The Calvinistic Impulse for the Sciences

We propose to show how Calvinism encouraged its adherents to engage in scientific study concerning the understanding of natural phenomena.^[1]

The ideal would be to have this subject treated by someone well versed in both the history of sciences and the characteristic features of Calvinist thought. However, given the relative scarcity of Calvinist scholars in France, where Calvinism is still in the early stages of its revival, and the modern necessities of the division of labor, we must settle for the attempt of a specialist in Reformed theology. This person makes no other claim to scientific pretension than what can be rightfully claimed by someone who has received a general education preceding specialized university studies and who has made an effort to keep up to date.

Considering that our aim is not to study the influence of science on theology but, rather, to account for the possibilities that a particular theology opens for the study of the sciences, a precise and in-depth knowledge of this theology is of the utmost importance.

We do not expect to encounter a preliminary question challenging the attempt to establish any causal relationship between the appearance of a new theological thought and the attitudes of its adherents towards scientific disciplines.

Religion exercises a profound influence on the formation of human sensibility and intelligence, and the evidence of this influence is too evident to deny its impact on the intellectual disposition of believers who study the sciences.

One might think, true enough, that a reform focused on some specific points of doctrine, while leaving the fundamental conception of Christian supernaturalism and biblical geocentrism intact, would not have significantly modified the scientific views of its followers.

However, we hope that this work will show that Calvinism is much more than a simple theological protest against Roman doctrines regarding justification, predestination, sacraments, the cult of saints and their images, the priestly hierarchy, and religious ceremonies.

In reality, Calvinism is a universal principle that extends its influence over all spheres of human activity. It represents a new spirit that confronts the essence of supranaturalist medieval tradition while also preparing the way for a reaction against rationalistic naturalism, which reached its peak within Protestant theology during the nineteenth century.

There is, however, a preliminary objection that needs to be addressed to avoid any misunderstanding. It is argued that Calvin is indifferent to nature, lacking any genuine interest in it, and possessing only bookish knowledge about it. There is no trace, in his extensive correspondence, of emotions experienced in the face of the natural spectacle surrounding him. He ignores Copernicus’s book,^[2] published in 1543 in Poland, and shares all the scientific errors of his time. He believes that the earth is the center of the universe and would likely have condemned Copernicus’s work if he had known it, as several of his disciples did. What a difference from François Rabelais,^[3] who wants an encyclopedic education for his pupil and who lives in immediate contact with nature! Calvin sees in it only an “effigy” [likeness] of God.

This judgment, in our opinion, stems from a certain injustice, as expressed by the illustrious historian Imbart de la Tour.^[4]

Calvin was indeed neither a pre-Romantic such as Rousseau,^[5] nor an astronomer such as Copernicus, nor a physician such as Rabelais. He was a scholar of ancient literature, a learned jurist, a theological and exegetical genius, an incredibly prolific writer, and a reformer burdened with the responsibility of a gigantic work that included countless, sometimes petty, details and other times poignant resolutions that affected the fate of the entire cause. Calvin was not preoccupied with the latest scientific novelties available in bookstores. Moreover, to speculate that he would have condemned Copernicus’s book, had he known it, is not historical; it falls into conjectural prophecy and reflects a biased perspective. Some of Calvin’s disciples condemned Copernican cosmology, just as Rome condemned Galileo. However, at least they did not claim infallibility, and other disciples of Calvin were among the first theologians to recognize and defend this cosmology.

Calvin wrote to his friends about specific topics, to console them, to reprove a prince for his conduct, to advise another in their reforming work, to exhort churches, and to strengthen martyrs. He had more important matters to attend to than indulging in sentimental descriptions of the beauties of nature.

Like Rabelais, but with even greater eloquence, Calvin praises the excellence of studying the natural sciences.^[6] With far greater authority than Rabelais, Calvin defends it against the obscurantism of “a bunch of fantastic minds who oppose all liberal arts and honest sciences, as if they only served to make people arrogant and were not useful means and instruments for the knowledge of God and the conduct of everyday life.”^[7]

In short, while Calvin did not personally engage in the natural sciences, he believed that each person has their own vocation. He was conscious of his vocation as a reformer. Imbart de la Tour acknowledges this, although he might be tempted to criticize Calvin for it. The only science to which Calvin felt obliged to dedicate himself was exegesis, in which he excelled. “Although after the duties of my office, little time remains, nevertheless, whatever time I have, I have resolved to use it in this kind of writing.”^[8]

Calvin, being a believer in predestination, believed that each person should follow their divine calling. We will see how his religion can reconcile the ideal of Christian perfection with the secular vocation of a scholar who devotes time to the natural sciences, a time that Calvin reserved for exegesis. For now, the misunderstanding we feared has been avoided. It must be understood that Calvinism will not compel all educated adherents to become physicists or geologists. God assigns tasks to each individual. What we aim to demonstrate primarily is that Calvinism is very conducive to awakening a genuine passion for the physical and natural sciences in believers who have the vocation, even if they are not yet aware of it.

It is said that Calvin sees in nature only an “effigy” of God. Yes, but precisely what he sees in nature is God. There is nothing so small in which some ray of God’s glory does not shine,^[9] and the arrangement of the starry space reveals His wisdom and power.

The believer, informed by the Scriptures and only by them, can spell out in the great book of nature the “names” (the perfections) of God. That is where they will find them, not in the speculations of their own minds. “As he has manifested himself to us by works, in these too we ought to seek him (Psalm 104, Romans 1:20). Our mind cannot take in his essence. The world itself is, therefore, a kind of mirror in which we may view him in so far as it concerns us to know.”^[10] Contemplating God’s work is also part of the sanctification of Sunday.^[11] Calvin, due to his doctrine of providence, sees in life and in “the whole course of nature” the result of God’s creative action, which “is always at work.” The Genevan Catechism is replete with this idea.

The Catechism, intended for popular teaching, was in the hands and memories of all. Who can measure the impact of such teachings on a religious child’s soul, particularly when open to the breath of religious emotion and seized by the sense of God’s majesty? The popular prejudice that it would be beneath us to pay attention to creatures smaller than us and without direct usefulness to us is rooted out. The scientific vocation can blossom and flourish like magnificent flowers.

Those seeking to understand the relationship between religious sentiment and the vocation of a nature observer will find examples in Termier’s To the Glory of the Earth^[12] and certain pages of Fabre.^[13] These scholars were not Calvinists, far from it. We do not claim exclusive privilege for Calvinism in matters of scientific vocation.

However, Bernard Palissy [1510–1589], both a scholar and an artist, the traveler Jean de Léry [1536–1613], and Ambroise Paré [1510–1590]^[14] were Huguenots. Later, Bacon of Verulam,^[15] the geographer Peper [Petrus] Plancius, the physicists Huyghens^[16] and Denis Papin,^[17] the learned and pious Euler,^[18] Robert Boyle,^[19] and more recently, the renowned geologist J. D. Dana,^[20] and Lord Kelvin,^[21] were all raised under Calvin’s influence, bearing witness to its scientific fecundity.

Despite these examples, some might argue that if the disciple lacks a religious soul, catechism teaching will be sterile. Conversely, if the disciple possesses a religious soul, they will almost inevitably turn away from “profane” studies to devote themselves to theology and preaching, especially if they are intellectually gifted. This is indeed what generally happens in Protestant circles more or less animated by the spirit of piety. Similarly, among Catholics, it is rare for an ardently religious soul to seek satisfaction for its desire for Christian perfection outside of the apostolate or the contemplative life of the cloister. “Profane” studies will be the domain of those whose piety does not aspire to transcend the secular realm or a few religious orders where gifted individuals dedicate themselves to scientific studies. This is out of obedience and sometimes to avoid questions that might put them in conflict with the authority of the Congregation of the Index.^[22]

However, this objection does not consider the fact that, for Calvinism, nothing is profane except evil. Unlike Catholicism, which regards grace as opposing nature by elevating it into the supernatural realm, Calvinism only opposes grace to sin and assigns grace no other role than to restore nature corrupted by sin.

For Catholicism, grace was necessary even before the Fall to elevate man from the natural plane of cardinal virtues to the supernatural plane of theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. There was originally a sacred and supernatural domain and a profane and natural domain.

For Calvinism, faith and the virtues derived from it were originally an integral part of nature as God created it. Sin renders man morally unfit for what is normally natural to him, and effective grace restores his nature to its normal state. Thus, faith is only supernatural in its origin, necessitated by an accident: sin. In essence, faith is natural.

Sin has contaminated all spheres of human activity, and grace restores them all to their state of primal purity. All vocations are equally holy and compatible with the ideal of Christian perfection. It all comes down to discerning and accepting the vocation that God assigns. The pastoral vocation is as natural as that of the scholar or magistrate, and these are equally imbued with the supernatural as the former. It is through this that Calvinism surpasses Catholic supranaturalism and reassures religious individuals when they obey God’s call to pursue a scientific career rather than an ecclesiastical profession.

With its doctrine of God’s sovereign freedom in the act of creation and of predestination, Calvinism, like Augustinianism and Thomism but with a consistency that these systems lack, protects those dedicated to the study of nature from the main assault of naturalism. It allows them to accept without trouble the revolution that toppled the essentially geocentric Aristotelian cosmology, replacing it with Copernican heliocentrism.

This scientific revolution is destructive for any form of religion that bases its eternal hopes on the intrinsic importance of our earth and the humanity inhabiting it. It had a terrifying impact on the minds of numerous scholars whose faith was based on the idea of the dignity and autonomy of the human person.

These believers knew well, even before Copernicus and Galileo, thanks to the teachings of the Old Testament prophets, that all nations of the earth together are but a drop in the bucket before God (Isa. 40:15) and that the earth is but a point in the vast space.^[23] It is a gross mistake to claim that the relative insignificance of the earth in the universe was revealed by Galileo’s telescope. Several years before this instrument’s discovery, the theologian and philosopher Jerome Zanchi [1516–1590], a direct disciple of Calvin, was already striving to scientifically demonstrate this thesis.^[24] However, in Arminian and semi-Pelagian circles, they consoled themselves by saying that, after all, this tiny point is at the center of the world, making it easier to believe that it was at the center of divine thoughts.

Primitive Calvinism, like today, was geocentric, but it was as Newtonian or Einsteinian as we are today. It accepted the ideas of the astronomers of the time, just as we do now.

Geocentrism plays no vital role in the system. The love of God is sovereign. His election is free. Every being is unworthy. Even a non-sinful man had no right to communion with God. Divine religion is the consequence of a unilateral covenant freely established by God. Since sin, a fortiori, there are only the unworthy, and it is “the weak things of the world” that God chooses to confound the strong. The value and eminence of the elect lie in God’s election and not in the material position they occupy either in humanity itself or in the universe.

From the perspective of Calvinist theology, as well as from the perspective of simple aesthetics, there is something childish in forcefully wanting the principal object to be situated at the geometric center of the picture. Calvin knows and presents the reasons that the official science of his time alleged to prove that the earth is suspended in the middle of the world. He does not rejoice in this as something favorable to the Christian faith. Moreover, he does not see it as such in his text. As if sensing a certain weakness in these reasons, he declares that we must go further: “The center of the world is not the principle of creation. It follows that the earth is suspended in space because God so willed it.”^[25] “Because God willed it so…” For Calvin, God is free; He could have decided otherwise. We know or believe we know that indeed, He did decide otherwise; that is all.

Thus far, we have shown that Calvinism provides an exceptionally favorable psychological preparation for the emergence and exercise of scientific vocation. We have seen that it shields the believer from the anguish of Pascal in the face of the silence of infinite spaces. The believing Calvinist has heard the word of God: “I have loved you with an everlasting love,” and that suffices for him.

Now, let us show that it assures its followers required intellectual training and grants natural sciences the right to experimentation, and the freedom to interpret the results of observation and experience.

First, intellectual training. Scholastic philosophy and theology based on it are essentially speculative. They use the syllogism as a tool for discovery and rely on predicative judgment, where the predicate enters into the comprehension of the subject. This method, when applied to physics, leads to failure, which present-day scholastics acknowledge without difficulty.

Calvin’s theology has the formal principle of the authority of the Word of God, recognized as such through the intuition of the testimony that the Holy Spirit bears to faith. The affirmation of faith is expressed through a judgment of relation. This type of judgment is the usual result of the work of interpretation by the exegete and the believer on the sacred text. It is no longer about speculating: we know Calvin’s aversion to “idle speculation.” It is about understanding the meaning of a thought and, for that, grasping the thread that connects the text to the context, interpreted according to the experimentally known laws of language, and understanding it by putting oneself in the mindset of the text, through faith, whose “assent” “resides in the heart rather than in the brain and in affection rather than intelligence.”^[26]

Calvin certainly does not condemn the syllogism, which he believes he finds, at least once, in the Scriptures (Commentary on 1 John 4:16). However, it is the judgment of relation that is the backbone of his theology and exegesis. In the face of a clearly formulated precept, he condemns the use of deduction to exempt oneself from it.^[27]

It is essentially the judgment of relation that intervenes in the discovery and enunciation of physical laws and in scientific observation in general. Therefore, we were not wrong to claim that Calvinist theology is an excellent school for the intellectual training of those who wish to dedicate themselves to the study of natural sciences.

After training the intellect of the worker, Calvinism grants them the right to experiment. Experimentation is undoubtedly the essential condition for progress in investigating the “secrets” of nature, enabling its mastery.

As Father Laberthonnière saw very well, “the claim of dominion over this world by a science that would allow man, if necessary, to make or undo on his own what is done in it, appeared as an encroachment on God himself.”^[28] This is because, from the ancient perspective, what necessitates things are their essences. In addition these essences are nothing but eternal ideas that imposed themselves on the divine intellect and projected out of it into indeterminate matter.

Consequently, to know is to contemplate. Modifying what exists, experimenting, is almost sacrilege. Experimentation is always suspected of aligning with the spirits of the abyss.

Calvin removes this obstacle of experimentation through his exegetical sense and because he is concerned with affirming God’s sovereignty.

It is the will of God that is the necessity of all things. He [Calvin] rejects the Platonic ideas;^[29] Theodore Beza likewise.^[30] The conception of natural sciences that emerges from the numerous passages where Calvin speaks about it is essentially practical.^[31]

Certainly, Calvin does not intend to draw from his ideas the consequence that favors experimentation. His concerns lie elsewhere. However, it is conceivable that his disciples could easily take advantage of the freedom offered to them.

On the other hand, the will of God that makes the necessity of all things is not, for Calvin, the arbitrary caprice of the “sophists.” For him, the stability of the “laws of nature” is the result of God’s fidelity; it is comparable to the firmness of His covenant of election with Israel.^[32] Nature can therefore be an object of science, like theology.

Finally, Calvinism grants scientists the necessary freedom to pursue their research. Its theologians, like those of other Churches, may be aware of the stubbornness of misoneism. Its ecclesiastical assemblies may be dominated, at certain times, by narrow views. But there is no longer an infallible representative Church with irrefutable decisions. “God alone is Lord of the conscience,” says the Westminster Confession. Only the Word of God is sovereign…

However, does this not then replace one yoke with another? Will not the tyranny of the Bible’s text be as burdensome as that of the Pope? Even more burdensome, as it speaks, while the Pope, since his infallibility is recognized, keeps a prudent silence!

To this question, we respond that Calvin has set, in exegesis, a principle that frees the scientist subject to the Word of God.

Certainly, the authority of Scripture is not limited to dogma and spiritual life. It has something to say in all spheres of human thought and activity. It has a principled authority even in scientific matters. Every science, every philosophy that pretends to deny God and God’s creative initiative is condemned by his sovereign authority.

Calvin, however, has set a principle that has become traditional in Reformed schools. When Scripture touches on facts that are the object of studies by “philosophers” — in Calvin’s language, this term designates scientists — Scripture speaks the subjectively true language of sensible appearance. Contrary to what exegetes from other churches believed, we are not required, for example, to believe that there is a reservoir of water above a solid vault of the firmament.^[33]

“Moses and the prophets” speak the language of the people, the language of the senses. That is the principle on which an exegesis of Scripture that refuses to distort the texts can meet an interpretation of nature that forbids ignoring the evidence of facts.

There is not a text that does not reduce to this principle, and there is not a scientific discipline that does not have the right to claim it. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” says Saint Paul, “there is freedom.”