Student ID: 2648

Warren Tefft
HIS 111
Essay II
11/15/13
The Churchs Influences on the Sciences and the Changes That Came with Protestantism
For thousands of years, man has only dreamed of what lies in and beyond the heavens.
Many times man has said, I know what lies beyond! only to be proven wrong or his knowledge
to be incomplete. The pre-Reformation Catholic Church was no different. A group known as the
Aristotelians had a stranglehold on the Churchs views, and subsequently the views of the
educated population, concerning space. Their view was challenged by Copernicus theories,
developed near the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.1 Even though scientists like Galileo
belonged to the Church, the Church and the Aristotelians responded to their contrary views by
prosecuting these scientists. Protestant thinkers who freed themselves from the views of the
Church, were able to think outside the box, resulting in many innovations. It was not until
some time had passed that the Protestants were able to get out of this box and think
independently; but it was no coincidence that the Protestant Reformation was dated so closely to
the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, changing the authority on science from the control of
Scripture to the control of observation and reason.
That is not to say, however, that there were no innovators among the Church. In fact, in
some aspects, Protestants and Catholics shared beliefs like the existence of a Creator and the
implications of such a view in the scientific realm. In some cases, Protestants were just as closeminded as the Church. Luther and a prominent Protestant astronomer named Tycho Brahe also
objected to Copernicus theory.2 This shows that while separate from the Church, Protestants still
1 James E. McClellan III and Harold Dorn, Science and Technology in World History: an Introduction (Baltimore
and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 203.

2 Ibid, 213.
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retained some of the beliefs inherited from the Church which inhibited or obstructed their views
of certain scientific principles.
The reason Copernicus had views differed from those of the Aristotelians was because of
his research into the theories of Ptolemy, other natural philosophers, and the implications that
came along with certain theories and conclusions that Ptolemy arrived at. The Aristotelians, as
evidenced by their name, held to the geocentric system modified by Aristotle from a previous
system of planets and stars rotating in circles around the earth. Actually, Aristotelians also held to
the theories put forth by Ptolemy, but did not take the theories to the same length Copernicus did
to arrive at his hypothesis and tended to mostly study those of Aristotle since Aristotles
planetary system was smoother and easier to comprehend.3 By using Ptolemys theories,
Copernicus found a way to further simplify the system, cutting down on the amount of celestial
spheres necessary for the Aristotelian system to work. The solution was the revolutionary idea
that the earth revolves around the sun.4 This hypothesis was the first step away from the Church,
the first weakening of the inhibiting chains.
The reason for the loud resistance against Galileo was because while Copernicus only
had a hypothesis, Galileo had reasons behind the hypothesis. In developing his reasons, Galileo
not only drove a lance into the heart of his nemeses, the Aristotelians,5 but also unintentionally
wounded the Churchs scholastic, biblically compatible stance on the heavens as well. The

3 Phil Dowe, Galileo, Darwin, and Hawking: The Interplay of Science, Reason, and Religion (Grand Rapids and
Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 10-13.

4 J. L. Heilbron, The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories (Cambridge and London: Harvard
University Press, 1999), 183.

5 Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and its Ambitions, 1500-1700 (Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009), 69.

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Churchs stance on this subject was intertwined with that of the Aristotelians, the most
prominently taught planetary system at the Churchs universities, because of biblical texts like
Then Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the
Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel: Sun,
stand still over Gibeon; and Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon. So the sun stood
still, and the moon stopped, till the people had revenge upon their enemies.6

As a result, the Aristotelian system was, without much hesitation, combined with canonical truth
even to the point of explaining Genesis without the use of miracles in favor of Aristotles
understanding of physics.7 Galileo believed that the Scriptures did not have authority over things
not concerning faith, especially physical, observable occurrences that have reasonable
explanations. However, he admitted that it is possible for the Scriptures to contain scientific
evidence and that if a philosophy or theory contradicted Scripture, it is the Scripture that should
be believed.8 This was sciences next step after those of Copernicus in the direction of freedom
from literal interpretation.
For those who wished to adhere to a geocentric theory for theological reasons, it was
obviously necessary to come up with a more accurate system, especially after the beating Galileo
gave to the geocentric theory. The astronomer and Protestant Tycho Brahe introduced his system,
the Tychonic system with the aid of the most advanced observatory in its time,9 where Kepler
would later come to study and perfect his theory.10 In Tychos system, the sun revolved around
6 Joshua 10:12-13 (New King James Version).
7 Kenneth J. Howell, The Hermeneutics of Nature and Scripture in Early Modern Science and Theology, in
Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions, ed. Jitse van der Meer and Scott Mandelbrote (Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2008), 277-278.

8 Phil Dowe, Galileo, Darwin, and Hawking, 35-36.

9 McClellan and Dorn, Science and Technology, 215.
10 Ibid, 219.
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the earth, but the planets revolved around the sun in order to be consistent with the geocentric
theory, the integrated Aristotelian/Scriptural stance, and new discoveries made using his
observatory.11 While still welcoming literal interpretation, the development of the Tychonic
system reveals that those still prescribing to these beliefs are admitting that there are flaws in the
system revealed through observations of the world.
At this point, almost fifty years after the first steps onto the plank, came the Protestant
leap from the Catholic ship. In 1596, Protestant Johannes Kepler published his book, Mysterium
cosmographicum (The Mystery of the Universe).12 According to McClellan and Dorn, Keplers
Mysterium was the first overtly Copernican work since De revolutionibus..13 A couple years
after his book was published, Kepler was driven from his home to Prague by the Catholic
counter-Reformation after refusing to renounce his views.14 This is one of the many declarations
of the Protestants that indicate separation from the beliefs of the Catholic Church.
Kepler was not the only one to reject the literal translation of Scriptures like [The Lord]
laid the foundations of the earth, so that it should not be moved forever.15 John Calvin, a
prevalent Protestant reformer, disagreed with some of the literal translations of Scriptures due to
his belief that what is pictured in the Bible is relatable to man's perspective of the world. For
example, when Genesis talks about the waters which were above the firmament,16 it is fairly
obvious that there is no water above us, but it is, at the same time, an understandable explanation
11 Ibid, 216-217.
12 Ibid, 218.
13 Ibid, 218.
14 Ibid, 218.
15 Psalm 104:5 (New King James Version).
16 Genesis 1:7 (New King James Version).
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of rain to the original Genesis audience. Calvin also wrote commentaries on the Scriptures, using
personal interpretation as opposed to the traditional borrowing from standard sources, showing
a further departure from the Catholic Church.17 Although Calvin did not support the Copernican
system, he concluded that some things in science were not given to man to know through the
Bible.18 The chains have now been removed and science is, for the most part, free of the literal
interpretation of Scripture.
Calvin's views reflected the spirit of the Protestant Reformation. In fact, a system of
Reformed orthodoxy was... recognized and established through interactions between himself
and the Council in Geneva.19 The Bible was given to man so that man could understand God, not
just the educated, which tended to be the case under the Catholic Church. With the famed
invention of the printing press, everybody was able to become a veritable theologian, as was the
case with Katharina Schtz Zell, a self-educated laywoman.20 Through the work of Schtz Zell,
the idea of a differentiation between essential issues and secondary issues was spread throughout
the Protestant population. The essential issues consisted of the basic issues of salvation, which
she understood in classic Protestant fashion as Christ alone, faith and grace alone, [and] scripture
alone..21 The secondary issues were the issues not dealing with salvation and basic faith, but

17 Bernard Roussel, John Calvin's Interpretation of Psalm 22, in Adaptations of Calvinism in Reformation
Europe. edited by Mack P. Holt (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), 11.

18 Phil Dowe, Galileo, Darwin, and Hawking, 26-29.

19 Bernard Roussel, Psalm 22, 11.
20 Elsie Anne McKee, A Lay Voice in Sixteenth-Century 'Ecumenics': Katharina Schtz Zell in Dialogue with
Johannes Brenz, Conrad Pellican, and Caspar Schwenckfeld, in Adaptations of Calvinism in Reformation Europe.
ed. Mack P. Holt (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), 83.

21 Ibid, 87.
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rather issues regarding interpretation, how a Christian should obey certain guidelines in
Scripture, etc.22 Scripture is first and foremost a message from God about God and his salvation,
not a textbook on science or a rulebook on how to live.
Both Schtz Zell and Calvin agreed: the Bible is not meant to be a code that needs to be
solved by the educated then spoon fed to the laymen and women. The Scripture is God's message
to man proclaiming His nature, love, and salvation. With this change of perspective came a
change in Western Civilization. The sciences in Western Civilization were controlled and verified
by the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church verified scientific facts using literal interpretation
of the Scriptures. With the Protestant Reformation, however, came a shift from literal to
observational interpretation. Both scientists and laymen/women then used the world to help them
understand the Bible; and in understanding the Bible, they understood God. Through their
understanding of God, they were then able to observe creation free from the binds of the
Church's literal interpretation and to glorify Him for its complexities.
This shift is evident in the works of Isaac Newton. Newton, using the work of Kepler and
others, showed in his work, Principia, how geocentrism is absurd and inconsistent with the
known facts.23 Principia was a total abandonment of the literalistic views of Catholicism, the
institution he eccentrically thought of as that of the Antichrist.24 Instead of his perception of
nature being controlled by Scripture, his perception of Scripture was partly controlled by his
observations of nature:
Commensurate with the grandeur of the subject, in the General Scholium
Newton offered a disquisition on God, the intelligent and powerful Being
evident in this most beautiful system of the Sun, planets, and comets.
Newton's natural philosophy led him to natural theology and the conclusion that

22 Ibid, 87.
23 James E. McClellan III and Harold Dorn, Science and Technology, 259.
24 Ibid, 261.
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God can be known through His contrivances in nature. Newton's God becomes
the great Clockmaker who watches his great machine tick away according to His
established laws of nature.25

This was a prime example of how the observation of nature came into play when applied to
theology and Scriptures as opposed to observation of nature being affected by theology and
Scripture.
This paper started near one end of a spectrum. At the far left of the spectrum is Faith, one quarter of the
way down is Faith Affecting Science, and halfway down is Coexistence of Faith and Science. Now,
passing the middle, we come to Science Affecting Faith at the three fourths mark and Science at the
far right. In reality, mankind never exactly hits the marks of the spectrum. There has always been science
associated with religion like in the first civilization of the Sumerians when they would study the stars.
Today there is faith associated with science given the fact that there are some things we can not or have
not found out, but still rely on. We never hit the halfway point because there was never an equilibrium
between science and faith. The closest we came was the transition from Faith Affecting Science into
Science Affecting Faith, known as the Scientific Revolution. In the years following this revolution,
Western Civilization continues to draw closer and closer to the right side of the spectrum, Science,
which is ironically a result of faith-driven scientists efforts.

25 Ibid, 260.
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Bibliography
Dear, Peter. Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and its Ambitions, 1500-1700.
Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Dowe, Phil. Galileo, Darwin, and Hawking: The Interplay of Science, Reason, and Religion.
Grand
Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005.
Farstad, Arthur, ed. Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers,
1982.
Heilbron, J. L. The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories. Cambridge and
London:
Harvard University Press, 1999.
Howell, Kenneth J. The Hermeneutics of Nature and Scripture in Early Modern Science and
Theology. In Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions. edited by Jitse van der
Meer and Scott Mandelbrote, 275-298. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008.
McClellan III, James E. and Harold Dorn. Science and Technology in World History: an
Introduction. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
McKee, Elsie Anne. A Lay Voice in Sixteenth-Century 'Ecumenics': Katharina Schtz Zell in
Dialogue
with Johannes Brenz, Conrad Pellican, and Caspar Schwenckfeld. In Adaptations of
Calvinism in Reformation Europe. edited by Mack P. Holt, 81-110. Burlington: Ashgate,
2007.
Roussel, Bernard. John Calvin's Interpretation of Psalm 22. In Adaptations of Calvinism in
Reformation Europe. edited by Mack P. Holt, 9-20. Burlington: Ashgate, 2007.