Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:18:08.279Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

John Wesley's Views on Science and Christianity: An Examination of the Charge of Antiscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

J. W. Haas Jr
J. W. Haas Jr
Affiliation:
professor of chemistry at Gordon College, Wenham,Massachusetts.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Traditional nineteenth-century views of the relationship between science and Christianity have seen the two in a mortal conflict from which science emerged victorious over an obscurantist theology which sought to dominate the thinking of the new scientific class. Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896) represented a high point in such battlefield historiography. Recent writers have found the relationship to be more complex and less militaristic as a result of examining more closely the context in which the alleged battles took place. This paper will examine the case of English evangelist John Wesley (1703–1791), long a scapegoat of the warfare model. Wesley was often tarred with antiintellectualism during his lifetime and, in the ensuing two centuries, this argument has focused on his attitudes toward natural science. The effect has been to cast a leading religious figure of eighteenth-century England in the antiscience mold.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 378 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Lindberg, David C. and Numbers, Ronald L., eds., God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science (Berkeley, 1986). This multiauthor work argues that neither conflict nor harmony adequately characterize the relationship.Google Scholar

2. White, Andrew Dixon, History of the Warfare of Science With Theology in Christendom, 2 vols. (New York, 1895).Google Scholar

3. Moore, James R., The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900 (Cambridge, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholarand Davis, Edward B., “Newton's Rejection of the Newtonian World View: The Role of the Divine Will in Newton's Natural Philosophy,” Fides et Historia 22 (1990): 6–19, are representative of the new historiography.Google Scholar

4. Cited in Tyerman, Luke, The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, 3 vols. (New York, 1872), 2:490–491.Google Scholar

5. Smollett, Tobias, The History of England, 5 vols. (London, 1891), 5:376,Google Scholarquoted in Semmel, Bernard, The Methodist Revolution (New York, 1973), p. 20.Google Scholar

6. Stephen, Leslie, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1881), 2:412.Google Scholar

7. Kingsley, Charles, Scientific Lectures and Essays (London, 1890), p. 316.Google Scholar

8. White, , History of Warfare, 1:128, 148, 220–221, 340, 361, 363.Google Scholar

9. McConnell, Francis J., John Wesley (New York, 1939), p. 336.Google Scholar

10. Stimson, Dorothy, The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernician Theory of the Universe (New York, 1947), pp. 93, 99.Google Scholar

11. Jacobs, Margaret, “Christianity and the Newtonian Worldview,” in Lindberg and Numbers, p. 250.Google Scholar

12. Ward, W. Reginald and Heitzenrater, Richard P., eds., The Works of John Wesley, 26 vols. (Nashville, 1988), 18:31 (hereafter Works [BE]).Google Scholar

13. Schofield, Robert E., “John Wesley and Science in 18th Century England,” Isis 44 (1953): 339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Collier, Frank W., John Wesley Among the Scientists (New York, 1928).Google Scholar

15. Schofield, p. 338.Google Scholar

16. Brantley, Richard E., Locke, Wesley and the Method of English Romanticism (Gainesville, Fla., 1983). See especially pp. 8–9, 16–19, 44–47, 64–83.Google Scholar

17. English, John C., “John Wesley's Studies as an Undergraduate,” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 47 (05 1989): 29–37.Google Scholar

18. Harrison, A. W., “One of Wesley's Science Notebooks,” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 18 (1931): 8.Google ScholarSee also English, John C., “John Wesley and Isaac Newton's 'System of the World',” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 48 (1991): 71.Google Scholar

19. Works [BE], 2:441, 576.Google Scholar

20. Whitehead, John, Life of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., 3 vols. (Boston, 1884), 1:244.Google ScholarEnglish, John, “John Wesley and Isaac Newton's 'System of the World,” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 48 (1991): 71–73 provides supporting evidence for Wesley's reading of these works in natural philosophy and mathematics.Google Scholar

21. Priestley, Joseph, The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments, 2nd ed. (London, 1769), pp. 392–393.Google Scholar

22. Telford, John, ed., The Letters of John Wesley, 4 vols. (London, 1931), 4:123.Google ScholarFor more detail on Wesley's medical activities see Heizenrater, Richard P., The Elusive Mr. Wesley, 2 vols. (Nashville, 1984) 1:133–144; 2:128–138,Google Scholarand Rogel, Samuel J., “Electricity: John Wesley's 'Curious and Important Subject',” Eighteenth Century Life 13 (11 1989): 79–90.Google Scholar

23. Works [BE], 22:9.Google Scholar

24. Jackson, Thomas, ed., The Works of John Wesley, 14 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1958), 4:232 (hereafter Works [Jackson]).Google Scholar

25. Arminian Magazine 2 (1779): 89–91.Google Scholar

26. Works [Jackson], 14:300.Google Scholar

27. Schofield, p. 337.Google Scholar

28. Whitehead, 2:302.Google Scholar

29. Works [Jackson], 14:300.Google Scholar

30. Wesley, John, A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation: Or, a Compendium of Natural Philosophy, 3rd ed., 5 vols. (London, 1777), 2:242 (hereafter referred to as Survey [3]).Google Scholar

31. Ibid., 1:308.

32. Works [Jackson], 14:301.Google Scholar

33. Schofield, p. 338.Google Scholar

34. Brantiey, especially pp. 17–20, 44–47, 64–102.Google ScholarSee also English, John C., “John Wesley's Indebtedness to John Norris,” Church History 60 (1991): 55–69CrossRefGoogle Scholarand Rack, H. D., Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism, 2nd ed. (London, 1992), pp. 65, 383–388.Google Scholar

35. Works [BE], 22:117.Google Scholar

36. Survey [S], 1:15.Google Scholar

37. Wesley, John, A Concise Ecclesiastical History, From the Birth of Christ to the Beginning of the Present Century, 3 vols. (London, 1781), 3:332.Google Scholar

38. Survey [3], 4:27–32.Google Scholar

39. Works [BE], 4:282–283. Wesley here is following a tradition found in Peter Browne's The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding (1728) and Robert Boyle's The Skeptical Chemist (1661).Google Scholar

40. Works [BE], 4:283.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., 3:353.

42. Ibid., 2:569.

43. Wesley, John, A Survey of the Wisdom of God m the Creation: A Compendium of Natural Philosophy, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Bristol, 1769), 2:23 (hereafter Survey [2]).Google Scholar

44. Hebert, Thomas Walter, John Wesley as Editor and Author (Princeton, N.J., 1940), p. 6.Google Scholar

45. Works [Jackson], 10:492.Google Scholar

46. Schofield, p. 334.Google Scholar

47. Grant, C. D., “Evolution and Darwinism in the Methodist Quarterly Review, 1840–1870,” Methodist History 29 (1991): 175–197Google Scholarand Clement, Mark, “Methodist Attitudes to Science, c. 1830–1870,” unpublished paper, 1994, both suggest a cautious support which emphasized harmony between science and Christianity.Google Scholar

48. Wesley, John, A Survey of the Wisdom of God in Creation: A Compendium of Natural Philosophy, 3rd American ed., 3 vols. (New York, 1823), 1:viii.Google Scholar

49. Schofield. p.340.Google Scholar

50. Works [BE], 2:270.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., 21:86.

52. Ibid., 2:380.

53. Ibid., 2:383–384.

54. Ibid., 3:93.

55. Survey [2], 2:21.Google Scholar

56. Ibid., 2:134.

57. Ibid., 2:166.

58. Ecclesiastical History, 3:332.Google Scholar

59. Survey [2], 3:218.Google Scholar

60. English, John C., “John Wesley and Isaac Newton's 'System of the World',” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 48 (1991): 69–86, especially 72–78.Google Scholar

61. Wilde, C. B., “Hutchinsonism, Natural Philosophy and Religious Controversy in Eighteenth Century Britain,” History of Science 18 (1980): 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62. Works [BE], 21:40.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., p. 388.

64. Ibid., p. 389.

65. Ibid., p. 441.

66. Ibid., p. 454.

67. Ibid., 22:387.

68. Ibid., p. 388.

69. Ibid., p. 409.

70. Ibid., pp. 571–572.

71. Ibid., p. 380.

72. Works [Jackson], 4:324.Google Scholar