Book Review: Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Part Five)
Chapter Four: Science
and the Origins of “Religion.”
As noted
above, another distinct overall thesis of Harrison’s is that modern concepts of
science and religion emerged together and
in certain ways mutually shaped how the other was viewed. In the opening pages to chapter four, he
writes “The processes that led to these modified understandings of scientia and religio are various, but the fact that both undergo similar transitions
is suggestive of at least some common causes.”
One
significant factor in this emergence was the decline of the Aristotelian theory
of virtues as imbued habits when “Protestant critics found fault with the
relationship between habit and merit.”
As such, quite interestingly, the Protestant emphasis of salvation by
grace through faith begins to intersect with the rise of natural science. The other side of the same coin was original
sin: “the premise that human beings could perfect any of their natural powers
was inconsistent with the Protestant understanding of original sin.” Thus, for example, the much-misunderstood
concept of “total depravity” in Calvin (not that we are completely bad, but wholly affected
in all areas of our lives) meant that “the data provided by an examination of
our ‘natural’ propensities may not in fact point to our natural end [as
Aristotle and the scholastics assumed], but may instead simply exemplify our
corrupt condition.” Nor indeed could we
point to the “ends” of natural objects themselves. In addition, our corrupt faculties could no
longer give us common-sense notions of the world, as in Aristotelian scientia. In fact, this concept of original sin and the
corruption of our faculties, and the damaging of the natural world, was one of
the foundational premises for Francis Bacon’s reconceptualizing the sciences
along empirical lines, so that “the great commerce between the mind of man and
the nature of things … might by any means be restored to its perfect and
original condition.” Harrison
summarizes:
So it was that an ‘unnatural’ and
somewhat counter-intuitive regimen of experiments was designed to interrogate a
fallen nature with the appropriate level of skepticism, while at the same time
addressing the human predilection for delusion and self-deception. As for the content of natural philosophy, it
would be premised on a view of the world similarly couched in nonteleological
terms. As noted earlier, replacing the
teleological causal powers that moved objects toward their natural ends were
divinely imposed laws of nature that paralleled, in certain respects, the
divine imperatives that constituted the moral law. … Divinely authored laws of
nature would replace the inner virtues or qualities of natural things, while
divinely authored moral laws would similarly replace human virtues.
This is as such another example of the “turning inside out”
of religio and scientia—instead of actions (divinely inspired or not) being spoken
of as residing at the interior of things themselves, these are “exteriorized”
and explained as imposed conditions—of natural or moral law given by a Divine
Lawgiver. Thus, for examples, virtues
themselves were redefined in terms of whether they yield behaviors that accord
with positive law. John Locke, for
example, dismissed the ancient virtues as “mere names pretended and supposed
everywhere to stand for actions in their own nature right and wrong.” In the absence of any consensus about
naturally evident human ends, the virtues appeared arbitrary unless formulated
on other grounds, namely an absolute moral law.
Indeed, Descartes similar “outside-in” reformulation of morality
according to Harrison, explains the vitriol and passion of so many of Descartes
opponents: they say that he was doing away with the natural powers of things,
and was proposing a significant challenge to the prevailing understanding of
the moral powers of human agency.
The upshot
of this de-Aristotelianizing (to put it crudely) of scientia and religio, is
that, shorn from their transformative and teleological contexts, they were
“increasingly associated with self-standing systems of thought and belief in
the familiar modern sense.” Harrison points
out an interesting example of this by translations of progressing editions of
Calvin’s Institutes, where while
Calving uses the Latin phrase vera
religio—“true religion”—which Calvin links to “training in Godliness.” As early as the first English translation of
the Institutes this was typically
translated “the true religion.” A simple change, perhaps, “but the expression
‘the true religion’ places the
primary focus on the beliefs themselves, and religion becomes primarily an
existing thing in the world, rather than an interior disposition.” In English books printed during the first
decade of the seventeenth century, the general phrase “true religion” is used
five times more frequently than with the definite article, by the final decade
of the century the latter expression is much more common. “A largely unintended consequence of an
insistence on explicit belief and creedal knowledge was thus the invention of the Christian religion, constituted by
beliefs. Henceforth both Protestant and
Catholic reform movements will emphasize the importance of doctrinal knowledge,
with the consequence that propositional beliefs become one of the central
characteristics of the new ‘religion.’”[1]
In watching
how some of these larger shifts play out, Harrison gives explicit approval to
several other narratives regarding the emergence of the category
“religions.” In particular he accepts
Tomoko Mazusawa’s contention that the previously neglected arena of comparative
theology was important for constructing “religion,” as well as a lengthy
commentary on William Cavanaugh’s arguments that the emergence of the modern
nation-states after the Wars of Religion, far from providing a solution to religion, fueled the emergence of modern religion.
In fact, while ‘religious’ factors
undoubtedly played a role, largely because religious and political motivations
were then difficult to distinguish, these unfortunate conflicts were as much
about the rival territorial ambitions of the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. This accounts for the otherwise puzzling fact
that in these ‘religious’ wars, Catholics and Protestants could find themselves
on the same side. The idea of plural
religions as codified sets of beliefs and specific practices that can exist
independently of political considerations and are capable of relegation to a
‘private sphere’ was one of the end products of this procession of state
building. Indeed, it is not a complete
distortion to reverse the received understanding of these wars and say that the
formation of the modern state was their cause, and the modern notion of
religion a consequence.
This newly
shifted emphasis to a “religion” being identified by its propositional content
led to increasingly rationalistic enterprises of argumentation to identify
which religion was the true one. Yet,
though we are very used to this sort of business today, Harrison wants to
stress, “the idea that a religion can be rationally justified is dependent on
this new understanding of religion. For
those who subscribed to this ideal, the perfection religion would be a body of
propositions, firmly established by ironclad logical demonstration.” It is at this point that the new concept of
science comes to play a role in the mutual shaping of science and religion as
we understanding them, since natural history and natural philosophy of the
seventeenth century are now charged with the mission of providing some of the
general warrants, and even foundations, needed by the new propositional
religion. But, conversely, this use of
the new sciences helps to solidify their status as indicating that they are
“religiously useful.” “The shape that
modern science takes at this time is thus partly determined by its interactions
with the newly ideated ‘religion.’”
It is tempting to frame these
efforts as apologetic exercises on the part of pious scientists—the lending to
religion of the authoritative voice of science.
But if this was an apologetic strategy, it was as much about supporting
science as Christianity. Science—or, to
speak more accurately, the new experimental natural philosophy—did not yet
speak with an authoritative voice and … during this formative period it was the
new philosophy that needed to establish its epistemic credentials, its
religious respectability, and its social utility.
This new
partnership between science and religion involved a transformation of both into
sets of practices and beliefs.
Such a conception is rather
different from the patristic idea of belief as related to trust and
obedience. It also differs from the
position of Thomas Aquinas who, in the very first question on faith in the Summa Theologia, inquires after its
proper object. He concludes that the
proper object of faith is not some proposition, but a thing—the ‘First Truth’
or God himself. Aquinas clearly allows
that propositional truths—the articles of faith—are important, but he insists
that the grounds for assenting to the truth of these articles lies in the
trustworthiness of God rather than, say, the testimony of human reason.
As such,
the demarcations of disciplinary boundaries are no longer hierarchical: they no
longer described the order of ascent from the natural world into contemplation
of God through the variety of practices, but are “horizontalized” and become
part of the same plane of knowledge.
Divine causation becomes more or less identical to natural
causation. It had the unintended
consequence of “raising the profile certain elements of Christian
religion—namely those propositions to which natural philosophy could lend its
support. In this manner, the attentions
of the natural philosophers further promoted the reification of religion, and
shifted attention away from the formative dimension that had once been central
to both enterprises.” Indeed in the
process what needs to be paid attention to is how there is a shift in the mode of theology while nonetheless
retaining certain key terms:
[1] Perhaps indicating more than a mere curiosity, we
might note Philip Dixon, Nice and Hot
Disputes: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century (New York:
T&T Clark, 2003) and Jason Vickers, Invocation
and Assent: The Making and Remaking of Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids:
Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2008) both argue that the decline of the Trinity
coincides with this exact same period of transition in English history. This is for both authors directly related to
the same features in the reification of “religion” that Harrison is elaborating
upon. It thus seems historically
speaking a healthy and functioning doctrine of the Trinity is inversely
proportional to the understanding of Christianity as a religion!
[2] On this cf. also
Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The Migration of the Theistic Arguments: From Natural
Theology to Evidentialist Apologetics,” in Rationality,
Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment: New Essays in the Philosophy of
Religion, ed. Robert Audi and William Wainwright (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986), 39, argues for a similar shift: “The medieval project
of natural theology was profoundly different from the Enlightenment project of
evidentialist apologetics. It had
different goals, presupposed different convictions, and was evoked by a
different situation. It is true that
some of the same arguments occur in both projects; they migrate from one to the
other. But our recognition of the
identity of the émigré must not blind us to the fact that he has migrated from
one ‘world’ to another.”
Comments