Natural Theology

Sources

Faith and Reason. The rise of modern science spawned such controversies as the debate over whether or not the universe was the result of divine creation or natural evolution. Intellectuals regarded science as rational and objective rather than intuitive and subjective. The empirical scientific method implied that the scientist understood and controlled the forces of nature. Nothing was mystical, magical, or divine in the laboratory. But at the beginning of the scientific revolution when America was first explored and colonized, faith and reason seemed complementary. Nicholas Copernicus was a Catholic clergyman. Christopher Columbus thought God directed his voyages to America. Carolus Linnaeus believed that God had created an unchanging Chain of Being neither subject to evolution nor to extinction. Cotton Mather was a physician and scientist but also a leading Puritan clergyman. The Protestant leader John Calvin welcomed the discoveries of science. The Quaker William Penn believed that the study of science revealed the laws of nature and their Creator.

Elder Scripture. The most religious and devout Christians in America, the New England Puritans, ironically welcomed the new science. The discoveries of Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Sir Isaac Newton led to greater reverence for God. Knowing that the Earth was not the center of a possibly infinite universe was for Puritans proof of God’s power and benevolence. Indeed, Puritans perceived science as complementing faith. God revealed himself to humans by means of the Old and New Testaments as well as through his works. God’s creation, nature, was considered to be “elder scripture.” The scientific study of nature led to knowledge of God, resulting in wonder and praise. In more simple terms, science strengthened faith.

Deism. During the eighteenth century in Europe and America some scientists and philosophers began to reach conclusions different from those of the Puritans. The new science implied a universe that ran like a machine. This natural machine operated according to laws that never changed. God appeared to deists as the Creator who made a universe that always operated the same way. Franklin, for example, wrote that the “supreme Being” acts “in and upon the Machine of the World.” The scientist, using experimentation, reason, and mathematics, discovered the predictable laws of the universe. God obeyed his own laws and was passive. He set the universe in motion and then sat back to watch, never intervening or performing miracles. God was a craftsman, and the universe was his invention. Deists were not atheists, but they were not Christians either. The idea of Christ’s resurrection contradicted natural law. The deist believed that faith, prayer, and worship of God were meaningless activities. Throughout the 1700s the deists and Puritans debated God’s role in the universe. Although both sides believed in the validity and methods of the new science, they reached vastly different conclusions.

Sources

Jeremy Belknap, The History of New-Hampshire (Boston: Belknap & Young, 1792);

George H. Daniels, Science in American Society: A Social History (New York: Knopf, 1971);

Benjamin Franklin, The Complete Poor Richard Almanacks, 2 volumes (Barre, Mass.: Imprint Society, 1970);

Frederick Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682–1763 (New York: Norton, 1948);

Conrad Wright, The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America (Boston: Starr King Press, 1955);

Louis B. Wright, Cultural Life of the American Colonies (New York: Harper, 1957).