Kim Alexander
Resource Guide 1: Conflict between the Church and Science:
The Question of Authority
The default position for many Evangelical Christians is to assume that an inherent conflict exists
between the Christian faith and science. As with most situations, the reality is more nuanced and
complex than that kind of simple assessment. As others in this series of resource guides
demonstrate, in significant ways, at various points in history, and in this era, the church has in
many respects been served well by science and has engaged the scientific community in
meaningful ways. That said, there have been notable conflicts, some of which have led to real
division and paradigm shifts. Where these conflicts exist, more often than not, they center on
issues of authority and hermeneutics.
A literal, but also metaphoric, shift occurred on November 1, 1755, All Saints Day in Lisbon,
Portugal when an earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed over 90,000 people, devastated
much of Portugal’s navy, and destroyed every church in the city. Portugal, the center of the
Christian colonial empire was shaken to its core. Irvin and Sundquist set this event and the
resulting debates [wrath of God or random event?] squarely in the Enlightenment, a time when
the notion of authorities, such as the Church and its texts, were being called into question.
Indeed, Immanuel Kant proposed that the cause of the earthquake was gases trapped under the
earth, an erroneous but early form of seismology.1 This event and its importance have been
documented by Edward Paice in Wrath of God: The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 (2008)
and, more recently by Mark Moleskey, This Gulf of Fire: The Destruction of Lisbon, or
Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason.
This metaphoric shift is perhaps best understood as an aftershock of events occurring more than
a century earlier. The first rumbles, perhaps, began in the early 16th c. when a Polish humanist
and Catholic Church official, Nicolaus Copernicus, proposed that the sun was at the center of the
universe, rather than the earth. The fruit of Copernicus’ efforts, in fact, though viewed by many
church leaders as heretical, led to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1586.
In the early 17th c., Galileo Galilei perfected the telescope and his observations led him to
embrace Copernicus’ theory that de-centered the earth. In 1615, evidence and investigations into
his claims began to draw the attention of conservative church leaders. For most of the next few
years, he remained silent. However, in 1623, bolstered by his confidence in prior admiration by
the newly elected Pope Urban VIII, Galileo became more open in discussing his theories.
In 1632, Galileo’s published proposal, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo
(“Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”), brought him into conflict with Pope
Paul V. Under the influence of Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, in 1633, the Sacred Congregation for
Doctrine, formerly the Inquisition, found Galileo’s theory to be heretical. He lived his remaining
nine years under house arrest, forbidden from further publishing. However, another work,
translated as “Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning the Two New
1
Dale T. Irvin and Scott W. Sunquist, History of the World Christian Movement: Volume II (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 2012), p. 337.
Sciences,’ was smuggled out of Italy and published in The Netherlands. Galileo’s theory wasn’t
accepted by church officials for another century.
Recently, Dennis R. Danielson has argued in Galileo Goes to Jail—and Other Myths about
Science and Religion that the work of Copernicus, and later Galileo, actually elevated the status
of both earth and sun. He argued that following Aristotle, Medieval philosophers and theologians
(no less than Aquinas) had viewed the earth’s centrality not as a place of superiority but evidence
of the earth’s “grossness.” Think of Dante’s vision of the lowest hell at the midpoint of earth.
Dennison also argued that the dispute with Galileo focused on matters of hermeneutics as well as
the displacement of Aristotle as authority. 2
Similarly, Richard G. Olson, maintained that Bellarmine’s disputes focused on scientific method.
Of importance for this discussion is this statement by Olson: “Furthermore, Bellarmine explicitly
agreed with Galileo that if at some future time someone could prove the reality of the Copernican
position, then a reinterpretation of Scripture would have to be undertaken.”3 Clearly, questions of
authority — that of ecclesiastical and scientific communities — were and remain in play in ways
reflective of deeper hermeneutical schemes utilized in faith and science.
As this kind of ongoing dialogue, at best, conflict, at worst, has been an ongoing reality and will
continue to be so, as new discoveries are made, it will be helpful for leaders in the academy and
the church, especially those at the grass roots level, to place this discussion in the context of
hermeneutics and to recognize that what is at stake is the issue of authority. Further, if these
discoveries, as in this case study, prove to be true, scholars and leaders must task themselves
with a difficult but necessary revisiting and, perhaps, recasting of their interpretations in a way
that is still true to orthodox views of God but is informed by new views of the wonders of God’s
creation.
Selected Bibliography
Irvin, Dale T. and Scott W. Sunquist. History of the World Christian Movement: Volume II.
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012.
Moleskey, Mark. This Gulf of Fire: The Destruction of Lisbon, or Apocalypse in the Age of
Science and Reason. New York: Knopf, 2015.
Numbers, Ronald L. ed. Galileo Goes to Jail –and Other Myths About Science and Religion.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Dennis R. Danielson, “That Copernicus Demoted Humans From the Center of the Cosmos” in Galileo Goes to Jail
–and Other Myths About Science and Religion, Ronald L. Numbers, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2009), pp. 52-3.
3
Richard G. Olson, Science and Religion, 1450-1900: From Copernicus to Darwin (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2004), p. 15.
2
Olson, Richard G. Science and Religion, 1450-1900: From Copernicus to Darwin. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Paice, Edward. Wrath of God: The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. London: Quercus, 2008.