History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

(139) See Beringer's Lithographiae, etc., p. 91.

(140) See Carus, Geschichte der Zoologie, Munich, 1872, p. 467, note,
and Reusch, Bibel und Natur, p. 197. A list of authorities upon this
episode, with the text of one of the epigrams circulated at poor
Beringer's expense, is given by Dr. Reuss in the Serapeum for 1852, p.
203. The book itself (the original impression) is in the White Library
at Cornell University. For Beringer himself, see especially the
encyclopedia of Ersch and Gruber, and the Allgemeine deutsche
Biographie.

But even this discomfiture did not end the idea which had caused it, for, although some latitude was allowed among the various theologico-scientific explanations, it was still held meritorious to believe that all fossils were placed in the strata on one of the creative days by the hand of the Almighty, and that this was done for some mysterious purpose, probably for the trial of human faith.

Strange as it may at first seem, the theological war against a scientific method in geology was waged more fiercely in Protestant countries than in Catholic. The older Church had learned by her costly mistakes, especially in the cases of Copernicus and Galileo, what dangers to her claim of infallibility lay in meddling with a growing science. In Italy, therefore, comparatively little opposition was made, while England furnished the most bitter opponents to geology so long as the controversy could be maintained, and the most active negotiators in patching up a truce on the basis of a sham science afterward. The Church of England did, indeed, produce some noble men, like Bishop Clayton and John Mitchell, who stood firmly by the scientific method; but these appear generally to have been overwhelmed by a chorus of churchmen and dissenters, whose mixtures of theology and science, sometimes tragic in their results and sometimes comic, are among the most instructive things in modern history.(141)

(141) For a comparison between the conduct of Italian and English
ecclesiastics as regards geology, see Lyell, Principles of Geology,
tenth English edition, vol. i, p. 33. For a philosophical statement of
reasons why the struggle was more bitter and the attempt at deceptive
compromises more absurd in England than elsewhere, see Maury,
L'Ancienne Academie des Sciences, second edition, p. 152. For very
frank confessions of the reasons why the Catholic Church has become
more careful in her dealings with science, see Roberts, The Pontifical
Decrees against the Earth's Movement, London, 1885, especially pp. 94
and 132, 133, and St. George Mivart's article in the Nineteenth Century
for July 1885. The first of these gentlemen, it must not be forgotten,
is a Roman Catholic clergyman and the second an eminent layman of the
same Church, and both admit that it was the Pope, speaking ex cathedra,
who erred in the Galileo case; but their explanation is that God allowed
the Pope and Church to fall into this grievous error, which has cost so
dear, in order to show once and for all that the Church has no right to
decide questions in Science.

We have already noted that there are generally three periods or phases in a theological attack upon any science. The first of these is marked by the general use of scriptural texts and statements against the new scientific doctrine; the third by attempts at compromise by means of far-fetched reconciliations of textual statements with ascertained fact; but the second or intermediate period between these two is frequently marked by the pitting against science of some great doctrine in theology. We saw this in astronomy, when Bellarmin and his followers insisted that the scientific doctrine of the earth revolving about the sun is contrary to the theological doctrine of the incarnation. So now against geology it was urged that the scientific doctrine that fossils represent animals which died before Adam contradicts the theological doctrine of Adam's fall and the statement that "death entered the world by sin."

In this second stage of the theological struggle with geology, England was especially fruitful in champions of orthodoxy, first among whom may be named Thomas Burnet. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century, just at the time when Newton's great discovery was given to the world, Burnet issued his Sacred Theory of the Earth. His position was commanding; he was a royal chaplain and a cabinet officer. Planting himself upon the famous text in the second epistle of Peter,(142) he declares that the flood had destroyed the old and created a new world. The Newtonian theory he refuses to accept. In his theory of the deluge he lays less stress upon the "opening of the windows of heaven" than upon the "breaking up of the fountains of the great deep." On this latter point he comes forth with great strength. His theory is that the earth is hollow, and filled with fluid like an egg. Mixing together sundry texts from Genesis and from the second epistle of Peter, the theological doctrine of the "Fall," an astronomical theory regarding the ecliptic, and various notions adapted from Descartes, he insisted that, before sin brought on the Deluge, the earth was of perfect mathematical form, smooth and beautiful, "like an egg," with neither seas nor islands nor valleys nor rocks, "with not a wrinkle, scar, or fracture," and that all creation was equally perfect.

(142) See II Peter iii, 6.

In the second book of his great work Burnet went still further. As in his first book he had mixed his texts of Genesis and St. Peter with Descartes, he now mixed the account of the Garden of Eden in Genesis with heathen legends of the golden age, and concluded that before the flood there was over the whole earth perpetual spring, disturbed by no rain more severe than the falling of the dew.

In addition to his other grounds for denying the earlier existence of the sea, he assigned the reason that, if there had been a sea before the Deluge, sinners would have learned to build ships, and so, when the Deluge set in, could have saved themselves.