Van Huyssteen J.W. (editor) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

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CHRISTIANITY,LUTHERAN,ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

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(1484–1531) on the Eucharist. Luther insisted on a

literal understanding of the words of Jesus Christ:

“This is my body.” God is not only present in cre-

ation as Spirit, but through Christ God is ubiquitous

in the midst of the material world, in the natural el-

ements of bread and wine. The Medieval distinction

between the natural and the supernatural thus be-

came obsolete, and Luther criticized the Roman

Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation accordingly.

Natural bread and wine are not changed (sub-

stantiated) into the supernatural body and blood

of Christ. Rather, Christ is present “in, with,

and under” natural bread and wine. In later

Lutheranism, this idea of consubstantialization was

developed into a more general principle of finitum

capax infiniti (the finite is capable of embodying

the infinite). In this vein, seventeenth-century

Lutheran Orthodoxy developed a theological mate-

rialism in contrast to the more spiritual ontologies

of Zwingli and Calvin. In the twentieth century,

these ideas also influenced the sacramental realism

of Anglican theologians such as William Temple

(1881–1944) and Arthur R. Peacocke (1924– ).

Interaction with the sciences

Luther did not himself show any interest in natural

science; he preferred to stay within the Biblical

worldview. But Luther’s close collaborator Philip

Melanchthon (1497–1560), who was in charge of

the university reform in Wittenberg, strongly sup-

ported natural philosophy, as the sciences were

called at that time. In his textbook The Elements of

Natural Philosophy (1549) Melanchthon taught that

the entire physical cosmos manifests God’s provi-

dential order. Melanchthon also wrote a highly in-

fluential textbook On the Soul (1552) in which he

emphasized the compelling force of the human af-

fects on human reasoning, but also recommended

the value of anatomical studies, including Andreas

Vesalius’s Fabric of the Human Body (1543). This

textbook of Melanchthon was used by the Calvin-

ist Otto Casmannus, who in 1594 coined the term

anthropologia for the general field to be further

subdivided into psychologia and somatologia. In

Melanchthon’s many university orations he em-

phasized the value of the sciences from astronomy

and astrology to medicine and psychology, both

for the practical needs of society and for the theo-

logical contemplation of divine order in nature.

Thereby Melanchthon placed natural philosophy

in the context of a natural theology of Stoic flavor

(Frank, 1999).

The impact of Lutheranism on science, how-

ever, is difficult to evaluate. Some argue that dis-

trust in the a priori human reasoning led

Melanchthon to a stronger empirical orientation

(Kusukawa, 1995); others emphasize the traditional

Aristotelian character of Melanchthon’s philosophy

of nature (Methuen, 1998). Some see the Lutheran

emphasis on the Bible as disconnecting the

Lutherans from any scientific interest (White, 1896,

vol. 1); other interpreters see the careful literal

reading of the Bible as a motivation for a likewise

careful and unbiased study of the book of nature

(Harrison, 1998). The case of astronomy may show

the complexities. Nicolaus Copernicus’s

(1473–1543) On the Revolutions of the Heavenly

Spheres was published in Tübingen in 1543 by the

Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander

(1496–1552). In his preface Osiander declares

Copernicus’s work a fruitful hypothesis, though

hardly literally true. Melanchthon was initially hos-

tile to Copernicus, but later claimed “to love and

admire Copernicus more.” Even though

Melanchthon could still not believe the theory to

be literally true, he integrated the data and figures

of Copernicus into the second edition of his 1562

book Elements (Barker, 2000). The Lutheran

Copernican Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) came

out of this astronomic school, and in 1616, when

Copernicus’s work was listed on the Papal Index

of prohibited books, Copernicus appeared along-

side the names of Luther, Erasmus, and Calvin.

Rather than seeking a global theory of a dis-

tinctive Lutheran involvement with science, it may

be wiser to take one’s departure in the observation

that the Lutheran tradition in general takes a high

view of nature, but a low view of disengaged rea-

soning. Whereas the Reformed and Anglican tradi-

tions highlight rationality (and played a major role

in the emergence of classic physics), there are

some affinities between Lutheranism and Romanti-

cism. Both Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

(1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von

Schelling (1775–1854) were self-conscious Luther-

ans. Much later, Paul Tillich (1886–1965) explained

how his own mystic and aesthetic attitude towards

nature was nourished, via Schelling, by the

Lutheran principle that the finite is capable of the

infinite.

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In this perspective it may be more than a coin-

cidence that some of the most counterintuitive the-

ories of modern science were produced by scien-

tists working in a Lutheran milieu. In 1820 the

Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851)

discovered electro-magnetic force. In line with

Schelling, Ørsted believed that the spiritual forces

of attraction and repulsion are more basic than ma-

terial particles, and their laws were claimed to reign

in nature as well as in society. The quantum theory

of the 1920s involved even more counterintuitive

notions, and the embrace of paradoxical statements

in the Copenhagen Interpretation by Niels Bohr

(1885–1962) and Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976)

was probably facilitated by a philosophical climate

in which paradoxes could be better guides to truth

than more pedestrian appeals to order and ration-

ality. Bohr’s indebtedness to Søren Kierkegaard

(1813–1855) is an interesting case of a disguised

presence of a religious tradition in the heuristics of

science as well as in its subsequent interpretation.

There exists no official Lutheran view of the

natural sciences, or worldviews. The general dis-

trust in the project of natural theology (despite

Melanchthon’s legacy) is based on the prior con-

viction that the preaching of theology does not

rely on particular philosophical or scientific foun-

dations. Since the nineteenth century, Luther’s doc-

trine of the two regiments (the spiritual and the

secular) also led to a widespread assumption of an

autonomy or Eigengesetzlichkeit (Max Weber) of

the sciences. Rudolf Bultmann’s (1813–1855) fa-

mous program of demythologization may count as

one such example of separation. However, the

conviction that natural processes are the “masks of

God” present in creation has continued to prompt

Lutherans to enter the science-religion dialogue.

Since the 1980s significant initiatives have been

taken by the German Evangelical Academies

(Hans May, 1990), by the Evangelical-Lutheran

Church of America (Mangum, 1989) and by the

Lutheran World Federation (Mortensen, 1995). But

in general the dialogue is left to individual schol-

ars working in nondenominational settings.

See also CHRISTIANITY, HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND

RELIGION; NATURAL THEOLOGY

Bibliography

Barker, Peter. “The Role of Religion in the Lutheran Re-

sponse to Copernicus.” In Rethinking the Scientific

Revolution, ed. Margaret J. Osler. Cambridge, UK:

Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Frank, Günther. Die theologische Philosophie Philipp

Melanchthons (1497–1560). Leipzig, Germany:

Benno Verlag, 1995.

Harrison, Peter. The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of

Natural Science. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1998.

Kusukawa, Sachiko. The Transformation of Natural Phi-

losophy: The Case of Philip Melanchthon. Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, 55 vols., eds. Jaroslav Pe-

likan and Helmut T. Lehman. St. Louis, Mo. and Con-

cordia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–1976.

Mangum, John M. The New Faith-Science Debate: Probing

Cosmology, Technology, and Theology. Minneapolis,

Minn.: Fortress Press; Geneva, Switzerland: World

Council of Churches, 1989.

May, Hans; Striegnitz, Meinfried; and Hefner, Philip, eds.

Menschliche Natur und moralische Paradoxa aus der

Sicht von Biologie, Sozialwissenschaften und Theolo-

gie. Evangelische Akademie Loccum: Rehburg-Loc-

cum, 1990.

Melanchthon, Philip. Orations on Philosophy and Educa-

tion, ed. Sachiko Kusukawa. Cambridge, UK: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1999.

Methuen, Charlotte. Kepler’s Tübingen: Stimulus to a The-

ological Mathematics. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.

Methuen, Charlotte. “Order of Nature and Natural Order

in the Theology of the Reformers” eds. Niels Henrich

Gregersen, Ulf Görmon and Hubert Meisinger. Stud-

ies in Science and Theology 8 (2002): 57–76.

Metzge, Erwin. Sakrament und Metaphysik. Eine Luther-

studie über das Verhältnis des christlichen Denkends

zum leiblich-materiellen. Stuttgart, Germany: Kreuz

Verlag, 1948.

Mortensen, Viggo, ed. Concern for Creation: Voices on the

Theology of Creation. Uppsala, Sweden: Svenska

Kyrkans ForskningsrHd, 1995.

Sparn, Walter. Wiederkehr der metaphysik. Die ontologische

Frage in der lutherischen Theologie des frühen 17.

Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart, Germany: Calwer Verlag, 1976.

Tillich, Paul. “Autobiographical Reflections.” In The Theol-

ogy of Paul Tillich, eds. Charles W. Kegley and Robert

W. Bretall. New York: Macmillan, 1952.

White, Andrew Dickson. A History of the Warfare of Sci-

ence with Theology in Christendom, Vols. 1 and 2.

New York: Appleton, 1896.

NIELS HENRIK GREGERSEN

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CHRISTIANITY,ORTHODOX,

SSUES IN SCIENCE AND

RELIGION

Historically, Orthodox Christianity dates back to

the ancient Church, which was established by the

apostles, powerful bishops, and seven Ecumenical

Councils (from Nicea in 325 to Constantinople in

727). Orthodox Christianity considers itself as the

“right” belief and “right glory,” whose Church

guards and teaches the true belief about God and

represents the Church of Christ on Earth.

The divisions and fragmentation of the initially

united Church led to the split of the Orthodox

Church with Western Christianity, which is con-

ventionally dated 1054 C.E. The Orthodox Church

itself is divided into what can be called Oriental

churches (mainly in Iraq and Iran), five non-Chal-

cedonian churches (in Armenia, Ethiopia, Egypt,

and India; sometimes called monophysite), and the

Eastern Orthodox churches proper.

In modern usage the term Eastern Orthodoxy is

usually applied to those Christians who are in com-

munion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Con-

stantinople, which historically became restricted to

the Greek-speaking world and later to other Slavic

countries in Eastern Europe. There is no centralized

organization in the Orthodox Church (unlike

Roman Catholicism); it is a family of self-governing

territorial bodies that are called Patriarchates. There

are four Ancient Patriarchates and nine other auto-

cephalous churches (the biggest one is the Russian

Orthodox Church). All churches are in sacramental

communion with each other. The territorial

arrangement of the churches does not coincide

with the formal boundaries of the states.

View of nature

Orthodox theology has a positive attitude towards

the natural world as a good creation of a good

God. Nature is never worshiped; it is God-creator

who is worshiped through creation. The Fathers of

the Church loved nature, but were never captured

by the imagery of nature, which could prevent

them from having a spiritual life in God. Thus na-

ture was never considered an end in itself; its

meaning and purpose can only be revealed in the

perspective of Christ who, through the incarnation,

recapitulated nature. The Fathers saw nature in the

perspective of the hierarchy of the orders of cre-

ation, which proceeds from the natural law estab-

lished by God. This “platonic” approach to nature

could not provide any methodology of its investi-

gation. The attitude to nature was speculative; it

was interpreted in terms of laws that govern na-

ture, but not their particular outcomes, which are

displayed in a variety of phenomena. Nature, how-

ever, was never excluded from the general view of

communion with God, so that the theology of the

Greek Fathers was cosmic in its essence. Maximus

the Confessor (c. 580-662) articulated that it is

through communion with the Logos (Word) of

God in Scriptures, through contemplation of the

underlying principles of creation in nature, and in

sacramental communion with Christ in Church that

the fullness of communion can be achieved. Na-

ture itself as the medium through which and by

which communion with God can be established is

seen as sacrament. Human being as microcosm

and mediator participates in the cosmic Eucharist,

which aims to renew and redeem the material

world. Science then is treated as a tool to articulate

the world in terms of its relationship with God.

Interaction with the sciences

In the first centuries of Christianity, the attitude to

the sciences was established in the context of its

encounter with classical Hellenistic culture. Since

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215), philosophy

and the sciences were considered human activities

cooperating in ultimate truth, as useful tools in

order to defend faith and make it demonstrable,

and important for Christian education. The Greek

Fathers asserted that scientific knowledge is in-

complete in itself and must be supported by wider

views of reality, which are accessible through faith.

Knowledge and the sciences thus have their foun-

dation in faith. Carried out through the centuries

this attitude to science did not change, excluding

any open conflicts between science and theology,

with one exception—the seventy years of “scien-

tific atheism” in Soviet Russia.

There is a perception among leading modern

Orthodox theologians that science cannot be ex-

cluded from the theological vision of God and cre-

ation. The task of Orthodox theology is to recon-

cile the cosmic vision of the Fathers with the vision

that grows out of the results of natural science.

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The split between science and religion can be

overcome on the grounds of their reinstatement to

communion with God. Scientific work can be in-

terpreted as “para-eucharistic” work ( John

Zizioulas). Scientific progress must be taken into

account only in the context of the progress of

human spirit and the deepening of human experi-

ence of the reality of the divine, which cannot be

reduced to a physical or chemical level (Dumitru

Staniloae). New conceptual tools for mediation be-

tween religion and science must be developed.

The most important and urgent problems in the

science-religion dialogue are not cosmological

(e.g., creation of the universe) or philosophical

(e.g., the meaning of evolution), but ecological

and bioethical.

The Orthodox Church understands the modern

ecological crisis either in terms of the misuse of

science or utopian reliance on the power of

progress. The Church consequently treats the crisis

as essentially anthropological and spiritual. The

message of the Church is to be cautious with sci-

entific discoveries and technologies because they

are handled by spiritually disorientated human be-

ings, who have lost their roots in the divine. The

loss of vision of the unity of the whole creation

and human priestly responsibility for nature leads

to abuse and degradation of the natural world,

which threatens the very existence of humankind.

It is in the context of love for nature, inner vigi-

lance and chastity towards nature, and self-restraint

in the consumption of natural resources that scien-

tific activity can acquire some “eucharistic” features

and nature can become reinstated to its sacramen-

tal status.

The Orthodox Church is deeply concerned

with the possible moral and social implications of

the fast advance of biology and medical science in

terms of control and regulation of human life. For

Orthodox Christians, life is the gift of God, who

creates and preserves human personality. When bi-

ology and medicine interfere with human exis-

tence on the natural level, and threaten human

integrity and personality, Orthodox theology op-

poses this on moral and social grounds. For exam-

ple, the official position of the Church, expressed

by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church in

2001, with respect to cloning human beings is

strongly negative on social grounds (the “printing”

of people with specified parameters can appear

welcome to adherents of totalitarian ideologies),

as well as personal grounds (a clone can feel like

an independent person, but it is only a “copy” of

someone who lives or lived before). However, the

cloning of isolated cells and tissues does not

threaten the personality and can be helpful in

medical practice. Genetic engineering is admissible

with the consent of the patient in the case of some

hereditary diseases, but the genetic therapy of

germ cells is considered dangerous because it in-

volves a change of the genome in the line of gen-

erations, which can lead to mutations and can

destabilize the balance between the human com-

munity and the environment.

See also CLONING; ECOLOGY; GENETIC ENGINEERING;

EDICAL ETHICS

Bibliography

Breck, John. The Sacred Gift of Life: Orthodox Christianity

and Bioethics. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Semi-

nary Press, 1998.

Cavarnos, Constantine. Biological Evolutionism. Etna,

Calif.: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1994.

Gregorios, Paulos Mar. The Human Presence: Ecological

Spirituality and the Age of the Spirit. New York: Amity

House, 1987.

Nesteruk, Alexei V. “Patristic Theology and the Natural

Sciences.” SOUROZH: A Journal of Orthodox Life and

Thought 84 (2001): 14–35 (part 1); 85 (2001): 22–38

(part 2).

Sherrard, Philip. The Rape of Man and Nature: An En-

quiry into the Origins and Consequences of Modern

Science. Suffolk, UK: Golgonooza Press, 1991.

Staniloae Dumitru. Theology and the Church. Crestwood,

N.Y.: St. Valdimir’s Seminary Press, 1980.

Vucanovich, V. Science and Faith: Order in the Universe

and Cosmic Evolution Motivate Belief in God. Min-

neapolis, Minn.: Light and Life Press, 1995.

Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Church. London: Penguin,

1997.

Ware, Kallistos. Through the Creation to the Creator. Lon-

don: Friends of the Centre, 1997.

Zizioulas, John. Being as Communion: Studies in Person-

hood and the Church. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s

Seminary Press, 1997.

ALEXEI NESTERUK

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CHRISTIANITY,

ENTECOSTALISM,ISSUES IN

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Describing overall Pentecostal attitudes and rela-

tionships to science is difficult given the diversity

of the movement. What historians call classical

Pentecostalism (denominational groups whose ori-

gins are traced back to the Azusa Street revival in

Los Angeles from 1906 to 1908) does not ade-

quately encompass the substantially diverse nonin-

stitutional forms of the movement featured since its

beginnings, including the development of its edu-

cational structure, much less its neo-Pentecostal as-

pects emergent since the charismatic renewal of

mainline churches during the 1950s. Further, the

predominance of oral over written modes of com-

munication, especially among non-Western Pente-

costal movements, means that specific documen-

tary evidence regarding Pentecostal attitudes of

laypersons to science is relatively meager.

Because of their otherworldly orientation, Pen-

tecostals have been either relatively silent about or

dismissive of the sciences. Administrators of Pente-

costal institutions have had degrees in the human-

ities or in education, not in the natural sciences.

Pentecostalism, being a missionary religion, felt lit-

tle need for scientific involvement until the last half

of the twentieth century. Some Pentecostals re-

jected scientific learning, based upon their limited

perception of what science actually was, along

with some aspects of society and culture as a

whole. Yet other facets of the movement, including

the emerging Pentecostal educational establish-

ment, provide substantial evidence of growth in

scientific studies and applications.

Creation and evolution

Otherworldly aspirations combined with a biblicist

mindset and worldview, together with the expec-

tation of the imminent return of Christ, fostered an

anti-intellectualism among the vast majority of the

first generation Pentecostals. Rather than pursuing

a secular education or moving up the social ladder,

most early Pentecostals were motivated ideologi-

cally primarily by evangelistic concerns, and sec-

ondarily by apologetic ones. Pentecostal Bible in-

stitutes were focused first and foremost on the

development of pastors, missionaries, and church

workers, and only minimally, if at all, on scientific

education as a liberal art.

Science, insofar as it was understood by these

Pentecostals, was an enemy of the faith, primarily

because of the popularized claims of evolutionary

biologists and paleontologists and their apparent

presupposition of the nonexistence of God. At this

point in Pentecostal development, these popular

claims appeared indistinguishable from the

methodology and interests of other branches of sci-

ence, which were totally unknown territory. Since

no Pentecostal expertise was available to sort out

the details of experimental evidence and interpre-

tation, the sciences did not seem safe. As with many

Christians of their time, Pentecostals rejected the

Darwinian theory of evolution as being antithetical

to a literal reading of the biblical creation narratives.

The widespread influence of the Scofield Reference

Bible (1909) among early Pentecostals led many to

adopt the gap theory of temporally ambiguous in-

tervals between the Genesis narrator’s “days.” Un-

beknownst to the Pentecostals, and probably to the

writers of the Scofield Bible, this interpretation, or

one of equating the “days” with temporally am-

biguous periods, was equivalent to the mainstream

of contemporary European Old Testament and

Torah scholarship before, during, and after the in-

troduction, in 1859, of Charles Darwin’s speculative

thesis with The Origin of Species.

Beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, a handful of

second and third generation Pentecostals were

drawn, out of curiosity and thoughtfulness, to

study the sciences at universities, primarily biol-

ogy, studies not encouraged by the elder genera-

tion. It began to dawn that medical missions cre-

ated the need for biological sciences. At the same

time, by distancing themselves from fundamental-

ism and affiliating with the emergent evangelical

movement in the 1940s, Pentecostals purchased

some social space for members of the movement

interested in the sciences.

By the 1950s and 1960s, the initial avoid-and-

reject mentality toward evolutionary biology re-

mained among Pentecostal leaders but existed in

tension with the discriminating worldview preva-

lent among the emerging group of college edu-

cated adherents. However, the acquisition of aca-

demic history by leaders in education, theology, or

various humanities did not always erase an anti-

intellectual and suspicious posture toward the

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sciences. Yet, Bible college and Bible institute ed-

ucators and administrators sensed the need for

providing an alternative “Pentecostal” program of

study for Pentecostals desiring a college education.

This led to the development of departments in the

humanities and the sciences, and the offering of

degrees in most of the liberal arts.

The scientific liberal arts, however, proved ex-

pensive to offer and did not command the enroll-

ment and tuition dollars of other subjects. The

quest for regional accreditation was a strong moti-

vating force, but outside scrutiny and pressure did

not overcome the traditional resistance to scientific

competence. Faculty were sought with at least

graduate, if not terminal, degrees in the humanities,

mathematics, and the natural sciences, but the ap-

proach was, understandably, geared toward the pri-

mary realization that academic history had accredi-

tational benefits. The established tradition in the

world’s universities and participating governments

was that academic history, particularly in the natu-

ral sciences, is preparatory to the goal of academic

production but this remained a totally unknown

domain to Pentecostals. The established link be-

tween academic history and scholarly research and

production, and between academic history, aca-

demic production, and teaching, would take at least

another half century or more to be understood and

become financially feasible at Pentecostal institu-

tions. As Pentecostalism enters its second century,

these scientific traditions are fairly well established

at some of the leading Pentecostal institutions like

Oral Roberts University (ORU) in Tulsa, Okala-

homa, and Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee.

Meanwhile, Pentecostal attitudes toward cre-

ation and macroevolution have continued to de-

velop. The appearance of Dake’s Annotated Refer-

ence Bible (1963) provided further “scientific

evidence” for the gap or day-age interpretation

already popular among many Pentecostals.

The emergence of young earth creationism in

fundamentalist and conservative evangelical

circles caused alarm among Pentecostal science

departments, and the Society for Pentecostal

Studies was warned early on by the head of the

science department at Lee university, Dr. Myrtle

Fleming, to “distinguish between fact and theory,

original works (experimental evidence), and

philosopher’s thinking” (Numbers p. 307). Pente-

costal administrators have considered young earth

creationism an embarrassment, with some institu-

tions refusing to hire faculty in any discipline, sci-

entific or otherwise, who adhere to this ideology.

Many prominent Pentecostal evangelists and lead-

ers have also opposed the Darwinian theory of

evolution, while others have adopted literary un-

derstandings of the creation narratives that are har-

monious with science. For many Pentecostal

theologians and scientists the so-called theistic

evolution (macroevolution with divine guidance)

also appears incompatible both with biblical inter-

pretation and with the experimental findings of

modern science.

Yet, increasingly, Pentecostals educated in the

sciences are suspicious about dogmatic ap-

proaches to superimposing macroevolution upon

the physical evidence. There is emerging interest in

paleontology, paleoastronomy, paleobiology, and

paleogeology. Old style reactionary or rhetorical

polemic from evolutionary biologists against the

abrupt appearance of species, especially in light of

the Cambrian explosion of life forms and, for ex-

ample, the recent extraction of DNA from a ho-

minid fossil, carries less weight among Pentecostal

scientists and educators. As more and more Pente-

costals are receiving graduate education and

achieving doctoral degrees in the sciences, there is

a sense in which the older creation-evolution de-

bates are no longer an issue. New experimental re-

sults can now be assessed in an atmosphere where

the hidden presupposition of the nonexistence of

God is out in the open. The ongoing study of mi-

croevolutionary mechanisms, while rejecting ideo-

logically motivated macroevolutionary changes per

se until scientific evidence strongly suggests other-

wise, is a responsible position taken by the major-

ity of Pentecostal scientists. The ideology of carte

blanche macroevolution not only contradicts much

scientific evidence outright, but is imbued with un-

necessarily confining naturalistic, atheistic, and

Darwinian presuppositions that are no longer fash-

ionable to many in the scientific community. Fur-

ther, while contemporary Pentecostalism may host

a few anomalous advocates of young earth cre-

ationism, it has made little headway among

Pentecostals. Pentecostal, Orthodox, and Jewish in-

terpretation is overwhelmingly in favor of under-

standing the “days” of the Genesis creation narra-

tive as deliberately ambiguous and temporally

indefinite periods. This is consistent with both cos-

mological observations and with the sudden ap-

pearance of diverse species in the extant fossil

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record as continually investigated by a number of

scientific disciplines.

Pentecostalism and medical technology

Another window into the relationship between

Pentecostalism and the sciences is provided by

Pentecostal attitudes toward the use of medicine

and the emerging medical establishment. The bib-

licism of early Pentecostalism led many to embrace

the belief of divine healing insofar as this was ex-

plicitly connected with the New Testament practice

of speaking in tongues (inspired speech in un-

learned language, both human and divine, as con-

ceptually interpreted in the book of Acts, and, dif-

ferently, in the first epistle of Paul to the

Corinthians). In part, given their lack of medical

knowledge and the inaccessibility and unafford-

ability of medicinal supplies, early Pentecostals

looked to God for their healing. As such, early

Pentecostal attitudes toward medical practitioners

and their arts resonated well with faith healer John

Alexander Dowie’s (1847–1907) widely circulated

pamphlet, which identified the most dreaded dis-

ease as the “bacillis lunaticus medicus” (ridiculous

bacteria of medicine). The result was that many

sectarian Pentecostal groups, especially in the rural

Appalachian part of America, rejected medicine

and relied solely on the healing power of God,

sometimes resulting in the loss of life.

Yet such early Pentecostal polemics were ram-

pant against not only the emergent class of medical

doctors, who often made mistakes and appeared

unreliable to some, but also against the spiritual

healing technologies of the Christian Science

movement. Ironically, whereas North American

Pentecostals were wary of combining faith and

spiritual healing, throughout Asia, sub-Saharan

Africa, and Latin America, Pentecostals have com-

bined the belief in divine healing with shamanistic

practices in order to address physical, emotional,

and psychological ailments.

However, Pentecostals have always negotiated

the tension between a robust belief in faith heal-

ing, which repudiated medical technology entirely,

and the belief that faith healing and the use of

medicine were indeed compatible. As Grant

Wacker points out in Heaven Below (2001), med-

ical doctors were found attending early Pentecostal

revival services and even participating as members

in Pentecostal communities of faith. Over the gen-

erations, both the upward social mobility of many

Pentecostals and their medical missionary em-

phases led to an increasing acceptance of the use

of medicine. In the 1970s, the establishment of a

medical graduate program at ORU, a vanguard in-

stitution for neo-Pentecostal and charismatic higher

education, followed soon after by their City of

Faith Medical and Research Center, signaled the

full engagement of the medical sciences among

Pentecostals. Yet the ORU motto of educating “the

whole man in spirit, mind and body” reflected at

the same time the Pentecostal concern for holistic

health care strategies. Unsurprisingly, then, polls

conducted in the mid 1990s among Pentecostal

ministers in Britain revealed that 93.7 percent be-

lieve that “modern medicine is a God-given bless-

ing” (Kay, p. 121). It is fair to assume that this per-

centage is reflective at least of Western Pentecostal

attitudes toward the medical sciences.

Arguably, given the emergence of the Pente-

costal movement at the turn of the twentieth cen-

tury, early Pentecostalism can be understood, at

least in part, as a reaction to the scientific and tech-

nological rationality of that time. Glossolalia

(speaking in tongues) is symbolic of the resistance

of the masses against the hegemonic discourse of

Enlightenment rationalism, as well as of a prayerful

desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The belief in

divine healing could be seen by sociologists as a

protest against the failures of medical technology

to heal the ills associated with the modernization

and urbanization of the nineteenth century, as well

as an appropriation of New Testament thought re-

garding spiritual gifts. As such, Pentecostal spiritu-

ality signifies an eruption in the Western world of

the nonrational elements of human feeling, ex-

pression, and experience that opposes not the ra-

tional scientific methodology of science and engi-

neering disciplines but the overextended popular

claims of biological science.

In the meantime, however, the limits of scien-

tific rationality have been recognized and ac-

knowledged by the scientific community. For

many, the impersonal is no longer preferred to the

personal in the new “Era of the Glimpse of God”

that began in 1965 with the paradigm-shifting dis-

covery of the cosmic microwave background, fol-

lowed by its spectacular finely tuned variations in

1992. This new era may have reopened the door

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for the dialogue that is taking place between hu-

manities scholars in the inexact sciences who are

studying Pentecostalism and between the many

Pentecostals who are studying and practicing the

various sciences. At the beginning of the second

century of the Pentecostal “reformation,” with over

a million churches throughout the world, one of

the classical Pentecostal institutions, the Church of

God Theological Seminary in Cleveland, Ten-

nessee, now offers a Master of Divinity and Doctor

of Ministry course in Theology and Science.

See also CREATIONISM; SPIRITUALITY; SPIRITUALITY AND

AITH HEALING

Bibliography

Assemblies of God, General Council of. “The Doctrine of

Creation” (August 15–17, 1977). Springfield, Mo.: Au-

thor, 1977. Available at http://www.agncn.org/

documents/creation.pdf.

Elbert, Paul. “Biblical Creation and Science: A Review Arti-

cle.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 39

(1996): 285–289.

Hummel, Charles E. The Galileo Connection: Resolving

Conflicts between Science and the Bible. Downers

Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986.

Kay, William K. “Approaches to Healing in British Pente-

costalism.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 14 (1999):

113–125.

Krings, Matthias; Stone, Anne; Schmitz, Ralf W.; et al.

“Neanderthal DNA Sequences and the Origin of

Modern Humans.” Cell 90 (1997): 19–30.

McHargue, Lawrence T. “The Christian and Natural Sci-

ence.” In Elements of a Christian Worldview, ed.

Michael D. Palmer. Springfield, Mo.: Logion Press,

1998.

Munyon, Timothy. “The Creation of the Universe and

Humankind.” In Systematic Theology, rev. edition,

ed. Stanley M. Horton. Springfield, Mo.: Logion

Press, 1995.

Numbers, Ronald. The Creationists: The Evolution of Sci-

entific Creationism. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1993.

Thurman, L. Duane. How to Think about Evolution and

Other Bible-Science Controversies. Downers Grove,

Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1978.

Wacker, Grant. “The Pentecostal Tradition.” In Caring and

Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious

Tradition, ed. Ronald L. Numbers and Darrel W.

Amundsen. New York: Macmillan, 1986.

Wacker, Grant. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and

American Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 2001.

Walker, Paul L. Understanding the Bible and Science.

Cleveland, Tenn.: Pathway Press, 1976.

AMOS YONG

PAUL ELBERT

CHRISTIANITY,RADICAL

REFORMED,ISSUES IN

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The Radical Reformation began in Switzerland and

southern German in the 1520s, when participants in

the mainline Reformation objected to state control

over churches. The Schleitheim Confession of 1527

was an attempt by Radical Reformers to distinguish

their movement from other Protestants. The Radical

Reform movement supported baptism for believers,

separation from the world, selection of pastors from

within the congregation, and the refusal to swear

oaths. These elements were designed to nullify the

effects of Constantinianism, the identification of the

church first with empire and then with nation state.

The Radicals objected to the use of coercion

and violence in the name of God. In this sense,

they believed God’s action in the human world to

be noncoercive. Accordingly, they rejected vio-

lence and adopted the ban (exclusion from the

shared life of the community in accordance with

Matthew 18) as the most severe form of punish-

ment. The Radicals continue to believe that Chris-

tianity has more to do with changing the world

than interpreting its meaning, and therefore they

have rarely engaged with scientific developments.

Nevertheless, it can be argued that understanding

God’s action in the natural and social world as

noncoercive has important consequences for inter-

actions with the natural and social sciences.

When Isaac Newton’s (1642–1727) Laws were

accepted as a complete account of all the move-

ments of matter in the universe, it became difficult

to conceive of God’s action in the world. Modern

liberal and conservative views differed over char-

acterizations of divine action. Liberal theologians

generally rejected the concept of special divine

acts because it seemed self-contradictory for God

to break natural laws. Conservative theologians, on

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the other hand, generally accepted that God could

and did miraculously break into the natural causal

order. By contrast, Radical Reformed theologians

claimed that while God does act in the world, God

does so noncoercively. With developments in

quantum physics, it has become easier, though still

not unproblematic, to make sense of this claim.

For example, it would not be inconsistent, or coer-

cive, for God to manipulate quantum events since

it is widely agreed that there is no self-determina-

tion at this level for God to overrule.

Whereas conflict with the natural sciences has

not been an issue for Radical Reformed theolo-

gians, there are inherent tensions between Radical

Reformed thought and modern social science be-

cause of the movement’s attempt to embody the

Sermon on the Mount. From the early modern pe-

riod, the dominant assumption in social science

has been that coercion, and ultimately violence, is

necessary to maintain order in society. However,

according to the Radical Reformed view the

church itself provides empirical evidence that a

society based on noncoercive reconciliation is

possible. The church can be understood as an ex-

periment whose existence demonstrates that vio-

lence is not a necessary part of social relations.

From this perspective, a new vision can emerge

for society and social science. One concrete ex-

ample is Jesus’ rejection of retribution as a model

for justice in the Sermon on the Mount. In its

place, the sermon provides for an understanding

of justice that focuses on reconciliation and

restoration.

See also CHRISTIANITY, ANGLICAN, ISSUES IN SCIENCE

AND

RELIGION; CHRISTIANITY, EVANGELICAL, ISSUES

SCIENCE AND RELIGION; CHRISTIANITY,

UTHERAN, ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION;

HRISTIANITY, ORTHODOX, ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND

RELIGION; CHRISTIANITY, PENTECOSTALISM, ISSUES

SCIENCE AND RELIGION; CHRISTIANITY,

EFORMED, ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION;

HRISTIANITY, ROMAN CATHOLIC, ISSUES IN

SCIENCE AND RELIGION; SCIENCE AND RELIGION,

ISTORY OF FIELD

Bibliography

Murphy, Nancey, and Ellis, George F. R. On the Moral Na-

ture of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics.

Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1996.

Murphy, Nancey. Reconciling Theology and Science: A

Radical Reformation Perspective. Kitchener, Ont.:

Pandora Press; Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1997.

Yoder, John Howard. The Original Revolution: Essays on

Christian Pacifism. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1971.

Zehr, Howard. Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime

and Justice. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1995.

CHRISTIAN EARLY

NANCEY MURPHY

CHRISTIANITY,REFORMED,

SSUES IN SCIENCE AND

RELIGION

The term Reformed theology, though sometimes

used synonymously with Calvinism, refers more

broadly to doctrines traceable to a group of six-

teenth-century reformers that included Guillaume

Farel (1489–1565), John Calvin (1509–1564),

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), Heynrich Bullinger

(1504–1575), John Knox (1505–1572), and, ar-

guably, Johannes Bucer (1491–1551) and Peter Ver-

migli (1500–1562). Nonetheless, it was Calvin in

the various editions of his Institutes of the Christ-

ian Religion (1536–1560) who more than anyone

set the main trajectories of Reformed theology.

Early reformed senses of nature

Calvin likens Scripture to spectacles by which one

can read the benevolent purpose of creation,

which includes both the delight and the utility of

nature. There is no suggestion that Calvin thought

Scripture was a substitute for physical inquiry re-

garding matters of what are today called the natu-

ral sciences. At the same time, there is no evidence

that he closely followed the latest scientific discov-

eries; his relative indifference to the work of Nico-

laus Copernicus (1473–1543) is itself, in retrospect,

a glaring omission. The necessities of international

diplomacy for the Reformed movement, its politi-

cal theory and practice, demanded more of his at-

tention than did the astronomy of the time. Calvin

still worked within a framework that resisted the

notion that the Earth moved. He never reached the

point of Thomas Digges (d. 1595), who argued that

such a movement within a huge expanse of ex-

tremely distant stars redounded to God’s glory.

Digges belongs to that significant group of people

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active in the transition from a modified Aristotelian

natural philosophy to a Newtonian physics. Gisbert

Voetius (1589–1676), who sought to hone his par-

ticular version of Aristotelianism and who argued

for proscribing the writings of René Descartes

(1596–1650), was a kind of throwback. That ex-

ception, however, is far outweighed by the works

of one of the great forerunners of modern science,

Francis Bacon (1561–1626), and of Isaac Newton

(1642–1727).

The senses in which the word nature and its

several translations are used by Reformed theolo-

gians are even more numerous than those inher-

ited from classical antiquity and the early church.

The best way, drawing on Ronald Hepburn in

“Philosophical Ideas of Nature” (1967), of getting at

this usage is to note the analogies the Reformed

theologians chose to deal with the perennial ques-

tions about fundamental reality comprising the

world and its structure. Those questions are re-

garded as perennial largely because of the opu-

lence of analogies used by different streams of

classical philosophy: geometrical and mathematical

analogies in the case of Anaximander and Pythago-

ras, archetypal and intellective analogies in the

case of Plato, organic and motional in the case of

Aristotle, cosmic and cyclical in the case of the

Stoic philosophers. In these discussions, the termi-

nology was richly varied, especially when trans-

lated from one language to another. The word

natura sometimes translated physis (“nature”),

sometimes ousia (“being”); sometimes substantia

(“substance”) translated them both. When used in

Christian doctrine, a workable agreement about

several major terms was achieved by the time of

the Council of Chalcedon (451), whereby in the

West persona (“person”) translated hypostasis

(“way of being”), substantia translated the unique

ousia of the Trinity, and naturae translated the two

physeis united in the incarnation. Even so, the so-

called monophysite controversy (over whether the

one person Jesus Christ had only one nature)

showed that this usage was not universally ac-

cepted. Each of the main terms had its own history

during the course of medieval philosophy.

Nature and grace in reformed orthodocy

Following one medieval tradition, Reformed the-

ologians sometimes used the term nature in con-

trast to grace, sometimes as a synonym for the

whole of creation including human life, and some-

times as a synonym for the whole of creation ex-

cepting human life. What seems best to character-

ize their view of nature is that they could draw on

any of a number of analogies, so long as the analo-

gies served a view of the universe as that which is

created by God out of nothing and is providen-

tially sustained for an ultimately good end. Or, to

put it another way, benevolent teleology governed

their cosmology in such a way that critical inquiry

into the basic structure of reality was encouraged.

In their history of interpretation, they read 2

Corinthians 4:6 as making the connection between

the human nature united to the eternal word in the

incarnation and nature as the whole cosmos

brought into being by God’s efficacious word: “It is

God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ that

has shone into our hearts to enlighten them with

the knowledge of God’s glory, the glory on the

face of Christ.” According to Johann Heinrich Hei-

degger (1633–1698), the reason God created was

to share his love with another. In this way God can

be called natura naturans (nature which brings

about nature), the uncaused cause who created ex

nihilo (out of nothing) the natura naturata (na-

ture thus brought about), including the secondary

causes through which God’s providentially sustain-

ing word works. The intricacy, order, and beauty

of the universe thus benevolently created and sus-

tained (as “creation continued”) provided motiva-

tion for the study of nature in which the Reformed

theologians were convinced that the hand of God

could be discerned; that is, the wondrous correla-

tion between the microcosm and the macrocosm

helped provide the kind of validation in which

physical experimentation, done with a variety of

analogical worldviews, would flourish.

This use of the primary-secondary causes

scheme, largely developed to claim simultaneously

God’s all inclusive providence and a measure of

creaturely initiative, came to be radically chal-

lenged. However, depending on who was using

the scheme, it could function to encourage physi-

cal investigation. Heidegger, in his 1696 treatment

of divine concurrence, pushed this idea to provide

an intriguing argument for physical inquiry. To dis-

cover order in events necessarily predictable ac-

cording to natural laws is, of course, commend-

able; “ … but God’s providence is manifested

particularly in things contingent” (Heppe p. 248)

God alone, says Heidegger, already understands

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