Dan J. Bye
NOTE:
This
article was first published in The
Freethinker, Vol. 127 (6), June 2007. pp.8-10.
(http://www.freethinker.co.uk)
Dr. Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at
Infuriated by McGrath’s distortions of atheism and its history, and by the generally dreadful quality of the scholarship on display in Twilight of atheism, I have slowly been compiling a detailed critique of that book. In this article, I present an analysis of one short section of Twilight to give an early airing to a discovery that I believe to be an original contribution to the literature on Calvin and Copernicus.
One of McGrath's targets in Twilight
is the idea that science and religion are (or have been) at war, or that they
are inevitably in conflict. To
illustrate his argument that there is “no universal paradigm for the relation
of science and religion, either theoretically or historically” (Twilight, p.84), McGrath concentrates on
refuting two legends: the Wilberforce-Huxley “debate”, and the myth of Calvin’s
condemnation of Copernicus. He claims
that both stories “have been known to be completely false since about 1970, and
are now viewed by historians as the urban myths of journalists too lazy to
check their sources” (Twilight,
p.81). McGrath is on safe ground
here. A legend has grown up around the
encounter between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley at
McGrath begins by referring to Bertrand Russell’s History of western philosophy (first published 1945):
Russell illustrated the “bigoted” nature of Christian theology
with a racy account of the early fortunes of the Copernican theory of the solar
system, and singled out John Calvin’s critique of the theory for special
criticism. Did not the Bible say that the sun went round the earth? Well, that,
according to Calvin, was the end of the matter. “Calvin,” wrote Russell,
“demolished Copernicus with the text: ‘The world also is stablished, that it
cannot be moved’ (Psa. xciii.I), and exclaimed: ‘Who will venture to place the
authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?’” John Calvin emerges
from this episode as an arrogant fool, typical of the kind of person who gets
in the way of scientific progress. With the coming of atheism, such obscurantist
ravings against advances in our knowledge could be silenced. (Twilight, p.80)
However, McGrath continues:
Russell did not source his citation from Calvin, forcing others
to work out where he got it from. The noted historian of science Thomas S. Kuhn
attempted to track it down when studying early responses to Copernicus’s
theory. Yet neither Kuhn nor anyone else could find anything like the quotation
attributed to Calvin in any of his published writings. It did, however, feature
prominently in the pages of Andrew Dickson White’s History of the Warfare of
Science with Theology in Christendom (1896).
(Twilight, p.81)
In his earlier book Religion and science (first published 1935), Russell had expressed his indebtedness to White 2, so it seemed that White was probably Russell’s source in History of western philosophy as well. Unfortunately for the literary detectives, White didn’t cite his sources properly either. Historian Edward Rosen (1960; see also Ratner’s challenge to Rosen’s conclusion that Calvin had never heard of Copernicus, and Rosen’s reply (both 1961)) is credited with discovering that the quotation could be tracked back from Russell, via White, to “a work published in 1886 by F.W. Farrer (sic)” (Twilight, p.81) 3 :
Once more, no source was provided for the citation. The trail
fizzled out at that point. Farrer was a cleric at Westminster Abbey in
A writer who criticises others for failing to check their facts and their sources needs to take particular care over their own material. McGrath comments, sarcastically, that the “intellectual authority of the great atheist writer Bertrand Russell was such that few bothered to check out his assertions.” (Twilight, p.81). McGrath’s intellectual authority is somewhat less intimidating, and I can report that there is no shortage of mistakes in the two pages of Twilight under examination. Despite criticising Russell for failing to cite his sources, nothing by any of the key figures (Russell, Kuhn, White or Farrar) in this story can be found in McGrath’s bibliography, except for the article by Rosen.
McGrath's reference to “F.W. Farrer” is a misspelling of the name of one of the important players in the spreading of the Calvin/Copernicus story (yet Farrar's name is correctly spelled in Edward Rosen’s article, which McGrath cites). The cleric in question is Frederic William Farrar (1831-1903). He became dean of Canterbury Cathedral in 1895, but had previously been canon and archdeacon of Westminster Abbey. The apparent source of White’s Calvin ‘quote’ was Farrar’s History of interpretation (1886, p.xvii).
McGrath claims that Russell “illustrated the ‘bigoted’ nature of Christian theology with a racy account of the early fortunes of the Copernican theory of the solar system, and singled out John Calvin’s critique of the theory for special criticism” (Twilight p.80). In fact, the 33 words quoted by McGrath are the sum total of what Russell has to say about Calvin on Copernicus. McGrath omits “similarly” from Russell’s original, which reads: “Calvin similarly, demolished Copernicus…” (Russell 1961, p.515), indicating that, far from singling Calvin out, the passage is just one of a series of examples. Nor does Russell say that “Christian theology” is “bigoted”, as McGrath implies. What he actually says is this:
Protestant clergy were at least as bigoted as Catholic
ecclesiastics; nevertheless there soon came to be much more liberty of
speculation in Protestant than in Catholic countries, because in Protestant
countries the clergy had less power.
(Russell 1961, p.515)
Furthermore, although Copernicus’ work involved “the dethronement of the earth from its geometrical pre-eminence”, which, “made it difficult to give to man the cosmic importance assigned to him in the Christian theology… such consequences of his theory would not have been accepted by Copernicus, whose orthodoxy was sincere, and who protested against the view that his theory contradicted the Bible” (Russell 1961, p.513). Russell’s point was that “Copernicus was right to call his theory a hypothesis; his opponents were wrong in thinking new hypotheses undesirable” (Russell 1961, p.514) , and not, as McGrath has it, that Calvin was “an arrogant religious fool, typical of the kind of person who gets in the way of scientific progress.” Nor does Russell say anything remotely resembling McGrath’s overheated rhetoric: “With the coming of atheism, such obscurantist ravings against advances in our knowledge could be silenced.” (Twilight, p.80). Russell’s position was therefore more nuanced and less dogmatic than McGrath would have his readers believe.
McGrath mentions the Calvin/Copernicus myth in some of his other
books (see for example McGrath 2001, pp.258-259). He seems to have particular
difficulty with Farrar’s name. In A Life
of John Calvin (1990, p.xiv), and Reformation
thought: an introduction (1999, p. 273) he spells Farrar’s surname
correctly, but misspells his first name as “
In Twilight, McGrath credits Thomas S. Kuhn with having made some effort to track down the alleged comment of Calvin. In Foundations of dialogue, McGrath was more explicit:
This particular urban myth was not challenged until Thomas S.
Kuhn attempted to track it down as part of his exploration of the background to
the Copernican Revolution. Kuhn did not find the quotation in Calvin but in
Andrew Dickson White’s History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in
Christendom… (McGrath 1998, p.17).
McGrath doesn’t supply a source for this claim in either Twilight or Foundations of dialogue, and it seems to be false. First, no other writer on the subject refers to any such investigation or "challenge" by Kuhn. Secondly, Kuhn doesn’t mention conducting any such research or making any such challenge in any of the publications by him that I have consulted (Kuhn 1957; Kuhn 1977; Kuhn 1996; Kuhn 2000). Thirdly, far from exposing the error, Kuhn in fact perpetuates it by reprinting the alleged quotation from Calvin in his book on Copernicus (Kuhn 1957, p.192). His cited source? Andrew D. White’s A history of the warfare of science with theology in Christendom! There is no indication that Kuhn was even aware that the quotation was of dubious provenance. Although I am at one with McGrath in his criticism of “scholarly laziness” and “the urban myths of… amateur historians” (McGrath 1998, p.18), I fear he has blotted his copybook by introducing this new urban myth into the literature in place of the old Calvin/Copernicus one. McGrath presumably does not have Farrar’s excuse of lacking “the will and resources to check his facts.” (Twilight, p.81)
How can we explain McGrath’s solecisms? If the relevant passages in Twilight have, as I suspect, been copied largely unaltered from Foundations of dialogue, it makes sense to examine that work for clues. The bibliography of Foundations of dialogue contains three entries for Kuhn (including two different editions of The structure of scientific revolutions), but, oddly, not his The Copernican revolution (1957). On the other hand it does, like Twilight, include Edward Rosen’s article, in which Kuhn is identified as one of those who uncritically borrowed the Calvin quote from A.D. White (Rosen 1960, p.163). Foundations of dialogue also cites Helge S. Kragh’s An introduction to the historiography of science (1987). In that work Kragh correctly says:
Following White, Calvin's alleged anti-Copernicanism has been a
permanent part of history of science and history of ideas for generations; the
quotation from Calvin used by White has been used as evidence many times, by
Bertrand Russell, Will Durant, J.G. Crowther and Thomas Kuhn, among others.
(Kragh 1987, p.135)
But these are dead-ends, demonstrating only McGrath’s inattention to his sources. McGrath’s gloriously ironic failure to properly cite any of his assertions on this issue leaves us with fewer clues to work with than Edward Rosen had in 1960. Unable to solve the puzzle, I can only conclude by noting that perhaps McGrath’s Kuhn story must be “dismissed as pure invention”, to borrow McGrath’s remark about Farrar’s error (Twilight, p.81).
McGrath characterises the “warfare model” of the relationship
between religion and science as symptomatic of atheism (although the main
sources, Farrar and White, were not atheists). But although it is fair to say
that it has not been unusual for atheists to adopt such a view, many have not.
Atheism is consistent with a range of opinions on the relationship between
science and religion. Among recent rationalist authors, Ludovic Kennedy (1999,
p.154) and Dick Taverne (2006, p.17) have included the misquotation of Calvin
in their books. But a survey of atheist
and rationalist literature in my own collection reveals that most writers have
not promoted the misquotation. On the
other hand, some religious people (creationists for example) hold that there is
indeed a conflict between religion (or their particular interpretation of the
Bible) and science (or particular scientific findings), and so much the worse
for science. But, historically, stories like that of Calvin and Copernicus have
also formed part of arguments designed to promote liberal theological views.
See, for example, W.R. Inge (Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral) in
One nagging question remains: did anyone ever say those infamous words, “who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?” In 1960, Rosen identified Farrar as the earliest known source, and there the matter has rested for the last forty-seven years, with the former Canon of Westminster Abbey standing accused of making up quotations. However, my own research has uncovered an earlier citation – as far as I can discover this is the first progress on the issue in over half a century. And while I cannot rescue Farrar from the charge of being careless with facts, I can establish for the first time that the quotation was not invented by him, just wrongly attributed to Calvin.
The source I have unearthed is The Protestant Theological and Ecclesiastical Encyclopedia, edited by J.H.A. Bomberger (1860):
This orthodox theology had, since Gerhard, taught an equal
inspiration of the O. and N. Testaments, so that the H. Spirit is author in an
equal measure of every part of the Scriptures, of the book of Esthor, as of the
gosp. of
The “C.” referred to here is not Calvin but the Lutheran theologian Abraham Calovius (1612-1696), described by Farrar as “a man of stupendous diligence and wide learning, but the very type of a bitter dogmatist.” (Farrar 1886, p.364). Bomberger’s encyclopedia is an incomplete (only two volumes were produced) English adaptation of the Real Encyklopädie für protestantische theologie und kirche (22 vols. 1853-1868), edited by Johann Jakob Herzog (1805-1882). The article on Calovius (the article is entitled “Calov”, which is a common variant abbreviation of his name) was written by Dr. Friedrich Tholuck (1799-1877), and the indications are that it is a straightforward translation of the original article Tholuck wrote for Herzog. I must leave it to others with better knowledge of German and access to the original sources to follow the references further.
Bomberger/Herzog is not the only source I have discovered which attributes the quotation to Calovius. The Scottish theologian Marcus Dods (1834-1909) also credits a version of the quote to Calovius in his The Bible: its origin and nature (1905): “’Who’, said Calovius, ‘would dare to set the authority of Copernicus above the authority of God?’” (Dods 1905, p.66). Dods’ source is not cited, but in any case Dods was writing too late to be a source for Farrar or White.
If either Bomberger or Herzog’s original work was Farrar’s ultimate source, then a plausible explanation for his mistake presents itself: he simply confused ‘Calov’ with Calvin (in Bomberger, the article on Calvin appears in close proximity to the article on Calovius). The dates of publication also fit well, both Bomberger and Herzog appearing a good many years before Farrar's book. So, is there any evidence that Farrar consulted either Bomberger or Herzog? Yes: he cites Bomberger’s translation of Herzog in his The life of Christ (1874), which predates History of interpretation by over a decade. And he cites Herzog, apparently the original this time, in History of interpretation itself (Farrar 1886, p.480).
In Foundations of dialogue, McGrath says:
I am unpersuaded that White drew his citation directly from Farrer’s
work. Rosen’s research suggests to me that both Farrer and White are more
likely to have drawn on a third source, common to both, yet at present unknown
to us. (McGrath 1998, p.17).
No supporting reasons are provided 4, but now that a third source has finally been identified we can begin to evaluate McGrath's hypothesis. White cites Herzog at various points in A history of the warfare of science with theology, and also mentions Calovius in relation to his opposition to the Copernican system. Although White and Farrar both used Bomberger/Herzog, it seems unlikely that they both would independently conflate the entries on Calovius and Calvin. The evidence therefore still suggests that White drew directly on Farrar for the misquotation.
.
Alister McGrath enjoys an enviable reputation as a scholarly and accurate writer. Several of his books bear the imprimatur-esque praise of the Archibishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams: “Alister McGrath invariably combines enormous scholarship with an accessible and engaging style”. His anti-atheist work is very much concerned with correcting the errors (real or alleged) of writers like Richard Dawkins. Yet few people have subjected McGrath to the same amount of scrutiny. In this article I have put just two pages of Twilight of atheism under the magnifying glass, and revealed more flawed scholarship than I have space to discuss in detail.
Notes.
1.
The references to Twilight
in this paper are to the paperback edition published by Rider, see McGrath
(2005).
2.
For Andrew D. White’s version of the legend, see White (1896,
p.127). Contrary to the impression McGrath creates (“It did, however, feature
prominently…”), White devotes just two sentences to the story. Also note that McGrath mixes up his
publication dates. On p.81 he dates History
of the warfare of science with theology to 1896, which is correct. But on
p.85 he dates the same title to 1876. On p.86 he correctly notes that in 1876
White published an early version of the material under the title The warfare of science. History of the warfare of science with
theology essentially expands on the 1876 publication, and it seems McGrath
got the two books confused.
3.
Although Rosen gets the credit, Reijer Hooykaas identified
the implausibility of the alleged quotation in terms of Calvin’s theology in
the 1950s , but he isn't mentioned in Twilight. Citing White’s
attribution, Hooykaas commented, “many historians pass judgment on Calvin
without having a serious knowledge of his works” (Hooykaas 1956, p.136 note
100). In the same work Hooykaas also mentions Farrar’s favourable opinion of
Calvin in his History of interpretation
(Hooykaas 1956, p.138) but nowhere does he mention Farrar’s use of the
controversial quotation. A century
before Hooykaas, The Gentleman’s Magazine
observed that Calvin was pre-Copernican rather than anti-Copernican: “He knew
not of the opinions of Aristarchus of old; nor was even aware that Copernicus
had so recently enunciated the truth upon the heavenly system.” (Anon 1854,
p.31)
4.
There must be some doubt whether McGrath has even read
Farrar's History of interpretation, since it is absent from the
bibliographies of both Twilight and Foundations of dialogue.
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