Story Books, Science and Religion
Delivered on Sunday 07 February 2010 in St George's Chapel
Genesis 1 - 2:3
Everything and everyone has a story. The Royal Society has a story that began in 1660 and so celebrates its 350th anniversary this year. To mark that occasion this is the second of my three inquiries. Last week I spoke about the artificially constructed worlds of 'science' and 'religion', and about the individual and corporate use of language. This week I am going to reflect a bit on story and books. The world of natural philosophy and science is full of stories, some mundane, some extraordinary. There is, for example, that marvellous story of Alexander Fleming who went off on holiday in 1928 without having given his lab bench a thorough clean down. On his return he noticed a strange fungus on some of his cultures. That was strange enough but stranger still was the fact that bacteria didn't seem to thrive anywhere near the fungus. And so, quite by accident, penicillin was discovered.
But when it comes to the conversation between religion and science the story that typically comes to the top of the list is the story about Galileo and the Church. It's a story you all know well and it runs a bit like this: Galileo discovers that Copernicus was right to suggest that the earth moves around the sun. In his zeal he puts down a defiant challenge to religious faith. The Church fearful of his challenge, place him before the Roman Inquisition where he faces trial, condemnation, and imprisonment. That story - told in that way - is the beginning of another story, the one that speaks of a war between science and religion. I want now, for just a few minutes, to look again at Galileo and his relationship to faith and the Church. I want to suggest that the way we typically tell this story is simply false.
Galileo was born in Pisa in 1564 some twenty-one years after Copernicus had published his book On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres. The prevailing way of understanding the universe in sixteenth century Europe was strictly in accordance with Aristotle and Ptolemy. The earth was the centre of the universe and it did not move. Copernicus a canon at Krakow Cathedral put forward a contrary view: the sun was the centre of the universe and the earth did indeed move. Nobody took any notice. Why? Partly because to believe Copernicus would be to jettison two thousand years of natural philosophy, and partly because the suggestion just didn't appeal to our common experience. We do not experience the earth moving; can we really believe something so opposed to our everyday experience?
So not surprisingly Galileo began his natural philosophical investigations with no great interest in Copernicus' ideas. It was only when he developed a telescope that he began to change his mind. Using this new technology he was able to make observations that seemed to show Copernicus right and Ptolemy wrong. Now in 1613 one of Galileo's students was having breakfast with the Grand Duchess Christina, the mother of Galileo's patron and a member of the great Medici family. She enquired of this student whether Galileo's theories conflicted with the Bible. The student answered her questions reassuringly and let Galileo know of their conversation. Thinking he better make matters clear, Galileo put pen to paper replying to his student, and later writing a much longer letter to Christina herself. It is that letter that causes all the fuss.
To begin with a couple of minor Dominican friars, perhaps overzealous or perhaps the victims of Galileo's sharp tongue, send a copy of that letter to the Inquisition. Reading through the minutes of these meetings you have to be impressed at the order, protocol an due process. Anyway, they listen to the case, and dismiss it. Except that is, for one small bit: there's nothing in this, they say, but we are not in a position to judge the sense of this geokinetic thesis (the notion that the earth moves) and so they did what all large institutions do in the face of the incomprehensible, they brought in the consultants. Four months later the consultants reported. They concluded that the geokinetic thesis was 'foolish and absurd'. The Inquisition read the consultants' report and ignored it. What they did do, however, was insist that Copernicus' book should undergo some minor corrections and that Cardinal Belarmine, the most powerful and important theologian living in Rome, should have a quiet word in Galileo's ear. 'Don't', he was asked to say, 'teach Copernicanism as literally true'. Galileo agreed.
Well that seemed to be that. But then in 1623 Maffeo Barberini, a great friend and admirer of Galileo, was elected Pope Urban VIII. Galileo travelled to Rome to meet him. In fact Galileo had six audiences with the Pope in which they discussed the earth's motion, and after which the Pope agreed that Galileo could write about it. And so he did. The book was finally published in 1632 but no sooner was the ink dry, when an instruction was issued to stop sales. The Pope, apparently, was furious. Now you have at this point, to try to put yourself into the Pope's red shoes. Right at this time he was under severe pressure for his refusal to support the Thirty Years' War; there was a strong Spanish coup underway that would try to depose him; and now he discovered that his friend Galileo had embarrassed him. It would seem that Galileo had failed to let the Pope know that Cardinal Belarmine had asked him not to teach Copernicanism as literally true. It isn't clear what really passed between Belarmine and Galileo but it is clear that Galileo had failed to mention any of it to Pope Urban, and it was on that point that he was found guilty during the 1633 trial. This was not about whether it was the earth or the sun that sat at the centre of the universe; this was about whether or not he had disobeyed an official order.
Galileo was heartbroken by the whole affair. The charge - suspicion of heresy - cut him off from the Church he loved. In fact he once wrote that he had often been tempted to burn all his work on astronomy but that he had not once turned his back on faith. Instead, just as Aquinas and Augustine had written before him, Galileo, in that fateful letter to Christina, had argued that the Bible supported neither Copernicus nor Ptolemy. The Bible was read to know God, not astronomy. In making his argument Galileo was attempting to defend Christian teaching from the uncertainty of natural philosophy. He was not, as the popular story would have it, against the Church, he was instead a faithful supporter. It was his view that there are two books from which we can read about God: the book of nature and the book of scripture. It was also his view that these books were not in competition with each other. We may well need to tell his story differently.
But we may also need to tell the story of Genesis differently. A literal reading of the first chapter of Genesis (today's first reading) has found support and continues to find support in some quarters. It is a particular way of telling the story and those who tell it this way often point to Augustine for support, correctly reminding us that Augustine did indeed write a famous book On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis. Mind you, when Augustine uses the word literal he is more expansive with it, than we might be. Literal for Augustine will also include metaphor, but it is true that in this book he was trying to make sense of a more straightforward reading. It was a difficult book for him to write, so difficult that it remained unfinished. There are a number of reasons for this but one was certainly his concern not to write something that rational people would think plain daft. Here is a direct quote from the his book:
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that a non-Christian should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are.
So much for Augustine and his struggle to write a literal account of Genesis. How should we read it. On this point you will find no agreement and much debate but let me make a suggestion. I think this very first chapter of the Bible is a wonderfully sculpted piece of theology. It is the theological equivalent of a musical overture, setting out a theme that will be developed over the hundreds of pages to follow. And it begins with these words:
[For the Hebrew script please see the pdf of the entire series]
I read them to you in Hebrew because there is a clear point being made here that is entirely lost in translation. Count the words. [Reread]. There are seven words, written in a remarkable sentence of 28 letters. In ancient Judaism, the number seven is of enormous importance - it crops up time and time and time again, and usually pointing us to something or some act deeply associated with God. And what act could be more deeply associated than the act of creation. The verb used, the verb 'to create' is a special verb, it is only ever used in relation to God. God creates. People make. In these first seven words we have a glorious statement pregnant with possibility. What follows is God's powerful act of creation. Phrases get repeated time and again. How often: seven times. With one exception. The phrase 'And God said' is repeated 10 times. Why? For two reasons: first 10 symbolises absolute completion, and second God will speak 10 times once more when he delivers the 10 commandments, the code according to which his creatures should live.
This then is theology. It is not the scientific story of how the world came into being; it is the theological story of why there is something rather than nothing. It is the theological story of a God powerful enough to create just by his command. It is the theological story of how the relationship between God and his creatures began. It is the overture to the book of scripture.
Both Galileo and Augustine were committed to the notion that God could be known through two books, the book of nature and the book of scripture. Such readings, however, would always need to be sensitive, honest and humble. And we too are called to read these books and then to speak faithfully about God. To engage in thoughtful appreciative reflection on all that is and on the one who brought all that is into being.
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