof. Sayce, of Oxford.. has recently declared his belief that the Chaldaeo-Babylonian theory was the undoubted source of the similar theory propounded by the Ionic philosopher Anaximander—the Greek thinkers deriving this view from the Babylonians through the Phoenicians; he also allows that from the same source its main features were adopted into both the accounts given in the first of our sacred books, and... the most eminent Christian Assyriologists concur."

"There was still another ancient source of evolution ideas. Thoughtful men of the early civilizations... along the great rivers... noted how the sun-god, as he rose in his fullest might, caused the water and the rich soil to teem with the lesser forms of life. In Egypt, especially, men saw how under this divine power the Nile slime brought forth "creeping things innumerable." Hence mainly this ancient belief that the animals and man were produced by lifeless matter at the divine command, "in the beginning," was supplemented by the idea that some of the lesser animals, especially the insects, were produced by a later evolution, being evoked after the original creation from various sources, but chiefly from matter in a state of decay. This crude, early view aided doubtless in giving germs of a better evolution theory to the early Greeks. Anaximander, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and greatest of all, Aristotle, as we have seen, developed them, making their way at times by guesses toward truths since established by observation. Aristotle especially, both by speculation and observation... reached something like the modern idea of a succession of higher organizations from lower, and made the fruitful suggestion of "a perfecting principle" in Nature. With the coming in of Christian theology this tendency toward a yet truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude view remained..."

"We may note the opinion of St. Basil the Great in the fourth century. Discussing the work of creation, he declares that, at the command of God, "the waters were gifted with productive power"; from slime and muddy places frogs, flies, and gnats came into being"; and he finally declares that the same voice which gave this energy and quality of productiveness to earth and water shall be similarly efficacious until the end of the world. St. Gregory of Nyssa held a similar view. This idea of these great fathers of the Eastern Church took even stronger hold on the great father of the Western Church. For St. Augustine, so fettered usually by the letter of the sacred text, broke from his own famous doctrine as to the acceptance of Scripture and spurned the generally received belief of a creative process... In his great treatise [De Cenesi contra Manichæos] on Genesis he says: "To suppose that God formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very childish. ...God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips.""

"St. Augustine... suggests the adoption of the old emanation or evolution theory, [and] shows that "certain very small animals may not have been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have originated later from putrefying matter," argues that, even if this be so, God is still their creator, dwells upon such a potential creation as involved in the actual creation, and speaks of animals "whose numbers the after-time unfolded." In his great treatise [De Trinitate] on the Trinity... we find the full growth of this opinion. He develops at length the view that in the creation of living beings there was something I like a growth—that God is the ultimate author, but works through secondary causes; and finally argues that certain substances are endowed by God with the power of producing certain classes of plants and animals."

"More and more it became difficult to reconcile the dignity of the Almighty with his work in bringing each of these creatures before Adam to be named; or to reconcile the human limitations of Adam with his work in naming "every living creature"; or to reconcile the dimensions of Noah's ark with the space required for preserving all of them, and the food of all sorts necessary for their sustenance. ...Origen had dealt with it by suggesting that the cubit was six times greater than had been supposed. Bede explained Noah's ability to complete so large a vessel by supposing that he worked upon it during a hundred years. ...He also lessened the strain on faith still more by diminishing the number of animals taken into the ark—supporting his view upon Augustine's theory of the later development of insects out of carrion."

"Theological necessity was among the main reasons which led St. Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, to incorporate this theory [see preceding quote], supported by St. Basil and St. Augustine, into his great encyclopedic work [Etymologiae] which gave materials for thought on God and Nature to so many generations. He familiarized the theological world still further with the doctrine of secondary creation, giving such examples of it as that "bees are generated from decomposed veal, beetles from horseflesh, grasshoppers from mules, scorpions from crabs," and, in order to give still stronger force to the idea of such transformations, he dwells on the biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar, which appears to have taken strong hold upon medieval thought in science, and he declares that other human beings had been changed into animals, especially into swine, wolves, and owls."

"In the twelfth century, Peter Lombard, in his theological summary, The Sentences, so powerful in molding the thought of the Church, emphasized the distinction between animals which spring from carrion and those which are created from earth and water; the former he holds to have been created "potentially," the latter "actually.""

"St. Thomas Aquinas...in the Summa, which remains the greatest work of medieval thought, accepts the idea that certain animals, spring from the decaying bodies of plants and animals, and declares that they are produced by the creative word of God either actually or virtually."

"Biblical theology continued to spin its own webs out of its own bowels, and all the lesser theological flies continued to be entangled in them; yet here and there stronger thinkers broke loose from this entanglement and helped somewhat to disentangle others."

"At the close of the Middle Ages in spite of the devotion of the Reformed Church to the letter of Scripture the revival of learning and the great voyages gave an atmosphere in which better thinking on the problems of Nature began to gain strength. On all sides in every field men were making discoveries which caused the general theological view to appear more and more inadequate."

"First of those... beginning to develop again that current of Greek thought which the system drawn from our sacred books by the fathers and doctors of the Church had interrupted for more than a thousand years was Giordano Bruno."

"After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth century, Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human thought... in promoting an evolution doctrine as regards the mechanical formation of the solar system... but his constant dread of persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants, led him steadily to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. The execution of Bruno had occurred in his childhood, and in the midst of his career he had watched the Galileo struggle in all its stages. He had seen his own works condemned by university after university under the direction of theologians and placed upon the Roman Index. ...Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no great thinker had been so completely abased and thwarted by theological oppression."

"Leibnitz, though not propounding any full doctrine on evolution, gave it an impulse by suggesting a view contrary to the sacrosanct belief in the immutability of species... His punishment at the hands of the Church came a few years later, when in 1712, the Jesuits defeated his attempt to found an Academy of Science at Vienna."

"Spinoza, Hume, and Kant... might have done much to aid in the development of a truer theory had not the theologic atmosphere of their times been so unpropitious."

"Early in the eighteenth century Benoist de Maillet, a man of the world, but a wide observer and close thinker upon Nature... was led into the idea of the transformation of species and so into a theory of evolution, which in some important respects anticipated modern ideas. ...But he fell between two ranks of adversaries ...the Church authorities denounced him as a freethinker... Voltaire ridiculed him as a devotee."

"De Maillet had seen in the presence of fossils on high mountains a proof that these mountains were once below the sea, Voltaire, recognizing in this an argument for the deluge of Noah, ridiculed the new thinker without mercy."

"De Maillet received no recognition until, very recently, the greatest men of science in England and France have united in giving him his due. But his work was not lost, even in his own day; Robinet and Bonnet pushed forward victoriously on helpful lines."

"Linnaeus... was the most eminent naturalist of his time, a wide observer, a close thinker; but the atmosphere in which he lived and moved and had his being was saturated with biblical theology, and this permeated all his thinking. ...Toward the end of his life he timidly advanced the hypothesis that all the species of one genus constituted at the creation one species; and from the last edition of his Systema Naturæ he quietly left out the strongly orthodox statement of the fixity of each species, which he had insisted upon in his earlier works. ...warnings came speedily both from the Catholic and Protestant sides."

"Church authorities was so shocked by Linnaeus's proofs of a sexual system in plants that for many years his writings were prohibited in the Papal States and in various other parts of Europe... Not until 1773 did one of the more broad minded cardinals—Zelanda—succeed in gaining permission that Prof. Minasi should discuss the Linnaean system at Rome."

"In a letter to Eloius, Linnaeus tells of the rebuke given to science by one of the great Lutheran prelates of Sweden, Bishop Svedberg. From various parts of Europe detailed statements had been sent to the Royal Academy of Science that water had been turned into blood... Linnaeus looked into it carefully and found that the reddening of the water was caused by dense masses of minute insects. News of this explanation having reached the bishop, he took the field against it; he denounced this scientific discovery as a Satanic abyss."

"To all appearance he [Linnaeus] continued to adhere to the doctrine that all existing species had been created by the Almighty "in the beginning," and that since "the beginning" no new species had appeared."

"Buffon... had caught the idea of an evolution in Nature by the variation of species, and was likely to make a great advance with it; but he, too, was made to feel the power of theology. As long as he gave pleasing descriptions of animals the Church petted him, but when he began to deduce truths of philosophical import the batteries of the Sorbonne were opened upon him; he was made to know that "the sacred deposit of truth committed to the Church" was, that "in the beginning God made the heavens and the earth"; and that "all things were made at the beginning of the world.""