Philosophies of science often provide the logic for our hermeneutics.
Americans in the early nineteenth century joined the rest of the western world in a love affair with science. And they knew exactly who to praise for the rise of that science. First was Francis Bacon (d. 1626), father of the modern scientific method. Bacon thought true knowledge came from induction, the process that reasons from particular ideas to general laws. And he thought it should be empirical, gained by observations and experiments.
The genius who best put Bacon’s principles to work was Sir Isaac Newton (d. 1727). Through careful observation and brilliant reasoning Newton explained the regular movement of matter in time and space according to mathematically precise laws of motion. His contemporary John Locke (d. 1704) showed how Newton’s kind of reasoning could illuminate the study of human nature in his heralded Essay on Human Understanding.
The science of Bacon, Newton, and Locke underwent one important modification before its full impact was felt in America. This was accomplished by the Scottish “philosophers of common sense” who appealed to the universal perceptions of humanity to rescue the Newtonian-Lockean system from the idealism of George Berkeley and the skepticism of David Hume.
Led by Thomas Reid (d. 1796), an undeservedly neglected figure, the Scottish realists answered both Berkeley and Hume to the satisfaction of many Europeans and most Americans. Against Berkeley, they contended that “common sense”—the universal perceptions of mankind as well as down-to-earth hard-headedness—testified to the real existence of the physical world. Against Hume, they argued that a careful study of our minds (an empirical examination of consciousness) led inevitably to the conclusion that cause and effect can be relied upon and that a God exists who rewards good and evil.
Early American Response
The Scottish variation of the new science provided such a satisfying explanation of reality for so many Americans that it was virtually the sole scientific perspective in America during the early nineteenth century. The Scotsman John Witherspoon had brought common sense realism with him to Princeton College in 1768, where it flourished for over a century. But other learned Americans adopted it as well, including such disparate figures as the evangelical president of Yale College, Timothy Dwight; the deist Thomas Jefferson; the innovative founder of the Restoration movement, Alexander Campbell; and the traditional Presbyterian, Samuel Miller.
American Christians had special reasons for appreciating the Scottish version of the new science. With its emphasis on observable facts, whether in nature or the mind, it rescued science from the agnostic and materialistic implications given it by leaders of the Continental Enlightenment. The Baconian and Scottish realist insisted that science must stick to perceived facts and shun “hypotheses” that could not be verified by direct observation. In so doing, this perspective provided a sturdy defense against impious “inventions” and godless metaphysics, such as the materialism of some French philosophers who explained all reality by reference to the physical side of man.
Historian T. D. Bozeman has given the convenient label “Baconianism” to the science shaped by Bacon, Newton, Locke, and the Scottish realists. For many Americans, the most important thing about this Baconianism was its ability to make science “doxological” (the word is also from Bozeman). That is, this kind of science seemed to enlist both science and orthodoxy in praise (doxology) to the Creator.
Christian apologists in Europe and America also exploited Baconianism in defending the faith against deism, atheism, and “Enlightened” immorality. They used the Newtonian world view to refurbish proofs for the existence of God. If Newton had proved that reality is a vast complex of cause and effect relationships, it gave new life to the cosmological argument. The sequences of cause and effect observable in the present could not stretch back into the past indefinitely but required an original cause not itself acted upon by anything or anyone. Saved as well was the argument from design. If the complexity of nature could be reduced to the orderly mathematics of Newton’s laws, this was prima facie evidence for an intelligent Designer of the universe.
Apologists likewise used Baconian methods to defend the statements of Scripture. Samuel Stanhope Smith, Witherspoon’s son-in-law and himself the president of Princeton from 1795 to 1812, argued in an influential work first published in 1787 that science proved the unity of mankind, a belief increasingly questioned as travelers brought back strange tales of strange peoples from around the globe.
Apologists also used the methods of the Scottish realists for a scientific defense of Christian morality. The Scottish disciple of Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart (d. 1828), argued that scientific intuition—the careful study of our own minds—led to the inductive conclusion that God exists and has standards for our lives. When we study our consciences honestly, John Witherspoon could say, we end up with the general moral principles Scripture also reveals.
Three Problems
Evangelical intellectuals in America were able to unite Christianity and Baconianism with great success. They could champion morality as both biblical and scientific. They could unify faith and learning in the growing numbers of church-sponsored colleges. They could combine the gospel of peace and the orderly science of Newton to combat antiintellectualism and social disorder on the frontier.
At least three serious problems existed, however, in the process that saw Protestant Christianity joined so securely to the science of Bacon, Newton, and the Scottish realists. (1) Baconianism became the most satisfying mode of explanation for Christians, even though little serious consideration was given to whether the Baconian idea of truth was a Christian idea of truth. (2) Few Baconians seemed to have considered the question of explanation at all. That is, almost no one reflected upon the influence that currently fashionable forms of scientific reasoning exerted upon expressions of the faith. (3) Most seriously, the ease with which intellectuals found it possible to prove scientifically the existence of God, the validity of Christian morality, and the accuracy of the Bible, led to a situation where the proofs of science seemed to become the basis for belief in God and in scriptural revelation.
The three problems can also be stated as questions: (1) Are the scientific principles of Bacon and the world view of Newton the only adequate forms for Christian explanations? (2) How self-aware should Christians be about their acceptance of scientific world views that make some explanations appear more attractive than others? (3) Are the existence of God and the truth of his revelation in Scripture dependent on our ability to verify them by the methods of science in general, or of any one type of science in particular? Since the first and third problems/questions lead into complicated philosophical discussion, we will focus on the second. In particular, we will explore how the history of American evangelicalism has been affected by the relative absence of critical self-awareness concerning forms of explanation and popular conceptions of science.
Hodge and Finney
A brief series of examples can show how influential Baconianism was in framing explanations that satisfied American evangelicals in the nineteenth century. The science of Bacon, Locke, Newton, and the Scottish realists had an impact on the way nineteenth-century evangelicals approached their Bibles. The orthodox Congregationalist Leonard Woods, Jr., wrote in 1822 that the best method of Bible study was “that which is pursued in the science of physics,” regulated “by the maxims of Bacon and Newton.” Southern Presbyterian Robert Breckinridge wrote in 1857 that theology was a science that could be expressed as “uncontrovertibly as I would write geometry.”
We can also see the Baconian approach in Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology. While that work still speaks as forcefully to many evangelicals of our era as it did to believers over one hundred years ago, the Baconian spirit of Hodge’s age exerted a noticeable influence on his introductory discussion of theological method.
“The Bible is to the theologian what nature is to the man of science. It is his store-house of facts; and his method of ascertaining what the Bible teaches, is the same as that which the natural philosopher adopts to ascertain what nature teaches.… The duty of the Christian theologian is to ascertain, collect, and combine all the facts which God has revealed concerning himself and our relation to him. These facts are all in the Bible.”
The Baconian effect was no less evident in the more practical theology of Charles G. Finney, the greatest revivalist of his day. His Lectures on Revival (1835) summarized a new approach to evangelism. Since God has established reliable laws in the natural world, we know that he has also done so in the spiritual world. To activate the proper causes for revival is to produce the proper effect. “The connection between the right use of means for a revival and a revival is as philosophically (that is, scientifically) sure as between the right use of means to raise grain and a crop of wheat.” Because the world spiritual was analogous to the world natural, observable cause and effect must work in matters of the spirit as well as in physics.
The point of these examples is not to belittle these men. Hodge’s theological works are among the most substantial ever published in America, and Finney’s revivalism left an impact on the churches that is felt to this day. The point is rather that Hodge’s introductory comments on theological method and Finney’s concept of revival relied upon Baconian-Newtonian explanations without, it appears, ever giving the question of explanation itself a second thought.
New Scientific Explanations
The great difficulty in not thinking about explanation itself is that satisfying explanations, like every other form of human endeavor, are subject to the whims of fashion. In this case, even as American evangelicals were cementing their alliance with Baconianism, a newer form of scientific explanation had begun to excite the imagination of pioneering intellectuals. The scientific world view of Bacon, Newton, Locke, and Reid was beginning to give way to a form of scientific explanation first associated with the work of Charles Darwin. It was a world view, however, which in its general outline would also inform the work of Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein.
The explanations of the eighteenth-century science no longer sufficed for the scientists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Baconianism was mechanistic: its model was the carefully constructed watch; the newer science was organic: its model was the growing plant. Baconianism was static and antithetical: scientific conclusions were fixed and could be stated dogmatically, once and for all; the newer science was developmental and synthetic: scientific conclusions were expected to change over time and often included considerable ambiguity or mystery. Baconianism was realistic—our minds took reality from the external world; the newer science was often idealistic—our minds shaped perceptions of the world. Baconianism was commonsensical: Samuel Johnson could dispose of Berkeley’s theories by kicking a stone; the newer science was esoteric, talking of straight lines curving deep in space, of matter changed into energy, and of particles with negative weight.
Taint of Darwinism
The great problem for American evangelicals in adjusting to newer scientific explanations was that they first came to American attention through the work of Charles Darwin. But Darwin, and even more a circle of “Darwinists” who carried his ideas into the study of religion, society, and human nature, had no interest in harmonizing the latest scientific discoveries with Christian truth. In fact, the Darwinists tended to be materialists, denying the Christian idea of the soul; they tended to be agnostic, questioning the existence of God; they argued for randomness and chance in nature, denying God’s design of the world.
In reaction to these clearly anti-Christian tendencies, the nineteenth-century forerunners of modern evangelicalism largely rejected the work of Darwin and the Darwinists. In so doing, however, they also tended to reject the newer modes of scientific explanation with which Darwin was associated. To be sure, not all nineteenth-century evangelicals rejected the newer science when they rejected the unchristian propositions associated with it. America’s leading botanist in the 1860s and 1870s, Harvard’s Asa Gray, was a lifelong Christian who believed in both development in nature and the argument for design. Congregationalist theologian George Frederick Wright, who later wrote for The Fundamentals, had some reservations about evolution, but had no trouble with the newer forms of scientific explanation in general.
Modern evangelicals naturally are concerned about the seeming incompatibility between the conclusions of the newer science and the cosmology of the Bible. Interestingly enough, in the nineteenth century it was not until the materialism and agnosticism of the Darwinists were perceived as the ally of the newer science that evangelicals gave up efforts to harmonize developmental science, and the Bible. A developmental, more or less organic theory of the origins of the solar system—the nebular hypothesis of Pierre Simon Laplace—had in fact won widespread acceptance among American evangelicals in the early nineteenth century.
This hypothesis described very long periods of astronomical and geological develoment, which evangelicals of virtually every description easily incorporated into their interpretations of Genesis. Two of the still popular ways of interpreting the first chapter of the Bible arose in the effort to harmonize Scripture with Laplace’s nebular hypothesis—the idea that the Hebrew yom designated a lengthy period rather than a single 24-hour day, and the idea that a period of incalculable eons might have separated the events of Genesis 1:1–2 from those of 1:3ff.
When, however, evangelicals began to perceive the newer science as the ally of a godless Darwinism, many rejected both as opposed to Christianity. The earlier marriage of Baconianism and the Christian faith made this rejection easy. To the Baconian evangelical, the newer science itself was condemned as speculative, metaphysical, and insecurely based on directly observable facts. To the Baconian evangelical, the newer science was linked too closely to the impieties of the Darwinists. The result of rejecting both the newer science and its anti-Christian applications was that twentieth-century fundamentalists and evangelicals continued to find explanations shaped by Baconian and Newtonian science the most satisfactory of all explanations.
Baconianism in Perspective
Several significant consequences have flowed from that fidelity to Baconian science. The first has to do with our approach to Scripture. Why do evangelicals read the Bible as we do? Is it not at least possible that it is Baconianism, rather than a principle of Scripture itself, that has encouraged some evangelicals to regard the Bible as a compendium of separate facts and commands rather than as a unified revelation of the character and acts of God? Discussions over the ordination of women sometimes illustrate this tendency. In addressing this issue, are we not prone to hurling individual texts at one another (Gal. 3:28; 1 Tim. 2:12), instead of examining the general character of God’s dealing with his people from Genesis through Revelation?
Baconianism may be responsible for other characteristics of the Bible reading of certain evangelicals, such as uneasiness with the idea of progressive revelation, or a preference for biblical systems constructed mechanically from the frequency of word use over those stressing the development of historical narration. Thus, Calvinists make much of God’s ability to “harden” hearts (Rom. 9:18; 11:7; Exod. 4:21), while Arminians stress the fact that Christ died for “all” (Rom. 5:18). Yet in both cases it is possible that intense focus on the individual words blinds interpreters to the larger historical and theological contexts of Scripture where the appropriate meanings for individual terms should be found.
Baconianism has certainly encouraged a “common-sensical” and literalistic approach to Scripture over one that gives full play to the Bible’s poetry, figures of speech, and literary devices and to the world views of Scripture’s human authors, in which the text had its origins. Evangelicals quite properly criticize modernists who explain away the force of scriptural passages by labeling them poetic or mythological. Still, the pendulum, under Baconian influence, can swing too far in the other direction. If we treat every number (e.g., one thousand, Deut. 7:9), event (e.g., the beast rising from the sea, Rev. 13:1), or statement (e.g., God has revealed hidden things to babes, Luke 10:21) as if it came from the computer of a modern research laboratory, we lose sight of the divinely inspired authors of Scripture who lived in a world that knew neither Newton nor the modern fashion of historical precision.
Another result of the continuing faithfulness to Baconianism is the failure of many evangelicals to be self-conscious about the Baconian mode of explanation itself. The Baconian conviction that reliable knowledge arises from the accumulation of perceived facts apprehended directly by objective observers is still widespread among evangelicals. This is regarded by some as so obvious that it is taken for granted.
In holding to this, however, these evangelicals cut themselves off from modern discussions about the nature of science. Historians and philosophers of science now generally agree that nonempirical factors are vital in the development of scientific knowledge (Michael Polanyi). They have made it clear how important are the personal attitudes of the scientists as well as the sociological condition of the scientific community in the growth of scientific theory (T. S. Kuhn).
The failure of many evangelicals to take part in the modern discussions about the nature of science has led to great confusion in relating biblical truth to scientific investigation. It may even be largely responsible for such imbroglios as the old earth/young earth impasse. If we take for granted the only way to read Genesis is according to the canons of common sense realism, and if we assume that modern geological findings are unscientific because they are not based on immediate observation, it is impossible to make progress in addressing the relationship between biblical truth and modern science.
Testing All Viewpoints
The point is not that evangelicals should become proponents of an ancient earth, or even that they should necessarily abandon Baconianism and common sense realism. The point is rather that without careful consideration of the way we think about Scripture, our thoughts about the Bible will be restricted in value by the limitations of that particular way of thinking. This, of course, holds true for any scientific world view that is not subjected to the scrutiny of its adherents, whether it is Baconian, post-Baconian, or something else.
Evangelicals in the nineteenth century needed, no less than their descendents today need, to be self-aware about their scientific commitments in order more accurately to assess when modern “discoveries” are subverting the Bible itself, or when they are merely interpretations of the Bible grounded in culturally limited frameworks of explanation.
Finally, it is worth noting how an analysis of “explanation” can help clarify debates within American evangelicalism today—over the nature of biblical authority, over the formulation of biblical personal ethics, over the propriety of social involvement. The sometimes acrimonious arguments concerning these and related issues may signify that Baconianism is slipping as the dominant mode of explanation for American evangelicals and that no equally accepted one has arisen to take its place. It is, thus, entirely possible that many current disagreements among American evangelicals are best understood not as black and white issues dividing faithful sheep from erring goats, but as conflicts between older and newer forms of scientific explanation.
Evangelicals do well to contend valiantly for truth. In this, however, they should always be aware of the damage done when the logic of an age is exalted over the inner logic of divine revelation. In the last analysis, the only way to avoid this damage is to bring all forms of explanation and all modes of scientific reasoning captive to the God who communicates definitively—in the ages before Newton, in the age of Newton, and in the age of Einstein—through Scripture and the witness of the Holy Spirit to his Son.
Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.
