History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in ChristendomWhite, Andrew Dickson
Religion
History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
White, Andrew Dickson
Religion and science -- History
(168) For Dr. Turner, see his Companion to the Book of Genesis, London
and New York, 1841, pp. 216-219. For McClintock and Strong, see their
Cyclopaedia of Biblical Knowledge, etc., article Deluge. For similar
surrenders of the Deluge in various other religious encyclopedias and
commentaries, see Huxley, Essays on controverted questions, chap. xiii.
The time when the struggle was relinquished by enlightened theologians
of the Roman Catholic Church may be fixed at about 1862, when Reusch,
Professor of Theology at Bonn, in his work on The Bible and Nature,
cast off the old diluvial theory and all its supporters, accepting the
conclusions of science.(169)
(169) See Reusch, Bibel und Natur, chap. xxi.
But, though the sacred theory with the Deluge of Noah as a universal
solvent for geological difficulties was evidently dying, there still
remained in various quarters a touching fidelity to it. In Roman
Catholic countries the old theory was widely though quietly cherished,
and taught from the religious press, the pulpit, and the theological
professor's chair. Pope Pius IX was doubtless in sympathy with this
feeling when, about 1850, he forbade the scientific congress of Italy to
meet at Bologna.(170)
(170) See Whiteside, Italy in the Nineteenth Century, vol. iii, chap.
xiv.
In 1856 Father Debreyne congratulated the theologians of France on their
admirable attitude: "Instinctively," he says, "they still insist upon
deriving the fossils from Noah's Flood."(171) In 1875 the Abbe Choyer
published at Paris and Angers a text-book widely approved by Church
authorities, in which he took similar ground; and in 1877 the Jesuit
father Bosizio published at Mayence a treatise on Geology and the
Deluge, endeavouring to hold the world to the old solution of the
problem, allowing, indeed, that the "days" of Creation were long
periods, but making atonement for this concession by sneers at
Darwin.(172)
(171) See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 472.
(172) See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 478, and Bosizio, Geologie und die
Sundfluth, Mayence, 1877, preface, p. xiv.
In the Russo-Greek Church, in 1869, Archbishop Macarius, of Lithuania,
urged the necessity of believing that Creation in six days of ordinary
time and the Deluge of Noah are the only causes of all that geology
seeks to explain; and, as late as 1876, another eminent theologian of
the same Church went even farther, and refused to allow the faithful to
believe that any change had taken place since "the beginning" mentioned
in Genesis, when the strata of the earth were laid, tilted, and twisted,
and the fossils scattered among them by the hand of the Almighty during
six ordinary days.(173)
(173) See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 472, 571, and elsewhere; also citations
in Reusch and Shields.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account