Appendix VII. — The Fathers of the Church and Science
There is a very general impression in many minds in our time that from the very beginning of Christianity the interest of Church men in the other world was so great that human attention was diverted just as far as possible from concerns of all kinds with the stage of existence through which man is passing here and now. As a consequence, there has been the feeling that from the earliest time the Church was opposed to science and scientific education, partly because this represented a rather compelling diversion from other-worldly interests, but mainly because it gave men control over natural forces which made life more comfortable, raised men up in their own estimation and was opposed to the spirit of humble faith best suited to the adherents of Christianity. Hence it is concluded that there was always a Church policy of deliberate opposition to science and indeed to all intellectual development. This attitude is often declared to be best represented by the expression attributed to one of the Fathers of the Church, “Heaven lies open to the simple of mind, the little ones of the earth, and the ignorant bear it away better than those who are proud of intellect.”
Any such impression with regard to the Fathers of the Church as to the establishment of a policy of opposition to science and education is quite erroneous and entirely contrary to the general trend of their writings, even though it may be apparently substantiated by expressions taken at random from the writings of the Fathers at moments when they were emphasizing the truth that has always been so manifest, that from the knowing ones of earth,—and our use of the word knowing in the phrase is not complimentary,—especially from those who are conceited in their knowingness, many things are concealed that are revealed to those who are simple of heart and mind. It has seemed worth while, however, to devote an appendix to this subject of the real attitude of the Fathers to science. As Father Leahy, in his “Astronomical Essays,” Boston (Washington Press, 1910), has answered Professor White’s assumptions on this subject with a knowledge of the Fathers I could not hope to emulate, I have preferred to avail myself of his permission to quote him at length.
“By the Fathers we understand in general the Christian writers in the Church’s early history. In the West the period may be held to have terminated with Isidore of Seville of the seventh century, and in the East with John of Damascus of the eighth. The important writers of this epoch number between fifty and a hundred, and their works constitute, as may be imagined, a body of literature of vast extent.
Our only present concern is to learn, if possible, what was the general attitude of this army of ecclesiastical writers towards the physical sciences, especially the science of astronomy. Explicit treatises on astronomy we shall not, indeed, expect them to supply. For their works when massed are seen to constitute a library of theology, and in such a collection we should no more look for scientific treatises than in a modern library for law. But inasmuch as the Fathers of the Church have been accused, by Andrew D. White and others, of having stayed and even thwarted the advance of science, it becomes the interest and the duty of the apologist to hunt up their scientific allusions that we may learn to what extent the charges made are true.
The Standstill of Science.—It has often been alleged as derogatory to the accomplishments of the Fathers, that they contributed nothing to the progress of scientific knowledge. From our modern standpoint we may be tempted to esteem this failure of theirs as a cardinal sin. But it would be wrong in this instance, as in every other, to render a verdict of guilt too hastily. We of the twentieth century are prone to forget that there are other fields of profitable intellectual exploration besides the physical, and that there may be objects of research and thought worthier of study than the material world.
The Fathers of the Church were philosophers and theologians occupied with the problems of the world’s origin and destiny, higher themes, surely, than any with which physical science is concerned. It is the fashion of the day to praise the ancient Greeks at the expense of the patristic and medieval theologians. But the distinction is to a large extent inconsistent, since both bodies of writers were at work upon the selfsame themes. Philosophers like the Greeks, the Fathers were like them moralists as well, engaged in the elaboration of right rules of conduct. Finally, unlike the Greeks, the Fathers were Scriptural scholars, many of them of extensive erudition, in homily and commentary expounding with wonderful assiduity the Sacred Books in which they believed that God had given His revelation to man.
Analogous Examples.—Should we be surprised, then, if men so occupied failed to add much to the world’s store of scientific knowledge? Though it were admitted, as it cannot be in its entirety, that they left physical science just where they found it, could not an explanation be discovered that would exonerate them from all blame? To justify such an apology, we do not even need to transport ourselves in spirit back to their time, a process which, however, strict fairness would demand. But in our own era we can think easily of dozens and hundreds of men of highest respectability and most beneficent accomplishment, men of books and men of affairs, jurists, statesmen, historians and others, who have themselves done little or nothing for the onward march of Science. That the careers of these men are profitless, who shall allege?
Again, the present writer has often thought of the almost parallel example of the ancient Romans. It makes their history but little less illustrious to learn that this conquering people did nothing for Science’s advance. Till Pliny of the first century after Christ, what Roman was a scientist? They were a nation of soldiers, statesmen, orators and jurists, and for seven hundred years they pursued through such avenues their triumphant course. Yet what writer of to-day rises to charge them with a cardinal sin, because Science remained at a standstill among them for seven full centuries? With these seven centuries can we not properly compare the later seven in which the Christian Fathers were the teachers of the civilized world?
Heritage from the Greeks.—Objection will be made, no doubt, that the Fathers began their career with fairer start than the Romans, forasmuch as they were the direct heirs of the astronomy and physics of ancient Hellas. And they will be incriminated with having abused their precious heritage, by not merely letting it lie fallow but by raising every possible obstruction to its further cultivation. Such is the tenor of Andrew D. White’s accusations against them.
This well-known writer smiles at the puerilities of patristic science. He cites from among them Cosmas of Egypt as having propounded a perfectly childish theory of the structure of the earth and grafted it on the science of theology. The ready answer to this particular charge is that Cosmas’ conception of the universe belonged to cosmogony and not theology, and further that it had no influence on subsequent thought. Returning to the general arraignment, White rebukes the Fathers for having clung so tenaciously to false opinions regarding the shape of the earth, the motion of the heavens, and the nature of the firmament. And, most seriously of all, he charges the Fathers with indifference and even hostility to the study of science itself.
In a few short paragraphs it is impossible to give an adequate rejoinder to these damaging complaints. But they demand some sort of reply, however inadequate it be, as emanating from an American scholar and statesman of high rank, and embodied in a work that has free and wide circulation among our college students.
Defence of Their Doctrine.—The first palliation for the reputed offence of the Fathers is that whatever false science they retail, was practically all of it derived from the very sources which it is the fashion of the day to laud in the highest degree. As far as was consistent with their faith, the Christian Fathers were the pupils of the Greeks. It was the latter and not the patristic writers who invented the false theories of a solid firmament and a motionless earth. If Europe and Arabia down to the Renaissance believed in the Geocentric system, it was because they trusted Ptolemy the Greek, till then admittedly the greatest of astronomers. And a similar ancestry could be traced, we venture to say, for all or the major part of their scientific errors as far as these may have extended.
Restrictions Made by the Fathers.—But if the Fathers were in general the heirs of the Greeks, they were not guilty of the mistake of accepting the inheritance in its entirety. To a large extent they could discern the chaff from the wheat, and were actually at pains to make the separation. It ought to be known that the scientific literature of the Grecians is teeming with the wildest and vainest of speculations regarding all matters within the scope of astronomical science. Here as elsewhere, the Greeks speculated endlessly, contradictorily, emptily, and almost aimlessly. In unfounded speculation they discoursed on all manner of astronomical subjects, the shape and size and distance of the sun, its nature and that of the moon and stars, and so on almost indefinitely, with scarcely any agreement or concomitance of opinion. There were almost as many diverse opinions as there were men.
To this motley assemblage of groundless and conflicting theories the Fathers had full access through the medium of Plutarch, the Greek compiler. Eusebius, for example, the Father of Church History, quotes Plutarch on just these topics for over thirty pages. If Eusebius and the other Fathers grew impatient with all this ill-assorted mass of soi-disant science, shall we charge them as Dr. White does with having been false to the interest of science? Should we not rather maintain that they helped save science from its enemies?
Opposition to Science.—It is only in the light of these indisputable facts that we can understand the sayings of the Fathers in which, as quoted by White, they upbraid science for its inutility. Be it noted in passing that White is wont to quote them not literally but freely, and apart from their context. Lactantius, Eusebius, Augustine, and Basil, these are the four whom he selects as representative. They are truly representative, and indeed any one of them might stand for all.
Let Eusebius be our particular choice, for he discusses astronomy more completely than the others. White alleges (Warfare, Vol. I, p. 91) that Eusebius endeavored to bring scientific studies into contempt, and quotes him as saying, “It is not through ignorance of the things admired by them [scientific investigators], but through contempt of their useless labor, that we think little of these matters, turning our souls to better things.”
Who would guess from this brief epitome of Eusebius’ views that the latter had devoted to the subject more than thirty pages? Who could possibly surmise that he had taken pains to write out, under the guidance of Plutarch, all the known opinions of the Greeks on some thirty-nine problems, all but two or three of them astronomical? Let the curious read Eusebius for themselves in the fifteenth book of his Praelectio Evangelica. They will there discover what White might have well acknowledged, that on not one of the problems are the Greek philosophers in agreement. On the nature of the sun there are nine opinions, on its size four, on its shape an equal number, on the moon’s nature seven. And this discrepancy of judgment continues to the end. Moreover a large proportion of the theories are of the most fantastic sort.
In the face of this chaotic wilderness of diverse, fluctuating and contradictory teachings, what could Eusebius do but turn away in impatience, and take up in their stead the only truth of which he felt certain, the truth of the Gospel? Such was his actual procedure. “Does it not seem to you that we have rightly and deservedly departed from the curiosity of all these men, so idle and so full of error?” He confesses frankly that he can see no fruit or utility for man in the teachings he has quoted. And he appeals for his complete justification to Socrates, the wisest of the Greeks, who in his day had adopted precisely the same stand. This and no other is the argument and spirit of Eusebius.
No Opposition to True Science.—This was the temper, also, that actuated the other Fathers named, Lactantius, Basil, and Augustine. No doubt these men valued spiritual knowledge above material. But it by no means follows from this that they undervalued Science. They were scholars of extensive culture, Basil a graduate of Athens, Augustine of Carthage, and Lactantius styled because of his proficiency the Christian Cicero. They were well acquainted with the learning of the Greeks. That they rebelled against the scientific fantasies of the latter, is not a proof that they were hostile to the advance of Science itself.
In the Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis expresses a sentiment quite similar to theirs. “Surely a humble husbandman that serveth God, is better than a proud philosopher who, neglecting himself, is occupied in studying the course of the heavens.” Like the Fathers, à Kempis had reason to be disgusted with the astronomy of his time, for it was beginning to be impregnated again with the virus of Astrology. By refusing to follow such pseudo-scientific teachings, both à Kempis and the Fathers did a real if seemingly negative service to the science of astronomy.
“He was born under a lucky star.” Language of this sort, used now only in pleasantry, recalls a form of superstition which was once accepted seriously by all men throughout the civilized world. In many a period, mankind has believed literally that the stars and planets exercised a real influence in shaping human lives. And there have been many epochs, ancient, medieval, and even modern, when astrology, the telling of fortunes by the stars, was given a rank among the learned professions.
Even now there occur occasional sporadic outbreaks of the same superstition. Along with other quacks and necromancers, astrologers are still occasionally in evidence, advertising their trade through the columns of the press. Indeed it is affirmed by the Catholic Encyclopedia that the growth of occultistic ideas is reintroducing astrology into society.
Errors of Astrology.—Whatever the popularity of this practice in the past, and whatever its prospective vogue in the near future, it is to be set down without qualification or hesitation as a delusion and a snare. To suppose that the heavenly bodies have an influence on human conduct is in its origin a pagan error, closely allied with the pagan myth that the sun, moon and stars are presided over by as many separate deities. Only thus could have originated the delusion that Jupiter and Venus would procure a blessed destiny, and Mars and Saturn a troubled one, for the children born at the time of their rising.
Nor can the cult be justified by an array of the names of those who have been its votaries. It is true that many astronomers in the past, including the great Kepler himself, have practised the astrological art, casting horoscopes for their clients. But in most cases it would be found, at least in the modern period, that these scientists merely yielded through tolerance to the weakness of their age. In true astronomy there is no place whatever for astrology.
Besides being groundless the practice is to be condemned for its perilous moral tendencies. Distracting the soul from the worship of the spiritual God, who alone governs the universe, it substitutes for His action that of mere material objects, stars and planets, which it thus elevates to the rank of lesser gods or demons. Pretending to forecast from birth what each man’s course in life shall be, it robs the will of its proper share in moulding human conduct.
The Christian Fathers.—An interesting testimony to the former prevalence of this erroneous belief is found in one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, “Guy Mannering,” whose whole plot turns upon the fulfilment of an astrological prediction. Reading the history at hand the novelist had learned what complete sway the cult had formerly exercised, almost down to the time of his writing. It would have interested the celebrated author to know that there was, however, one long period in which astrology was absolutely and effectually excluded from Christian Europe. For over a thousand years Christendom remained free from this blight, thanks to the teachings of the Fathers of the Church.
In discussing the relations of the Fathers towards the astral science, we have already shown how they purged it of some of its grossest errors. But their principal service to the science remains now to be told. For amongst all the vagaries of the science of the heavens, astrology is both in theory and in practice the most deplorable. That the Fathers placed the weight of their great authority in the scale against this superstition, is one of the most praiseworthy of their achievements.
First Efforts at Reform.—At the time that the Fathers began to write, in the century just following the labors of the Apostles, astrology formed everywhere an integral part of the science of astronomy. It was taught in all the schools, Chaldean, Jewish, Grecian and Roman. Almost from the beginning the defenders of the Christian faith proceeded to attack this pernicious error, realizing how inimical it was to the spread of truth which Christ had come to impart. Already in his address to the Greeks, Tatian was heard denouncing the absurdities of Grecian astronomy and astrology. This was in the middle of the second century, just at the close of what is called the Apostolic Period.
A little later, Tertullian, the famed apologist of the then flourishing African Church, placed himself on record as the uncompromising enemy of astrology. With his usual vehemence of language he declared that “of astrologers there should be no speaking even” among Christians; and went to the length of saying that “he cannot hope for heaven whose finger or wand abuses the heavens.” These and many similar utterances may be found in his Treatise on Idolatry.
Respect for True Astrology.—With this denunciation of magic and idolatry there went hand in hand, however, a genuine respect for the proper science of the heavens. Contemporary with Tertullian, and like him one of the great Christian masters of the period, was Clement Alexandria. To the Catholic astronomer of to-day it is gratifying to find this Father of the Egyptian Church giving generous testimony to the worth of astronomical science. With just discrimination he praises astronomy as “leading the soul nearer to the creative power, as helpful to navigation and husbandry, and as making the soul in the highest degree observant, capable of perceiving the true and detecting the false.”
Another contemporary, Hippolytus, was indeed unsparing in his denunciation of astrology. In a treatise of eleven quarto pages, contained in his “Refutation of All Heresies,” he riddled with merciless logic the vain pretensions of the Greek astrologers. But he showed that he had no quarrel with a well ordered study of the heavens, by giving liberal praise to Ptolemy, the ablest of the astronomers.
A Universal Teaching.—In far distant Syria, then a choice realm in the Church’s patrimony, there was at the beginning of the third century another school of Christian philosophers who joined with their brethren in West and East in waging war on the same dread enemy. A Syrian work, called the Book of the Astrologers, has two quarto pages of excellent quality recounting and scoring the absurdities of current astrological practices. It is so like Hippolytus’ work that one seems an echo of the other.
Perhaps the most interesting of all these concordant denunciations is that found in the “Recognitions of Clement,” a patristic writing probably of the third century. Here the treatises on astrology run to full ten chapters, a sign that the author had abundant knowledge of the subject. In this work astrology is refuted particularly from the moral point of view. It is convicted of the double charge of being fatalistic in its tendency and subversive of all morality. “Men’s conduct,” says the author’s thesis, “is due to their own free will and not to the configuration of the planets.”
Golden Age of Patristic Literature.—So ran on in perfect unity and harmony the steady flow of patristic teaching. It reached its climax, as we should expect to find, in the heroic writers of the fourth century, the golden era of patrology. Lactantius, the Christian Cicero, re-echoed the voices of the past in pronouncing astrology the work of demons. An Augustine, the greatest of the Fathers, confirmed the decision of his predecessors by protesting against the amalgamation of astrology with the true science of nature.
So effectual indeed was the opposition to astrology of the earlier Christian writers, confirmed by the masters of the post-Nicene period, that the practice came to be regarded by all the faithful as a superstition and a danger, and continued to be so esteemed down to the time of the Crusades. For a full millennium, Christian Europe midst all its vicissitudes was spared the absurdities of astrological belief and practice, thanks to the patristic school of writers.
A Surprising Omission.—We have thought it well to bring to light these none too well-known facts regarding one important part of the astronomical teachings of the Fathers. How they could have escaped the attention of Andrew D. White, or how he could have failed to find place for them in his voluminous work, it is difficult to understand.
His book bristles with accounts of superstitions, always telling against the theologians, and in favor of the scientists. But astrology is absent even from the index of his work. Had he allotted it a chapter, his numerous readers would have learned that one great school of theological writers, enduring for a thousand years, did wage war on a certain sort of science, to wit, the pseudo-science of astrology.