MARCELLO PERA

10       The god of theologians and the god of astronomers: An apology of Bellarmine

In his theological writings, Galileo maintained what might be called the “independence principle” – science and religion belong to, and are competent on, two distinct and different domains: the factual domain of natural phenomena and the domain of faith of supernatural phenomena. As he put it, a distinction is to be drawn between “purely physical propositions which are matters of faith [and] supernatural propositions which are articles of faith.” Accordingly, Galileo held the view that all factual statements about natural phenomena contained in the Scriptures have no value for salvation and, therefore, can be revised or dismissed on scientific grounds.

Bellarmine adopted a different principle, which can be called the “limitation principle.” According to it, certain factual statements contained in the Scriptures are necessary for their salvation value and, therefore, cannot be revised in the light of any contrary scientific theories. This has the consequence that, if such theories are advanced, they cannot be held to be true and, at the most, have to be treated as “hypotheses,” in the technical sense of devices for calculating or systematizing phenomena, deprived of truth and epistemic value.

Accepted by many theologians and most scientists as well, Galileo's principle has apparently become the official hermeneutic criterion of the Catholic Church. It is alluded to in the Encyclic Providentissimus Deus by Pope Leo XIII (1893), referred to in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes of the Vatican Council II (1965), and often invoked by the present Pope John Paul II as a means for avoiding conflicts between science and religion. Bellarmine's principle was instead advocated by the Pope Pius XII in his Encyclic Humani Generis (1950).

The aim of this essay is to maintain that the independence principle cannot be accepted by a Catholic believer, because although it favors science it may damage faith. In particular, I examine Galileo's allegiance to the independence principle and Bellarmine's opposition to it, the recent, ambiguous acceptance of this principle by the Church, and the reasons why, in spite of the official homage it pays to it, the Church is actually suspect of it. As a consequence, it will be shown that the fire of new Galileo affairs is still smoldering under the ashes that were thought to be cold.

Such cases do not depend on historical circumstances, the imprudence of men, the transition from one tradition to another, or the power and prerogatives of institutions; they are constitutive. The clash between science and religion is linked to two overlapping, although irreducible, forms of experience and the “logics” of their conceptual organization.

“TWO EXTREMES: TO EXCLUDE REASON, TO ADMIT REASON ONLY.”1

At the end of a new series of lectures on psychoanalysis in 1932, Freud contrasted scientific Weltanschauung and religious Weltanschauung and raised the question why the latter does not accept putting an end to the controversy with the former by explicitly admitting:

It is a fact that I cannot give you what is commonly called “truth”; if you want that, you must keep to science. But what I have to offer you is something incomparably more beautiful, more consoling and more uplifting than anything you could get from science. And because of that, I say to you that it is true in another, higher sense.²

The words Freud puts into the believer's mouth here express what may be called the independence principle between science and religion, according to which religious statements (or beliefs or truths) cannot interfere or conflict with scientific statements (or beliefs or truths) because they refer to different domains and have different purposes.

Freud was of the opinion that such a principle is neither accepted by religion nor acceptable to science. The reason why he claims the principle is not accepted by religion shows how a genius sometimes lets himself be attracted by mere banalities. Freud writes that “religion cannot make this admission because it would involve its forfeiting all its influence on the mass of mankind.”3

The reason why he maintains the principle is not acceptable to science shows how a genius may sometimes indulge in a mediocre scientism. Freud maintains that the growth of science has gradually eroded the foundations of religions and finally showed, thanks to psychoanalysis, that it is a transient illness, a “neurosis which individual civilized men have to go through in their passage from childhood to maturity.”⁴

If science has not yet solved “the problems of the universe” (no less!), this depends, according to Freud, on the fact that “it has truly not had time enough yet for these great achievements.”⁵ Ironically, enough, Freud's archaic nineteenth-century view that in science, “there is even today a solid groundwork which is only modified and improved but no longer demolished,”⁶ is at odds with his aim at confuting religion. The groundwork of science (however solid it may be) is quite different from that of religion, because although the former is based upon empirical experience and aims at explanation, religion is based upon revelation and aims at salvation.

If, as Freud himself maintains, religion, in one of its functions “issues precepts and lays down prohibition and restrictions,”⁷ how can one maintain that science interferes with religion? Precepts, prohibitions, and restrictions are (and should be kept) outside the domain of science.

But if we reject Freud's arguments, should we accept the independence principle? This is the subject of this paper. I shall focus on the relationship between the idea of God that believers, specifically Christian Catholic believers, trust in and the idea of God that scientists, in particular modern cosmologists, sometimes refer to. I shall uphold two main points. First, by provisionally accepting the independence principle, I shall try to show that on the basis of such a principle, scientists and theologians (or believers) have nothing to fear from each other but nothing to say to each other either, at least nothing more than, say, Van Gogh depicting sunflowers has to say to a seed oil producer. Secondly, I shall question the independence principle and suggest why believers should reject it. My view is that, contrary to what is nowadays held by the Catholic Church, that principle, although favoring science, damages faith. My apology of Bellarmine stems from this. I believe that religion may clash with science and there is no guaranteed way to avoid such a clash. If I am right, Bellarmine was also right and, what is more and worse, we continue to have the source of new Galileo affairs on our hands.

THE BIRTH OF THE INDEPENDENCE PRINCIPLE

The current formulation of the independence principle is mainly the work of Galileo, who introduced it in his famous letters on the Copernican question. By basing the principle on such authors as Augustine and Thomas, Galileo's move was rhetorically clever.

If many authoritative Fathers of the Church maintain that science is to be given freedom of inquiry and cannot conflict with religion, how should we refute extending this principle to the Copernican theory and allowing it to be examined as any other empirical theory? Yet, as has been acutely noted,8 Galileo's principle is much stronger and more demanding than Augustine's and less favorable to faith. As will be seen in a while, it is the last of a series of theses that are increasingly sympathetic with the reasons of science.

To make this point clear, let us suppose a scientific statement or a statement purporting to be cognitive T conflicts with a factual statement S contained in, or drawn from, the Holy Scriptures, in the sense that T and S cannot be both true. As different situations are possible, different attitudes can be adopted. The first situation is when T is not scientifically demonstrable. In this case, Galileo holds the following thesis:

Thesis 1: If T is not demonstrable, then accept S and reject T.

As Galileo himself says, this is the case with such statements as “the stars are animate”⁹ and in general with those “articles and propositions which, surpassing all human reason, could not be discovered by scientific research or by any other means than through the mouth of the Holy Spirit himself.”¹⁰

The second situation is when T is demonstrable and already demonstrated. In this case, Galileo holds a different thesis, namely:

Thesis 2: If T is demonstrable and demonstrated, then accept T and reject S.

Galileo puts forward this thesis when he writes that

a natural phenomenon which is placed before our eyes by sensory experience or proved by necessary demonstrations should not be called into question, let alone condemned, on account of scriptural passages whose words appear to have a different meaning.11

Like the previous one, this thesis, too, stems from Augustine and Thomas, and it is apparently harmless. There is no problem about rejecting or reinterpreting S when, to use Augustine's example quoted by Galileo, it is a statement such as “The heavens are stretched out like a hide,” or, to make use of Thomas's example also quoted by Galileo, such as “The earth hangeth upon nothing,” which are both demonstrably false.

But there is a third, more complicated situation. It is when T is demonstrable but not yet demonstrated. This is the case with Copernican theory. Here, Galileo's view is that, in case of doubt, one has to follow the holy Scriptures but to allow science to pursue T as a hypothesis until either T is proved to be true and, then, on the basis of Thesis 2, S is rejected or revised or T is proved to be false and then, on the basis of the same Thesis, S is accepted. Then Galileo's third thesis is:

Thesis 3: If T is demonstrable but not demonstrated, then keep S and pursue T as a hypothesis.

This thesis seems to be reasonable and tolerant but, as we shall see, it is a source of controversy. First, it is important to note that, according to Theses 2 and 3, S and T may conflict and the conflict is settled in favor of S or T according to the proofs that support T. If T is proved, then S is to be rejected or reinterpreted, for example, with the argument that the Scriptures in which S is included do not aim at proving the truth of S or with the argument that S has been introduced in the Scriptures with the aim of making them understandable to primitive, uneducated people.

More generally, Theses 2 and 3 come to say that factual questions belong to science, which has the right to treat them according to its own methods. Thus the consequence of Theses 2 and 3, at least the consequences Galileo draws from them, is another, more demanding thesis. It can be formulated in the following terms:

Thesis 4: All factual statements S are revisable in light of T.

Galileo professes this thesis when he writes that the factual statements contained in the Scriptures have no explanatory purpose but aim at salvation. In particular, when he writes that

the Holy Scripture did not want to teach us whether heaven moves or stands still, not whether the earth is spherical or like a discus or extended along a plane, not whether the earth is located at its center or in one side.12 And this the Holy Spirit did not want “deliberately,” because “they are of no relevance to His intention (that is, to our salvation).” In other words, to use Cardinal Baronio's formula, “the intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how one goes to heaven and not how heaven goes.”¹³

Let us now consider Copernican theory. Although it is at odds with the Scriptures, Galileo, consistently with his own Theses 3 and 4, calls for freedom of inquiry and demands one be allowed to pursue it at least as a probable, promising hypothesis. As he explicitly writes:

One is not asking that in case of doubts, the interpretation of the Fathers should be abandoned, but only that an attempt be made to gain certainty regarding what is in doubt, and that therefore no one disparage what attracts and has attracted very great philosophers and astronomers. Then, after all necessary care has been taken, the decision may be made.¹⁴

The reaction of the Church to this demand was twofold and ambiguous. On the one hand, Bellarmine gave the impression of being willing to put Copernican theory under the protection of Thesis 3, for by writing to Father Foscarini that it could be considered as a hypothesis (“Your Paternity and Mr. Galileo are proceeding prudently by limiting yourselves to speaking suppositionally and not absolutely”), he seemed to admit that it can be pursued until, one might argue, it was proved to be true or false, although he personally appeared to be skeptical (“but I will not believe that there is such a demonstration until it is shown to me.”)

On the other hand, Bellarmine, set a limit to inquiry, because in the same letter to Foscarini, he maintained that the rest of the Earth is upheld by the Scriptures and if it is not a matter of faith “as regards the topic” (ex parte objecti), it is a matter of faith “as regards the speaker” (ex parte subjecti).15

As one can see, the point here does not concern the treatment to be granted to Copernican theory alone. The crucial point, the one that gave rise to the conflict, is whether all factual knowledge included in the Scriptures is in principle revisable and is actually to be revised should it conflict with scientific knowledge. Bellarmine's view is that not all is. In particular, Bellarmine's view is that factual knowledge included in the Scriptures that is essential to the salvation message of faith cannot be revised. Thus, Bellarmine contrasted Galileo's Thesis 4 with the following:

Thesis 5: Certain factual statements S are not revisable in the light of T.

In support of Thesis 5, Bellarmine mentioned some examples of factual claims that are not revisable. He writes that

it would be heretical to say that Abraham did not have two children and Jacob 12, as well as to say that Christ was not born of a virgin, because both are said by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of the prophets and the apostles.¹⁶

Clearly, to declare that these are factual statements that are “of faith” is tantamount to negating Thesis 4, suspending the validity of Thesis 3, and preserving such statements from (the possible revision due to) scientific inquiry.

In his reply, Galileo insisted that the cosmological question is a purely empirical question not belonging to the domain of those factual questions that have a salvation value. But such a reply was patently ineffective because Bellarmine did not deny this. He denied that the solution of the cosmological question, because it has a salvation value, could be different from one asserted by the scriptures.

Thus, Bellarmine took Galileo's own argument and turned it against him. His counterargument came down to this: If, as Galileo maintains, “two truths cannot contradict one another,”¹⁷ then if one of them is essential for the salvation of man, the other is to be rejected or reinterpreted.

Here, for Bellarmine, the tolerance of Thesis 3 could not be invoked. According to him, the burden of proof is not on the person who condemns T but on anyone who wants to reject or revise S. Patently this is not the astronomers’ concern, because when S is “of faith,” the Church has legitimate authority over it, not astronomers. In order not to beg the question, Galileo had only one way out. He had to deny that factual assertions of the Scriptures are relevant to faith, that is, to maintain that the purpose of the Scriptures is for salvation alone and not to be used for empirical description or scientific explanation.

This is precisely what he did when, as we have seen, he wrote that the cosmological assertions of the Scriptures are not essential to its message. He tried to avoid a conflict between science and religion by arguing that if salvation assertions are not revisable while factual assertions are, then the assertions of the Scriptures are not factual. Thus, he puts forward the following thesis:

Thesis 6: Factual statements S have no salvation value.

Theses 5 and 6 go in opposite directions. Whereas Galileo's Thesis 6 supports the independence principle, Bellarmine's Thesis 5 is the expression of a different principle, which we may call the “limitation principle,” according to which science and religion overlap and there are limits to the revision of statements concerning their overlapping area.

At least at first sight, the independence principle has advantages over the limitation principle. It is tolerant and mutually satisfactory, because it gives science and religion authority in different domains. According to this principle, if a conflict arises and science ascertains a truth that is contrary to a religious statement, this statement is to be rejected or revised. Yet this would not be harmful to religion because the rejected or revised statement would be irrelevant to salvation.

GALILEO AND THE INDEPENDENCE PRINCIPLE

As the subject is important and usually neglected, before continuing, I would like to go further into the question of Galileo and Thesis 6. Did he really maintain that all factual statements of the Scriptures are not essential to salvation?

In certain passages, Galileo seems to refer to cosmological statements alone, in particular to those statements of the Scriptures from which the rest of the Earth can be drawn. He claims that such a view cannot be said to be of faith for two reasons: First, because “it is not enough to say that all the Fathers accept the earth's rest, etc., and so it is an article of faith to hold it, rather one would have to prove that they condemned the contrary opinions.”18 Second, because on this matter, the Fathers do not share the same opinion, “given that one can read in the Fathers different interpretations of the same passages.”¹⁹ But if the Earth's rest is not of faith for these reasons alone, then one might think it is of faith for other reasons or that certain other factual statements may be considered to be so. Such a conclusion might be drawn from the following passage:

Next consider the principle that the collective consensus of the Fathers, when they all accept in the same sense a physical proposition from Scripture, should authenticate it in such a way that it becomes an article of faith to hold it. I should think that at most this ought to apply only to those conclusions which the Fathers discussed and inspected with great diligence and debated on both sides of the issue and for which they then all agreed to reject one side and hold the other.²⁰

However, the view Galileo advocates here is more general. He takes Thesis 2 literally. On the basis of Thesis 3, he asks for freedom of inquiry into natural phenomena. As a consequence, he invokes Thesis 4 as regards the factual statements of the Scriptures. And in order not to stop the progress of science with contrary scriptural statements, he advocates Thesis 5, although for obvious reasons of prudence, he does not profess it explicitly. Several steps lead Galileo to this conclusion.

He starts by raising

doubts about the truth of this prescription, namely whether it is true that the Church obliges one to hold as articles of faith such conclusions about natural phenomena, which are characterized only by the unanimous interpretation of all the Fathers.²¹

Then he goes on to say that, as regards natural conclusions, certain Fathers “consider it useless to spend time trying to ascertain those conclusions.”²²

But Galileo does not stop here, for he adds that natural questions are not only useless for the salvation message of the Scriptures, but that they are not even its subject matter. He distinguishes two kinds of questions: natural questions that belong to science and supernatural questions that pertain to theology.

Thus, not only does Galileo write that theology is worthy of the title of “queen,” insofar as its topic “surpasses in dignity all the other topics which are the subject of the other sciences and also insofar as its teaching proceeds in more sublime ways,”23 he also maintains that theology “does not come down to the lower and humbler speculations of the inferior sciences, but rather … it does not bother with them, inasmuch as they are irrelevant to salvation.”²⁴

Galileo's next step therefore consists in saying that theology concerns only transcendent and not mundane questions, or that its topic is the salvation of man and not the explanation of nature. In the letter to Castelli he writes:

I should believe that the autonomy of the Holy Writ has merely [solamente] the aim of persuading men of those articles and propositions which are necessary for their salvation and surpass all human reason, and so could not become credible through some other science or any other means except the mouth of the Holy Spirit itself.²⁵

In the corresponding passage of the letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, “merely” is replaced by “chiefly” (principalmente), but this change is dictated by caution, as is clear from the fact that he writes it would be prudent not to allow anyone to commit the Scriptures on natural questions.

Finally, and this is his last step, Galileo distinguishes between “purely physical propositions which are not matters of faith [and] supernatural propositions which are articles of faith.”²⁶ If, as it seems, this classification is exhaustive, then according to Galileo, there are no natural questions that are of faith. But this is precisely what Thesis 6 says: Natural questions in the Scriptures have no salvation value. And this supports the independence principle: There can be no conflict between science and religion.

THE INDEPENDENCE PRINCIPLE VERSUS THE MUTUAL SUPPORT PRINCIPLE

It is not my intention to question the practical effects of the independence principle. As a matter of historical fact, it has favored both science and religion. By protecting them both from possible mutual conflict, it has smoothed the way for the growth of the former and allowed the latter freedom of prediction. But I have doubts about the theoretical status of the principle and the legitimacy of the consequences sometimes drawn from it. First of all, let us note that the independence principle seems nowadays to be accepted by both scientists and Christian Catholic theologians or believers.

In 1893, with his Encyclic Providentissimus Deus, Pope Leo XIII declared that the Scriptures are not concerned with scientific matters; they make use of the language of the people they were addressed to. In a speech dating from December 20, 1931, Pope Pius XI said that “when one speaks of alleged contrasts between faith and science, either one makes science say what it does not say or makes faith say what it does not teach.”27

Eventually, in 1965, using almost the same words Galileo had used 350 years before, the Vatican Council II, with the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, established that

the methodic inquiry of each discipline, if it really proceeds scientifically and according to moral norms, will never be in real contrast with faith, because profane reality and reality of faith stem from the same God.²⁸

More recently, in 1980, Pope John Paul II has declared:

Between reason, which, according to its own nature stemming from God aims at truth and is qualified for knowledge and faith, which stems from the same divine source of every truth, there can be no substantial conflict. We do not fear, but rather exclude, that science, which is based itself on rational motives and proceeds with methodological seriousness, may produce knowledge that conflicts with truths of faith. This can only happen when the distinction between the domains of knowledge is neglected or denied.²⁹

As I have said, I doubt this is really the case. But before examining this problem, I shall provisionally accept the independence principle. It is my opinion that, if we stick to this principle, then science and religion cannot conflict but neither can they support each other.

And it is also my opinion that many of those who have professed the independence principle have, in actual practice, resorted to a different principle, that I shall call the “mutual support principle,” between science and religion. In my view, this latter principle commits a “category fallacy.” Such a fallacy is often involved in the use of the concept of creation by both cosmologists and theologists.

Let us take a closer look at this concept. Both the main cosmological theories of this century have made use of it, either to affirm that science has solved the problem of creation or to deny it. Thus, Bondi wrote that, thanks to the steady state theory,

the problem of the origin of the universe, that is, the problem of creation, is brought within the scope of physical inquiry and is examined in detail instead of, as in other theories, being handed over to metaphysics.30

For their part, certain cosmologists, either supporters of the Big Bang theory or interpreters of it, have maintained either that “we may perhaps not improperly refer [to the initial singularity] as to the creations”³¹ or that the initial singularity is the effect of an act of creation, so that “we can ‘witness’ the Creator's existence.”³²

On this point, I agree with Grunbaum's view³³ that the concept of creation as it appears in modern cosmology is different from the concept of matter formation ex nihilo as it appears in theology and that the latter concept gives rise to a pseudo-scientific problem, both in the steady state theory, because in this theory, such a problem cannot be raised any more than, in classical physics, the problem of uniform motion can be raised, and in the Big Bang theory, because, according to this theory, there is no time before the singularity and therefore no problem about its cause. I also adhere to Hume's and Kant's indictments concerning the use of the concept of a cause beyond empirical domains. But rather than stress these points, I prefer a different line of argumentation.

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that we can refer “not improperly” to the initial singularity as an act of creation. What conclusion can we draw from it? That a Creator exists? Suppose, still for the sake of argument, that this, too, is conceded. The problem now is twofold: Is this creator theologically relevant? Can this creator serve the purpose of faith?

My answer to the first question is decidedly negative. A creator proved by cosmology is a cosmological agent that has none of the properties a believer attributes to God. Even supposing one can consistently say the cosmological creator is beyond space and time, this creator cannot be understood as a person or as the Word made flesh or as the Son of God come down to the world in order to save mankind.

Pascal rightly referred to this latter Creator as the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not of philosophers and scientists.”³⁴ To believe that cosmology proves the existence of a creator and then to attribute to this creator the properties of the Creator as a person is to make an illegitimate inference, to commit a category fallacy.

My answer to the second question is also negative. Suppose we can grant what my answer to the first question intends to deny. That is, suppose we can understand the God of cosmologists as the God of theologians and believers. Such a God cannot (and should not) serve the purpose of faith, because, being a God proved by cosmology, he would be at the mercy of cosmology. Like any other scientific discipline that, to use Pope John Paul II's words, proceeds with “methodological seriousness,” cosmology is always revisable. It might then happen that a creator proved on the basis of a theory will be refuted when that theory is refuted. Can the God of believers be exposed to the risk of such an inconsistent enterprise as science?

My conclusion on this point is that if cosmology is really taken as independent from theology and faith as regards its domain and purposes, then cosmology neither proves nor confutes (or neither should prove nor confute) the traditional proofs of the existence of God.35 Thus Pope Pius XII's view, according to which “the idea of the creation of the universe [is] perfectly compatible with the scientific view,”³⁶ may be accepted but not in the sense the Pope intended it. That is, modern cosmology supports theology, although it does not provide an “absolute proof” of the existence of God.

The God of cosmologists and the God of believers are compatible because they are two quite different entities. But if they are two distinct entities, they cannot support each other. Thus when Pope Pius XII, after examining the results of modern cosmology, concluded, “Therefore creation in time; thus a Creator; so, God!”³⁷ his “therefore” is not scientifically proved, his “thus” is logically invalid, and his “so” is risky and in any case insufficient for the believer. Pope John Paul II seems to have rightly corrected his predecessor when he admitted that scientific rationality “is not enough to lead [one] to know a personal and transcendent God.”³⁸

The same conclusion holds in the opposite direction, that is, if one uses theology to support cosmology. My first negative reason is the same: By so doing, we make a category fallacy. My second negative reason is also the same but inverted. If, by using cosmology as support for theology we endanger the God of believers, by using theology as support for cosmology, we endanger scientific theories. This is what happened when Pope Pius XII considered the steady state theory as a “solely gratuitous hypothesis.”39 If the independence principle holds good, then what is or is not gratuitous is to be decided by science, independently of any theological assertion that may sound to the contrary.

But does the independence principle hold good? This is my last point.

FROM INDEPENDENCE TO CONFLICT

I shall examine this question from the standpoint of a Catholic believer. For him or her, God is a source of knowledge. Thus, a Catholic believer has two sources, experience and revelation.

According to the independence principle, these two sources can never clash because the former concerns factual questions whereas the latter concerns salvation questions. The problem is: Are there factual questions that a Catholic believer takes (or has to take) as essential for his or her salvation?

It can be readily admitted that many factual questions are not essential to the believer's faith. For example, it does not matter for him or her whether the Earth moves or stands still or whether life originated on Earth or elsewhere, in our galaxy or in other galaxies. However, not all factual questions are of this sort. Certain factual questions are essential to faith and cannot be removed or revised. This is the case with such dogmas as the virginity of Mary or Jesus Christ's resurrection, which, in spite of the fact that they patently clash with science, the believer cannot reject.

This is also the case with those questions concerning miracles that the believer accepts, although they are obviously contrary to scientific knowledge. But there are further factual questions that, though they are not dogmas, are essential to faith in the sense that the latter would make no sense without the former. Consider the following claims:

1. The universe is infinite in time.

2. Life in the universe stems from inorganic matter.

3. Life originated in more than one place.

4. Psychical life is reducible to biological and social conditions.

Granted, none of these claims is nowadays a scientific truth. But what matters is that all of them are open to scientific inquiry. Although they are not empirically testable in a strict, direct sense and can be better understood as metaphysical cores of research programs, they belong to those questions on which scientists claim to have a right of investigation and to which they consider positive solutions possible. Suppose one day, these solutions are put forward and eventually, after discussion and critical examination, transformed into truths of science. Might a believer accept them?

A Christian Catholic has two orders of commitments. He is committed to God from whom revelation comes and he is committed to Church, by which the right interpretation of the content of such a revelation is established and authenticated. The first commitment concerns faith, as a personal experience of revelation. The second concerns religion, as a set of concepts, beliefs, and practices required by faith according to the interpretation of the Church. If a conflict arises between a truth of science and a factual statement the believer attributes to revelation, the Church may revise such a statement and even drop it from the content of revelation the believer has to respect, that is, religion.

Such a move, however, has a limit. The believer and the Church may revise or reinterpret many statements, but they cannot give up those theses without which faith loses its meaning. Let us call these theses truths of faith. Here are a few of them for a Catholic believer:

1. God created the universe.

2. God gave the gift of life.

3. God gave the gift of life only to one original couple.

4. God gave man a body and a soul independent of that body.

All these truths of faith interfere with the previous claims of science. If God created the universe, then the universe has not always existed, for in such a case there would be no need to create it. If God gave the gift of life, then life cannot be taken as deriving from inorganic matter, for in that case, it would be a natural phenomenon. If God gave the gift of life to a single, original couple, then life cannot have originated in more than one place. And if man has a soul that is independent of the body, then man's consciousness and physical life cannot be reduced to (an organization or function of) biological and physical properties. For if this were the case, the term “soul” would become devoid of meaning.

Thus if the four truths of faith hold, the four truths of science cannot be maintained. It follows that a Catholic is committed to certain truths of faith that clash with certain truths of science. If he does not want to give up the former, he has to reject the latter. That is, he has to declare that there are questions that, although factual, cannot be corrected by science. But this is Bellarmine's Thesis 5, which is contrary to Galileo's Thesis 6. Consequently, the independence principle cannot be accepted by a believer.

Here is, in my view, the real source of the conflict between Bellarmine (and the Church) and Galileo (and modern science). One can say that Galileo was doubly imprudent, because he tried to credit Copernican theory with an epistemtic value higher than his “sensory experiences and necessary demonstrations” allowed him and because he also tried to show that Copernican theory was more compatible with the Scriptures than the Ptolemaic theory.40

However, one can also say that the Church insisted beyond any reasonable limit, because it tried to commit the Scriptures on a question such as the rest of the Earth that (as the Church itself eventually admitted) is not essential to salvation. But neither Galileo's imprudence nor the Church's obstinacy (its “errors and deficiencies,” as Pope John Paul II called them⁴¹) is the real source of the conflict.

The conflict was much deeper and transcended the dramatis personae of the time. It was a conflict between two principles, that is, the principle that science can investigate any factual question (Galileo's independence principle, supported by his Thesis 6) and any principle that certain factual questions cannot be investigated by science because they are articles of faith (Bellarmine's limitation principle, stemming from his Thesis 5). Or, if one wants, it was a conflict between two traditions: the new tradition of science, according to which science and science alone is competent on questions of truth, and the old religious tradition, according to which human experience cannot be dissected into different domains and the Scriptures, too, have something to say about it.⁴²

If this is the real nature of the conflict that arose at that time, then it can arise at any time. And, indeed, it arose again at the middle of this century with Pope Pius XII's Encyclic Humani Generis.

Pius XII rejected Theses 1–4 as contrary to articles of faith. I have already mentioned point 1, which the Pope considered as “gratuitous hypothesis,” because it is in conflict with the idea of creation in time by a Creator. As for Thesis 2, the Pope did not express himself, but his view can be seen from what he said about Thesis 3.

Speaking about evolutionism, the Pope wrote that an examination of this theory

has to be carried on in such a way that the reasons for the two opinions, that is, that for and that against evolutionism, are considered and evaluated with the necessary seriousness, moderations and control, and provided everyone is willing to submit to the judgment of the Church, which Christ entrusted with authentically interpreting the Holy Scriptures and with defending the Dogmas of Faith.43

But as regards polygenism, that is, Thesis 3, the Pope wrote:

As far as the other hypothesis is concerned, that is polygenism, the sons of the Church are not allowed the same freedom. Believers cannot adopt that opinion whose supporters teach that after Adam there have existed here on earth true men which did not come, by natural generation, from him, or that Adam represents the whole of many parents.⁴⁴

Thus, Thesis 3 cannot be accepted by believers and even less so Thesis 2. As for Thesis 4, the Pope was equally clear, for he wrote that “Catholic faith obliges us to believe that souls have been created by God immediately.”⁴⁵

Rather than following the independence principle, which he never accepted as a hermeneutic principle for the Scriptures, Pope Pius XII adhered to the mutual support principle and accepted Bellarmine's Thesis 5. For those questions that have not yet been proved by science but that might be, Galileo had called for tolerance and put the burden of proof on the shoulders of those who intended to damn them. Pope Pius XII (like Bellarmine before him) not only shifted the burden of proof but declared there can be no proof and not even any search for it, because no truth of the Scriptures with salvation value, however different it may be from a truth of science, can ever be rejected or revised. The following passage leaves no room for doubt:

Finally, we must speak about those questions which, though belonging to positive sciences, are more or less linked with the truth of Christian faith. Not a few insist that Catholic religion has to take great care of those sciences. This is undoubtedly commendable as regards those facts that are really demonstrated; but one has to be prudent if they are hypotheses, however in some way or another scientifically based, which touch upon the doctrine contained in the Holy Scriptures or in Tradition. If such hypotheses are directly or indirectly against the revealed doctrine, then they cannot be maintained in any way.46

The relevant points of this passage are the following: according to the Pope:

1. There are questions that, “though belonging to positive sciences, are more or less linked with the truths of Christian faith.”

2. Such questions are “in some way or another scientifically based.”

3. As a consequence, scientists advocate their own right to examine them and, if proved, they ask that the Catholic religion should take “great care of the results, that is, it should correct or reinterpret the Scriptures accordingly,” and yet

4. “if such hypotheses are directly or indirectly against the revealed doctrine, then they cannot be maintained in any way.”

This means that

5. There are factual questions essential to the salvation message of the Scriptures that cannot be revised.

This was Pius XII's view and this was Bellarmine's opinion (his Thesis 5). The conclusion is that, at least on some important points, science and Catholic religion are in conflict.

One might object that this conflict concerns the relationship between truths of faith and scientific hypotheses, not scientific truths. But the objection is untenable. Firstly because, according to a more adequate epistemology than Pius XII's, all scientific truths are hypothetical. Secondly, because the Pope denied that hypotheses contrary to articles of faith can be maintained even qua hypotheses. One might also object that Pius XII's Encyclic did not give rise to a new Galileo affair.

A new Galileo affair did not arise in 1950 (at the time of Pius XII's Encyclic) as it arose in 1633 (at the time of Galileo's trial) because of the contingent, historical circumstances. However, the real source of the affair, that is, the conflict between the independence principle and the limitation principle, has not been removed.

In summary, in a period in which scientific culture is so pervasive and its impact so impressive, it may be prudent and wise, as John Paul II has recently done, to invoke “a dialogue in which the integrity of both religion and science is supported and the advance of each is fostered” and to stress that “both religion and science must preserve their autonomy and their distinctiveness.”47 But it would also be dangerous to forget that the risk of a conflict, like a fire smoldering under the ashes, is still there.

NOTES

  1 Blaise Pascal, Pensees, translated by W. F. Trotter, Great Books of the Western World, vol. 33 (Encyclopedia Brittanica Inc.), the University of Chicago, Chicago, 1952, n. 253, p. 220.

  2 Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933), the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by J. Strachey, Hogarth Press, London, 1953–1974, 24 vols., vol. XXII, p. 172.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Freud, p. 168.

  5 Ibid.

  6 Freud, p. 174.

  7 Freud, p. 162.

  8 See E. McMullin, “How Should Cosmology Relate to Theology?, in A. R. Peacocke, ed., The Sciences and Theology in the 20th Century, London, Oriel, 1981, pp. 17–57.

  9 Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), English translation in The Galileo Affair, a Documentary History, edited by M. Finocchiaro, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989. See p. 104.

10 Finocchiaro, see pp. 93–4, see also p. 104.

11 Finocchiaro, p. 93.

12 Finocchiaro, p. 95.

13 Finocchiaro, pp. 95–6.

14 Galilei, “Considerations on the Copernican Opinion,” 1615, in The Galileo Affair, p. 85.

15 Letter of Bellarmine to Foscarini (April 12, 1615), in Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair, pp. 67–8.

16 Finocchiaro, p. 68.

17 Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, p. 96, also p. 93.

18 Finocchiaro, p. 108.

19 Finocchiaro, p. 109.

20 Finocchiaro, p. 108.

21 Ibid.

22 Finocchiaro, p. 109.

23 Finocchiaro, p. 100.

24 Ibid.

25 Galilei, Letter to Castelli (December 21, 1613) in Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair, p. 51.

26 Finocchiaro, p. 101.

27 Quoted in I Papi e la Scienza, edited by M. Gargantini, Milan, Jaca Books, 1985, p. 137.

28 Ivi, p. 63.

29 Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), Speech of December 15, 1980 to scientists and students in the Cathedral of Cologne, reprinted in K. Wojtyla, L'Uomo nel Mondo, edited by A. Rigobello, Rome, Armando, 1981, pp. 115–16.

30 H. Bondi, Cosmology, 2nd ed., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1961, p. 140.

31 This was Sir E. Whittaker's view as referred in Pope Pius XII's speech of November 22, 1951. See Discorsi Indirizzati dai Sommi Pontefici Pio XI, Pio XII, Giovanni XXIII, Paolo Vi, Giovanni Paolo II ala Ponfitica Accademia delle Scienze dal 1936 al 1986, Pontificiae Academiae Scientiarum Scripta varia in Civitate Vaticana, 1986, p. 812.

32 C. I. Borghi, “Mentalita scientifica e religiousa. Considerazioni di un fisico,” Serie Cristiani e Societa Italiana, no. 12, Milano, 1980, p. 20.

33 See A. Grunbaum, “The Pseudo-Problem of Creation in Physical Cosmology,” Philosophy of Science, 56, 1989, pp. 373–94.

34 Pascal, “Memorial,” in Oeuvres Completes, edited by J. Chevalier, Biblioteque de la Pleiade, Paris, Librairie Gallimard, 1954, p. 554.

35 I completely agree with McMullin when he writes that “what one can not say is first, that the Christian doctrine of creation ‘supports’ the Big Bang model or, second, that the big Bang Model ‘supports’ the Christian doctrine of creation.” See E. McMullin, “How Should Cosmology Relate to Theology,” p. 39. In my view, this holds good for any other scientific theory, cosmological or not.

36 Pope Pius XII, Speech of November 22, 1954, p. 80.

37 Pope Pius XII, p. 81.

38 Pope John Paul II, Speech of April 2, 1981, to the Secretariat for Nonbelievers in I Papi e la Scienza, p. 49. Later, John Paul II corrected Pius XII's view more dramatically when he warned theologians about “making uncritical and overhasty use for apologetic purposes of such recent theories as that of the Big Bang in cosmology.” See his Message of June 1, 1988, as reprinted in John Paul II on Science and Religion, edited by R. J. Russell, W. R. Stoeger S. J., G. V. Coyne S. J., Vatican Observatory Publications, Notre Dame, the University of Notre Dame Press, 1990 (the quotation is from pages M 11–12).

39 See Pope Pius XII's Speech of November 22, 1951, p. 77.

40 For this latter imprudence of Galileo's, see C. M. Martini, “Galileo e la teologia,” in Saggi su Galileo Galilei, edited by C. Maccagni, Florence, Barbera, 1972, vol. III, tome 2, pp. 441–51.

41 Speech of December 15, 1980, p. 116.

42 On this point, I agree with Feyerabend, who also describes “the conflict between Galileo and the Church as a conflict between traditions.” See P. K. Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason, London, Verso, 1987, p. 248.

43 Pope Pius XII, Encyclic Humani Genersis (August 12, 1950), Gregoriana Editrice, Padova, 1952, p. 24. I examined the content of this encyclic in the light of the relationship between science and religion in my “Scienza e trascendenza,” Studium, 77, 1981, pp. 517–43.

44 Ivi, p. 25.

45 Ivi, p. 24.

46 Ivi, p. 23.

47 John Paul II, Message of June 1, 1988, pp. M 7 and M 8.