01.4b. Calvinism & Science, pt. 2

You perceive immediately how radical and fundamental this Calvinistic solution of the perplexing problem is; Science is not undervalued or pushed aside, but postulated for the cosmos as a whole and all its parts. The claim is maintained that your science has to form a complete whole. And the difference between the science of the Normalists and Abnormalists is not founded upon any differing result of investigation, but upon the undeniable difference which distinguishes the self-consciousness of the one from that of the other. Free science is the stronghold we defend against the attack of her tyrannical twin-sister. The Normalist tries to do us violence even in our own consciousness. He tells us that our self consciousness must needs be uniform with his own, and that everything else we imagine we find in ours stands condemned as self delusion. In other words, the Normalist wishes to wrest from us the very thing which, in our self-consciousness, is the highest and holiest gift for which a continual stream of gratitude wells up from our hearts to God. He calls a lie in our own souls that which is more precious and certain to us than our life. With royal pride our consciousness of faith, and the indignation of our heart, rise up against all this. We resign ourselves to the fate of being slighted and oppressed in the world, but we refuse to be dictated to by anyone in the sanctuary of our heart. We do not assail the liberty of the Normalist to build a well construed science from the premises of his own consciousness, but our right and liberty to do the same thing we are determined to defend, if needs be, at any cost.

The parts are now exchanged. Not so very long ago the principal positions of Abnormalism were looked upon as axioms for all sciences in almost all universities, and the few Normalists, who at that time opposed the principle of their antagonists, found it difficult to find a chair. First they were persecuted, then outlawed, after that at the most tolerated. But at present they are the masters of the situation, control all influence, fill ninety per cent of all professorial chairs, and the result is that the Abnormalist, who has been forced out of the official house, is now obliged to look for a place where he may lay down his head. Formerly, we showed them the door, and now this sinful assault upon their liberty is by God’s righteous judgment avenged by their turning us out into the street, and so it becomes the question, if the courage, the perseverance, the energy, which enabled them to win. their suit at last, will be found now in a still higher degree, with Christian scholars. May God grant it! You cannot, nay, you even may not think of it, deprive him, whose consciousness differs from yours, of freedom of thought, of speech and of the press. That they, from their standpoint pull down everything that is holy in your estimation, is unavoidable. Instead of seeking relief for your scientific conscience in downhearted complaints, or in mystic feeling, or in unconfessional work, the energy and the thoroughness of our antagonists must be felt by every Christian scholar as a sharp incentive himself also to go back to his own principles in his thinking, to renew all scientific investigation on the lines of these principles, and to glut the press with the burden of his cogent studies. If we console ourselves with the thought that we may without danger leave secular science in the hands of our opponents, if we only succeed in saving theology, ours will be the tactics of the ostrich. To confine yourself to the saving of your upper room, when the rest of the house is on fire, is foolish indeed. Calvin long ago knew better, when he asked for a Philosophia Christiana, and after all every faculty, and in these faculties every single science, is more or less connected with the antithesis of principles, and should consequently be permeated by it. As little may you seek your safety in shutting your eyes to the actual conditions of things, wherein so many Christians imagine they find a safe shield. Everything astronomers or geologists, physicists or chemists, zoologists or bacteriologists, historians or archaeologists bring to light has to be recorded, detached of course from the hypothesis they have slipped behind it and from the conclusions they have drawn from it, –but every fact has to be recorded by you, also, as a fact, and as a fact that is to be incorporated as well in your science as in theirs. In order, however, to make this possible, university life has to be subjected again, just as in the days when Calvinism began its splendid career, to a radical change. Of late, university life all over the world presumed that science grew up only from one homogeneous human consciousness, and that nothing but learning and ability determined whether you might claim a professorial chair or not. No one thought, like William the Silent when he founded the Leyden University over against that of Louvain, of two lines of universities, opposed to one another on account of radical difference of principle. Since, however, the world-wide conflict between the Normalists and Abnormalists broke out in full force, the need of a division of university-life began again to be felt more generally on both sides. The first in the field were (I speak only of Europe) the unbelieving Normalists themselves, who founded the Université Libre of Brussels. Before this in the same Belgium the Roman Catholic university of Louvain, in virtue of old traditions, had been placed in opposition to the neutral-universities of Liege and Ghent. In Switzerland a university arose at Freiburg, renowned, although yet young, as an embodiment of the Roman Catholic principle. In Great Britain the same principle is followed in Dublin. In France, Roman Catholic faculties are pitted against the faculties of the State institutions. And also in the Netherlands, Amsterdam saw the birth of the Free University, for the general cultivation of the sciences on the foundation of the Calvinistic principle.

If now, according to the demands of Calvinism, Church and State withdraw, I do not say their liberal gifts but their high authority, from university-life, in order that the university may be allowed to take root and flourish in its own soil, then certainly the division, which is already begun. will be accomplished of itself and undisturbed, and in this domain also it will be seen that only a peaceful separation of the adherents of antithetic principles warrants progress, –honest progress, –and mutual understanding. We here call upon History as our witness. First, the emperors of Rome tried to realize the false idea of one State, but the division of their universal monarchy into a multitude of independent nations was needed to develop the hidden political powers of Europe. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe yielded to the enchantment of one world-Church, until the reformation dispelled this delusion, also, thus opening the way for a higher development of Christian life. Nowhere else is this as clearly seen as in the United States of America, where denominational multiformity gave a separate Church-embodiment to every differentiation of principle. In the idea of one Science only, the old curse of uniformity is yet maintained. But of this also it may be prophesied that the days of its artificial unity are numbered, that it will split up, and that in this domain also at least the Roman Catholic, the Calvinistic and the Evolutional principles will cause to spring up different spheres of scientific life, which will flourish in a multiformity of universities. We must have systems in science, coherence in instruction, unity in education. That is only really free, which, while it is strictly bound to its own principle, has the power to free itself from all unnatural bonds. The final result, therefore, will be, thanks to Calvinism, which has opened for us the way, that liberty of science will also triumph at last; first by guaranteeing full power to every leading life-system to reap a scientific harvest from its own principle; –and secondly, by refusing the scientific name to whatsoever investigator dare not unroll the colors of his own banner, and does not show emblazoned on his escutcheon in letters of gold the very principle for which he lives, and from which his conclusions derive their power.

Footnotes for Lecture 4

1. (Ed.) Justus Lipsius, 1547-1606 linguist, critic, and humanist R. C. He was in turn Lutheran, Reformed, and again Roman Catholic. At his death he was historian of the king of Spain. Tiberius Hemsterhuis, philologist, 1685 –1766; F. Hemsterhuis, nephew of Tiberius, 1721 –1790, philosopher, moralist. Herman Boerhave, very famous as physician, 1668 –1738

2. (Ed.) The invention of the telescope is attributed to Lipperhey of Middelburg, about 1600; of the microscope to Z. Jansen (1590), and of the thermometer, as well as the barometer, to C. Drebbel. Drebbel in 1619 exhibited Jansen’s compound microscope to James I. Anton van Leeuwenhoek, 1632-1723, was one of the most successful pioneer microscopists.

3. (Ed.) In his Encyclopedia of Theology, II, p. 29, Dr Kuyper defines science as an impulse in the human spirit that the cosmos to which he is related organically, may be reflected plastically in us, according to its moments, (causes, originating things), and may be comprehended logically, in its relations. Cf. p. 168

4. (Ed.) Frederick Borromeo (1564-1631) cardinal, archbishop of Milan. During the famine and pest at Milan, he fed 2,000 poor daily.

5. (Ed.) Petrus Plancius, 1622, St. Steven called him “le tres-docte geograph.”