We are really privileged today to be speaking with Dr. James Ungureanu. Dr. Ungureanu was historian in residence in the George L masie. program in history at the University of Wisconsin Madison and also author of the text that we'll be discussing today, science, religion and the Protestant tradition retracing the origins of conflict. Dr. andriana, thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure, Jonathan. Great to be here. Thanks, Brianna. First of all, if you'd be willing a little bit to share your story, how is it that you came to be a historian of science?
Well, kind of by accident, really. I started off as a philosophy major and then through certain events I became interested in in the history of science and ended up doing my PhD with a well known historian of science and Australia. And I never really wanted to be a historian. You know, I was born and raised in America. Both of my parents are from Romania, though they immigrated to the States during Ceausescu in the late 1970s. Like most immigrants under such circumstances, they kind of had a hard time finding stability, so they moved around a lot. But I grew up in Sacramento, California, about an hour north of the Bay Area. And again, never really thought about being a historian I was always sort of artistic as a child, my my brother and I used to draw comic books together. All four years of high school, I had art as an elective and even sold a few things that art shows. So in those young and naive years, I often thought about becoming a comic book artist. My last year in high school, though, brought me into the world of computers, I believe this was about 1999. My school had a great computer lab and I started to teach myself AutoCAD software which is used especially in the field of architecture and, and design and I went to Barnes and Noble or borders, and just sit there for hours reading these AutoCAD manuals. My parents couldn't afford a computer or or AutoCAD software. But after graduating from high school or applying to small architectural firms and in the area, I got a call back from one and got the job. It was for a local residential architect, mostly residential housing and subdivisions, and drew up all the plans are called blueprints back then, but I had a lot of fun doing it and learned a lot about the trade. A couple years later, I started working for architecture, a commercial architectural firm and we did big commercial projects like club houses, shopping centers, hotels, religious buildings and whatnot. But something was was missing. You're no longer living with my my folks. But I needed something. I needed something more. So while I was working as an architectural drafter, I started taking philosophy courses, a local community college, I began reading authors like Plato and Aristotle and I found Paul Davies God and the new physics Davies is a English theoretical physicist and, and a lot of his books he he talks about Western religious thought and he really introduced me to a number of important theologians like San Agustin and Thomas Aquinas, and the Bacon's Roger bacon and Francis Bacon and the like. This sort of became a spiritual awakening for me, they, these authors introduced me to the Bible, and the Bible, ultimately led me to Christ. So I knew early on in my my walk, that Christianity was not just this feeling of absolute dependence, but also has this rich intellectual history. And, and at that point, I decided to quit architecture and pursue a degree in philosophy and enrolled at the University of California Davis. Unfortunately, the way the philosophy the way philosophy was done at Davis, at least at that time was very analytical. The professors weren't interested in telling the stories of the philosophers we studied, what inspired them what, what motivated them for arguing the way they did, so I ended
the program at first, I needed more context, I needed more biography as it were. And so in addition to concentrating on philosophy, I added a second major in religious studies, which was amazing. So in the Religious Studies Program at UCD, and we had the option did read a lot. We read the Church Fathers read the Dead Sea Scrolls, we read the Apocrypha and you still do pygar fun some of the most pioneering scholarship on the study of religion. So it was it was an incredible experience. And there was one professor in particular at UCD that encouraged me to look more closely at the debate between science and religion. And her name is Alison coudair. She became my honors thesis supervisor. Her research mostly focuses on the interaction between religion and science in the West with sort of a special emphasis on the more esoteric elements like natural magic and qabalah on alchemy, and she was one of the last students of Francis Yates and if you know anything about Yates, her work is mostly in Renaissance thought. And she she taught at Warburg Institute in London, and she's most well known for her book, Bruno, and the hermetic tradition, which was published around the 1960s or thereabouts. So it's no surprise that early in my academic career, I was also interested in the same things. But for the undergraduate degree, I completed an honors thesis on the patristic period and natural philosophy that's early the early church natural philosophy looking at theologians like San Agustin and Roger bacon and how they responded to Greco Roman philosophy and Arabic theology. The thesis was essentially a response to sociologists of religion, Rodney Stark, and his book for the glory of God, which was published, I think, in 2003. Its subtitle reads, how monotheism led to reformations, science, witch hunts, and the end of slavery. So it's kind of a very fun book. But I took issue, at least at that time, I took issue with his emphasis that modern science was founded on a particularly Christian theological foundation. Again, I think I would retract some of my criticism now, but I contended at that time that his this particular Christian philosophy or Christian theology that's dark spoke about which greatly indebted to philosophy and theology outside Christian thought, as well. And again, you have this kind of Greco Roman influence and ideas coming from the east and so on. So after Davis, I had the choice of going to fuller Theological Seminary, or Trinity evangelical Divinity School, I decided to go to Trinity because most of my wife's family lived in in the Midwest at that time, so and we also wanted to start a family of our own too. So it was kind of a good idea to have family near living nearby, right. So Trinity Ted is an amazing place. The first year there, though, it was very difficult for me, I entered in the MBA program and immediately felt lost in the sense that I didn't really see as a good fit. I took the Greek classes, the Greek extra Jesus classes, those were a lot of fun, but I didn't really see myself ever using Hebrew in the future. I kind of knew I knew what I wanted to do. But then I had to take all these personal assessment courses that seemed designed more for a pastor and a scholar and training so but I had great advisors that attends church historian Scott managed and john Woodbridge, and I think we share that right, you had Scott and john. And they encouraged me to switch from the MDF to an MA in church history. And that definitely did the trick. I became a historian of Christian thought and absolutely, absolutely loved studying the history of Christian Christian ideas. But after Trinity, I took a year break from school, my wife and I tried to travel to South Korea to teach English. And that was 2012 to 2013, I think, coming back to state so I wanted to get back into it as it were, and work on my PhD. And the first person I thought about working with was raw numbers. Your audience might be interested in his work. Ron is a
well known historian of science and religion, he's done a lot of work on creationism. So when we actually when we moved back to the States, we moved back to Madison, Wisconsin, and Ron teaches at the university, or he used to teach at the University of Madison, Wisconsin. And, but unfortunately, Ron had just retired when when we when we came back to the states and he was no longer taking PhD students. But he he was an amazing guy. He was very open and welcoming and talking to me about various topics and getting in touch with others and, and during one of our conversations, he mentioned the work of Peter Harrison, and I had read some of Peters work while in grad school. I really liked it. I loved it. And I went ahead and picked up other books that he's published and articles that he's published and Ron told me that Peter was now working in Australia. Peter was the director of science or science and religion center. At the University of Oxford, but he had just stepped down from that position. And now he was back in Australia where he's originally from at the University of Queensland. So I called Peter up and we chatted for a little bit, and he encouraged me to apply. So I did, and I got a full ride scholarship to do a PhD at U q. Initially, I wanted to work on narratives of the scientific revolution among Enlightenment thinkers, especially the French philosophically, but Peter suggested a narrower topic, the so called conflict thesis, and that's what I ended up writing for my dissertation.
You are a true intellectual and spiritual adventurer, Dr. Boone Gree. on there. So thank you so much. That's a remarkable story. And we could actually take hours to travel down some of those pathways to hear about intellectual influences on on this incredible book. And one influence that stuck out to me too, is your a comic book cartoonist. And I was struck by the vividness of the picture that you or your publisher chose for the cover.
Right? It's it's actually a from a very popular satire magazine in the 19th century. Puck and not puck, that's the English side punch, American satire magazine on 19th century and, and the artists was a former Catholic, but he had embraced this new theology, it's this new religion that made science into a religion. So the cover is really interesting, because you see, you see, it's almost like a lecture hall, but you have bookshelves with the Bible and the Quran, but also scientific textbooks on the same shelf. So it's equating science and religion together.
There's a whole story being told right there on the cover. Thanks for helping us see that. Dogs ruin Briana. So let me dive into this book a little bit. It's complicated. So give me just a second to set the table for us, if you will, the book science, religion and the Protestant tradition retracing the origins of conflict. It's available from the University of Pittsburgh press last year 2019. And you're exploring the conflict thesis. So what is that? Well, that is we understand the idea that religion and science are fundamentally irreconcilable. They're in conflict, and that religion has long acted as the Doggett opponent to scientific progress. What's interesting in your analysis there, and what I had no idea about, and perhaps our viewers also did not know is that this thesis can be traced to a specific circle that's producing literature arguing for that. So you pinpoint the origin of the conflict thesis, to the writings of john William Draper, who died in 1882. And also to Andrew Dixon, white 1832 to 1918. So Draper, who acted as the founder of The New York University School of Medicine, he published a text called history of the conflict between religion and science. In 1875, White, who acted as the first president of Cornell University publishes a history of the warfare of science with theology and Christendom in 1896. So how did you come to see that the story of this clash between religion and science really is a particular historical narrative, which was largely constructed in the late 19th century?
Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right, when I'm not sure the conflict thesis is this idea that science and religion are fundamentally in conflict always have been, always will be. This is a history of war. And in that sense, it's a historical argument, right. Most proponents of the conflict thesis maintain if you look back in history at every moment in the advance of science or some new learning, religion has attempted to oppose or press or deny that progress and you have notions like Christianity was responsible for the demise of ancient science that the medieval period was an age of intellectual darkness, Galileo was imprisoned or tortured for advancing copernicanism or that Christian theologians opposed Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and so on, and the list is endless. And the conflict thesis has many supporters today, the so called New atheists are some of its cheap representatives. But so is Hollywood and the media, you see this in movies and TV shows, also news networks, popular history books, even academic textbooks promote such views. If you look at some introductory to science textbooks, in middle school or high school, they also portray this kind of conflict between science and religion. It's really kind of our part of our modern self understanding. It's very much part of our secular age and in some ways, essential to it. Now historians of science, of course, have turned this narrative on its head. They have been rejecting such simplistic views of science and religion for really kind of a century now and quite remarkably, they Trace the origins of this view to the 19th century specifically to Anglo American writers and that being john William Draper, and Andrew Dixon white. They're big figures in the history, historical studies of science and religion. So let me give you a little bit of background to Draper and white. As you said Draper was actually born in England. He studied chemistry and Medicine at the University of College London, known then as London University, which was established in 1826. His father died almost as soon as he started his studies, however, he nevertheless completed his certificate in chemistry. And then after that emigrated to the US because he had family living in Virginia colony for some time, he established himself fairly quickly. As a leading scientist. He taught at a couple of different schools before becoming head of chemistry at New York University in 1837, who is known for his photochemistry and is thought to be the first person to take a photograph of the human face and that being his sister. He was also one of the earliest to practice Astro photography. And if you look in archives and see pictures of the moon, it's probably for Draper's camera. But Draper gave up chemistry and science in general, for history, his most well known for his history of the conflict between religion and science. In it, Draper claimed that the history of science was a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers. The expanse of force of the human intellect on the one side and the compression, arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other. He went on to explain that faith is in its nature, unchangeable, stationary, fixed as it were. Science on the other hand, is progressive, and eventually a divergence must take place between them.
Andrew Dixon White was never a scientist Actually, he was a man of literature. White was born in New York. Around the time Draper and his family were making their way to America from England. White parents believed he was destined for the pulpit, and father sent him to an Episcopalian college but white found the curriculum at the college and uninspired to say the least and he actually ran away and demanded to be sent to Yale College. He had something of a falling out with his father on this, but father ultimately relented and sent him to Yale to study history and English literature. After college. He went on this grand three year European tour visiting places like Oxford and Cambridge and I spent some time studying in France and Berlin. Then several months, exploring or backpacking, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, before coming back home to do postgraduate work at Yale. In 1857. At the remarkable age of 25, White was appointed history professor at the University of Michigan. He often complained in his diaries that he not being taken seriously, because he had such a young face. I don't blame them. At the outbreak of the Civil War, though he resigned his post because he was unexpectedly nominated and elected for New York State Senate. It was during this time that he met Ezra Cornell, a Quaker who had made a fortune in the telegraph business. Together, they founded Cornell University. White became its first president, but he was sort of an absentee president as he had a number of diplomatic appointments, first in the Dominican Republic, then in Berlin and Russia, and eventually resigned his presidency and in 1885, to work exclusively on research and writing. He also contemplated running for the US presidency. So while I was very much a politically remind minded reformer and but before all that, before all that he was known for his battlefields of science lecture in 1869, in which he traced the great sacred struggle for the liberty of science, and in this lecture, he reviewed one by one battles, a legend battles fought in Australia, astronomy, chemistry, anatomy, geology, and he took this lecture and expanded it into a small book in 1876, and titled The warfare of science. And then after resigning from Cornell, he spent the next couple of decades expanding this lecture further and eventually it turned into his two volume masterpiece the history of the warfare of science with theology and Christendom, published in 1896. So according to historians of science, Draper white set the terms of the bait, you know, although feud cite them today or have ever even heard of them, most to claim there's some kind of conflict between science religion, usually follow one or more The narratives they set out in their books. So, short historian believe they have found the origins of this narrative and Draper white, but I don't think that's quite right. Actually, in my book, I offer kind of a different perspective. You know, many historians, for example, think of Draper in particular had something against the Roman Catholic Church. And no doubt he did, but really started everyone else. At the time, anti Catholic sentiment was at its height, in the late 19th century, and especially in America. So in terms of white historians argue that his religious criticism of his beloved Cornell University kind of set him off. But white had already formulated his views prior to founding Cornell University he was, it was actually teaching this narrative or parts of this narrative to undergraduate students at the University of Michigan. So something else is going on here. And I think, I think one of the reasons why we have failed why historians have mistaken to have failed to understand Draper and white is because, ironically, we have ignored what they actually said. They were doing.
For example, it's often mentioned, but left unanalyzed, that Draper's his history of the conflict was largely a condensed version of previously published works. And most importantly, Draper had published his history of the intellectual development of Europe in 1863. So this is a two volume book that was published nearly a decade before his history, the conflict and, and here and this particular book, he made a crucial distinction that most historians of science have either forgotten or really just kind of ignored. In discussing the so called paganism, nation of Christianity under Roman Emperor Constantine Draper distinguish between Christianity and ecclesiastical organizations, and he wrote, the former that is Christianity is a gift of God. The latter. ecclesiastical organizations are the product of human exigencies and human invention and therefore open to criticism, or if need be to condemnation. So he argued that the paganism ation of Christianity had resulted in the tyranny of theology over thought, and he declared that those who had known what religion was an apostolic days might look with boundless surprise on what was now engrafted upon it, and was passing under its name. Even his notorious history of conflict under closer inspection continues to make these distinctions. He argued that he would only consider the the Orthodox or extremist views and not the moderate ones. He expressed concern that traditionary faith was leading the so called intelligent classes to give up on religious faith altogether. So his narrative, in short, was intended to show that the decline of religious faith was a direct consequence of a politicized or materialized his term, materialized Christianity, not up science, and white shared much of the same sentiments in his historical narrative. He argued that the interference with science and the suppose interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in evils both to religion and to science. So he's, he's separating, it's really interesting what he's doing. He's separating religion from theology, and by separating religion from theology, white denounce that the most mistaken of all mistaken ideas with the conviction that religion and science are enemies. So while science has conquered, dogmatic theology, he argued, it will go hand in hand with religion. So the whole point of his narrative he later wrote in his autobiography, which was published in 1918, the whole point was to strengthen religious teachers by enabling them to see the evils in the past which for the sake of religion itself, they ought to guard against a future. So in other words, both Draper and white were trying to find a remarkably trying to find ways to reconcile religion and science that promote their conflict or warfare. And, interestingly enough, many of their readers and you see this in private correspondence, periodical press, newspaper reviews, academic reviews and journals. They also believe that Draper and white were seeking a reconciliation between science and religion. And in particular, a number of religiously liberal magazines on both sides of the Atlantic viewed Draper and white as their work as an entirely Protestant project. And we'll we'll get to that in a minute here so this, this Protestant emphasis has also clearly spelled out the criticism they received. And you have orthodox readers orthodox journals. more conservative Protestant journals also saw that they were trying to reconcile science and religion, but they argued ultimately they failed. And perhaps some of the most perceptive readers came from the Catholic tradition. Our viewer for the Catholic World Magazine, for instance, accused Draper of repeating and multiplying time, all the time worn off for food and ridiculous stories which stain the pages have long forgotten Protestant controversialist on the same accusation was leveled at at White as well. So here's the rub. Their proposals were not particularly new. What they did was sort of consolidate a number of narratives that were already in circulation that were commonplace, particularly among Protestants, Protestant theologians, historians, men and women of science. The conflict they spoke about was an internal one between contending Protestant groups. You have the in one corner, the new theology emerging among liberal Protestantism in which de emphasized scripture, dogmatism, institutionalism, and the like. And the other corner you have so called traditionary, faith creeds and doctrines, orthodoxy, and in general, more conservative Protestantism. And and this is where things get really complicated and messy because neither liberal nor conservative, Protestant Protestantism was monolithic, right, you think of think of them in terms of separate streams or perhaps connected by different outlets and then once and for Draper, he advocated a return to a pure, more rational Christianity. And if anyone's wondering, this idea comes from people like Francis Bacon and the so called English DS and, and in addition to folks like philosopher john Locke, or even, or even Isaac Newton, they, they all look back to the Protestant Reformation as reformation not only of religion, but sign for natural philosophy. So Draper seem to copy from historians like Edward Gibbon, but also from historians, from the German Lutheran tradition, English clergyman, and so he his understanding of church history, Draper almost relied completely on Protestant historians he even cited with john Calvin stoeckel austerity because particularly his doctrine of predestination, because he believed God has from all eternity decreed, whatever comes to pass. So Draper, in a way is conflating his deterministic view of the laws of nature with Calvin doctrine of predestination. But ultimately, the hero Draper's hero was Unitarian minister, and chemist, Joseph Priestley. And one of his lectures to students, Draper actually tells them, we must not impute it to mental weakness, that priestly pass through so many religious beliefs before arriving at unitarianism, but rather to the pursuit of truth. So clearly, Draper is no atheist. But he looked back to the rational religion found among 17th and 18th century Protestant intellectuals who viewed this new knowledge as evidence of the creative power of God. In a sense, this is kind of a new natural theology, and Draper can be firmly placed in this Protestant tradition.
Why wasn't the same liberal Protestant stream as Draper, but I guess in a different segment, or different course, if you will, because he did not look to the past, but rather to contemporary conceptualizations, or reconceptualization of religion, religion is found white believe in moral conscience and intuition and sentiment. This definition of religion, of course, was not new, exemplify the essential elements of the romantic movement, and which had become by the late 19th century, kind of a central component of liberal Protestant thought. White loved Germany, studying in Germany, he visited Wartburg Castle where Luther was protected under Prince Frederick and his diary white wrote about how when he visited the castle, he sort of communed with the spirit of Luther. While in Germany, we also studied under Karl Ritter and Leopold von ronk. He also was reading folks like Lessing and gritter and unsalted Sharla, mocker, and other so called mediating German theologians. blessing, for example, talks about the evolution of religion, that he maintained that all face would one day lead to truth. So no creed, or dogma was complete or final. Christianity was ever evolving thing like the rest of civilization. So white, this became part of White's own worldview. And Schumacher convinced them that religion, True Religion is found, not in doctrines or books or dogma, but intuition, feeling the sort of inward witness of the heart. So Draper and white were flowing down the same liberal Protestant stream, but in different posts, if you will. And if they put it in just a sentence, Draper followed religion of the head, whereas white followed a religion of the heart,
and your own green, new thank you so much for that fascinating account. And thank you for probing is to draw those string distinctions. What did science mean for the person of the 19th century? What were some of the landmark discoveries that sort of defined scientific thought for the 19th century person?
No, it's an interesting question because it was sort of an age of transition, early decades in the 19th century in Britain, that sort of experience something like a communications revolution, and one of Draper's classmates from the University of London. philosopher john Stuart Mill, wrote a series of articles and a radical newspaper, entitled The spirit of the age famil, the spirit of the age was an age of transition. Now, he wrote the march of the intellect, had pitted men of the present age against men of the past, and he pronounced that mankind had outgrown old into institutions and old doctrine and that change had taken place in the human mind. So that the early decades of 19th century had witnessed kind of this ever expanding scope of popular education. Now Popular Science publisher, Robert chambers, for instance, was the author of kind of an sensational book, vestiges of the natural history of creation, it was published in 1844. And in this book, chambers advanced a theory of progressive development based on uniform natural laws like Draper, he suggested that there are stages of this progress then kind of an organic metaphor of the stages of life and individually you see you have a childhood and you have a youth middle age and then old age, for chambers, believed his vestiges his book presented a case for a new natural theology and made constant reference to God and divine author great ruler of nature author of nature creator and an another other metaphors so when numerous naturalists criticize vestiges chambers reminded readers in a sequel published in 1846, that he never intended to write a scientific work and that the vestiges sought to articulate a new worldview rather than a scientific theory. So you know, one of my guiding questions and writing the book is what helped make Draper what helped make the conflict thesis real. And how did Draper and white ideas come to to such prominence? And like all good detective stories, there's a cast of characters central here besides Draper and white was a man named Edward Livingston humans. Or Yeomans he was a science editor of D. Appleton and CO, the publishing Empire and the 19th century America and a Newman's published, promoted defended for an American audience the works of Charles Darwin, biologist Thomas H. Huxley, physicist john Tyndall and evolutionary philosopher Herbert Spencer, and many other English and European scientists and, more importantly, it was humans. He was the key figure in disseminating and popularizing the narratives of Draper and why humans began publishing their work just as British and American publishing was undergoing a remarkable revolution. He was at the forefront of this evolution in establishing new international copyright laws, and popularizing scientific knowledge and an extremely successful Popular Science monthly magazine, which is no nothing like the one today but in addition to the magazine, he published his international scientific series, it was a series about 70 volumes, which intended on diffusing the latest scientific advances to a more global audience. And this was an 1870s so right before he started publishing, Draper and white humans were also a member of what was called the free religious Association. Now, in 1825, the American Unitarian Unitarian association was established to promote a sort of a more humanistic, naturalistic
Christology Understanding of Jesus, they offered also more rationalistic interpretation of Scripture and more general optimistic view of human nature. But after Civil War, controversy and schism emerged within the nomination, and some members decided that you're going to terrorism still harbored a residual orthodoxy thesis. Founded in 1867. In Boston, the free religious associations sought to promote the principles of free thought and moral philosophy without any reference to institutional Christianity, you know, composed of a diverse assortment of radical Unitarians, Universalist, spiritualist transcendentalist, scientific theists and other disaffected religious minorities. The free religious Association, advanced the new religion of humanity, so to speak. And according to its first constitution, it aspired to promote the interests of Pure religion, to encourage the scientific study of theology, and to increase fellowship in the spirit. Humans actually served as one of its vice presidents. So in 1873, at an annual meeting, he delivered an address and titled, The religious work of science to religious work of science. And in this speech, humans announced that science has long been regarded as still widely believed to be the antagonist of religion. But the time has come, he proclaimed, when it will become, it will be accepted as its most powerful ally, and best friend. So according to human science, and religion are not mutually exclusive. It is the Office of Science to explore the works of God, he argued, and religion to deal with the sentiments and emotions which go out toward the divine author of these works. So men of science explain, devote their lives to exploring God's works. So, the labor and discovering divine truths of nature, and this sense, according to humans, science is religious work. And as religious work, science has attained its grandest achievement, he argued in revealing the evolution for growth of religion. So whenever conflict emerge, it occurred not between science and religion, but between theology and science. Humans believe that the ology has always been the adversary of science. Men of science have always faced opposition of theologians, so you can see why Draper and white narrative would have appealed to humans but for humans, any kind of Orthodoxy or dogmatism must come to an end, if religion is to grow and advance. He believed that the history of science demonstrated not only the progress of knowledge, but also the progress of religion. And he published numerous liberal theologians and his magazine, this new theology, this religion of the future moving in the late 19th century. So in this sense, human saw Draper and white and others like them as peacemakers he labeled them peacemakers. Whether or not humans and the writers you published were actual peacemakers, I think is beside the point. For for humans and many other Protestant intellectuals at the time, the separation of religion or religious feeling or piety, from accepted creeds and of Orthodoxy provided the means of reconciling the discord between new knowledge and Ancient Faith, and in the hands of late 19th century scientific naturalist who became a weapon against all forms of religion. So well, religious views necessarily shared. Well, humans, religious views shared some similarities with liberal Protestantism. He rejected any kind of doctrinal belief of traditional Christianity. So he did not believe Protestantism would bring about a final reconciliation, Mike Draper and white did. But the idea of this new theology is freer religion than even what the most liberal Protestants could offer.
Dr. andriana Thank you so much for sharing with us the fruit of many years of research into the so called conflict thesis. This is a beautiful piece of work you've done, and we can refer viewers to who want the full story. This is not a thin book. The full story is in science religion in the Protestant tradition, retracing the origins of conflict. Thank you very much. Dr. andriana. If I can ask a question just about the the modern period today just flash forward to the future to the present moment. So do you see any hope for the reconciliation of the religious and scientific worldviews in our own public square today? What's your view
Yeah, you know, it's it's a tough question and something that I've, I'm still thinking about. But, um, a long time ago, philosopher and theologian, Ian barber came up with sort of this fourfold topology that describing the relationship between science religion, and the first was conflict. Second was independence, a third would dialogue. And the last one was integration. And I still think these are useful. But the main issue with them is that it still relies, it relies on the categories of science, religion, or science and faith. And, and those are often talked about an abstraction. And because of that, they're not very helpful, simply also, because that wasn't ever the issue. Right? It wasn't the issue for Draper and white. And I think it's still not the issue today. It's never been about these abstract notions of science and religion. It was always something more something about worldview, something about contending theologies. So exploring the history of the conflict thesis like I, I've done, it's really an exercise in the history of religious thought. And in this case, Christian thought. And here, I think a more hopeful approach, a more helpful guide is what Neo orthodox theologian Richard Niebuhr called the enduring problem. And this is sort of the many sided debate about the relations of Christianity and civilization or Christianity and culture. And this is by no means a new one, Christian perplexity. And this area has been around since the very beginning on Niebuhr had five categories, you know, the Christ against culture of Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture and paradox. And then the last one Christ, the transformer of culture, and in the history of Christianity and science, we see various formulations of these categories, perhaps even combinations and play. So when I when I think, I often think about the early church, and, and we might find examples there, help us move forward today. And I'm reminded, and you probably know this better than I do have the the letter of a diabetes, am I pronouncing that right letter two diabetes, it was an apologetical letter to a student of Christianity, defending ways to defend the Christian faith against criticism. And it's a letter that was written somewhere on the second century, late second century. And there's this beautiful passage, where the author writes that Christians are distinguished from other men, neither by country, nor language, nor customs, which they observe, they are, they inhabit cities of their, they neither inhabit cities of their own know or employ a particular form of speech, nor lead a life is which is marked by an out by any kind of singularity, you know, they inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according to the lot of each of them has determined so they, they, what they're not different Christians are not different from the rest of us. But there is there is something there is one particular thing that's it says that display in their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life, this mode of life, according to the author of the letter is the slow, this meekness and humility, which we have convenient, fused into it by by God through His redeeming love and his creative work. So Christians are not just Christians are just like everyone else. And yet, what is unique, or what's supposed to be unique is this humility and love for one another. And this idea is picked up by St. Augustine, perhaps the most influential figure in the early church. And you know, St. Agustin had this notion that all truth is God's truth. And I think that remains relevant to Christians today and science. We're called to bring all human learning, research and discovery to bear on on fundamental question these big questions in life and, at the same time, St. Augustine also sought to defend the integrity of Genesis against philosophers who criticized it as legend or irrational. He argued in response that human language is tricky, and to understand the meaning of words, we must be careful to discern their intentions. And when it comes to the biblical text, we must be attentive not only to a divine source, but also the human element. San Agustin believe that we become obstacles of salvation to others when we equate scientific theories with the meaning of the Bible and not much has changed today. I think the Augustinian solution to conflict, his humility both in the interpretation of nature and the interpretation of Scripture. But But more than that, I think for St. Augustine, Christ is the transformer of culture in the sense that a crisis supposed to redirect reinvigorate and regenerate the life of humanity and expressed in all our work. So, he sees this work as a something fundamentally good, but at present, perverted and corrupted, the good nature of man has been corrupted. And man, as creature is made to obey, to worship to glorify the depend on on God, for everything but according to sin against them. Our sin lies in turning away from God to ourselves or to some other inferior value. From this root sin, Arise other disorders in human life disorder extends to every phase of culture, you have wars, social injustice, dominion over others, dominion over creation, but by humbling human pride and detaching man from himself, on the one hand, by revealing God's love, and attaching man to this one good Christ restores what has become corrupted and redirects what had been perverted and this Augustinian sense the life of reason, the intellectual life is reoriented and redirected by being given a new principle. This redeemed reason begins with faith in God and love of the order, which God has put in all creation. There's room in this report approach to think of things like mathematics, logic, the natural sciences, even the Fine Arts and Technology, all these things may become instruments of that new love of God that rejoices in the whole of creation. So everything I dare say even the political life is subject to that great conversion as long as we begin with God, and there had been a host of Christian thinkers who have who have thought this way. You have plenty examples, we just need to look for them. Calvin was very much like San Agustin he looked at the vocations of mankind as activities in which they may express their love and faith and may glorify God and their calling. And
I'm reminded of the classic Krishna apologetic orthodoxy, by English writer only theologian, Gk Chesterton, and he spoke of the need for a democracy of the dead. And what he meant by that is that we cannot ignore the voices of those who, who came before us. Paying attention close attention to tradition prevents us from submitting too quickly to that small, arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. As Christians we live and move and have our being with this communion of the saints. And as this was reformed theologian Karl Barth observed near the end of his life, in order to serve the community of today, theology itself must be rooted in the community of yesterday.
Thanks, Ron, Brianna, we're so grateful to have been able to speak with you today, if I can ask a question that we ask all of the interviewees on this, this program, and that is this, what would it mean for the church to be united? Today, we're asking theologians all around the world to help us envision what a reunited or a United Church would look like? How would we recognize this United Church? And what is it that we can do as individual Christians to pursue the Unity for which Jesus prayed in john 17?
Again, it's a very hard question, but I do you believe there needs to be, in a way, a sort of theological retrieval. We need to look to the past in order to help us for the future. And I think looking to the past, we see certain voices that help us avoid contemporary polarized discussions. And we are and I think with those voices, we can find a way to move forward. But if we ignore those voices, I think we just keep making the same mistakes. We're making it as we have been.
We are so grateful today to have been speaking with Dr. James inria, new historian in residence in the George L. masie. program in history at the University of Wisconsin Madison and also authored the text that we've been discussing today, science religion in the Protestant tradition, retracing the origins of conflict, Dr. James Boone Breanna, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for the opportunity. Appreciate you. Take care