The most famous “thesis” concerning Protestantism and modernity is undoubtedly that of the German sociologist and historian Max Weber (1864–1920). The “Weber thesis” has to do with the origins of modern capitalism and the Protestant ethic that gave economics its spiritual force. The Puritan plays a major role in Weber’s thesis, functioning as the mechanism for the original combination of pious fervor and practical sense. “The Puritan wanted to work in a calling,” concluded Weber. “We are forced to do so.” Weber’s thesis turns in part on the role of a Protestant and particularly Puritan conception of vocation. But it also turns on a popular, if largely mistaken, stereotype of the Puritan as dour and somber. Weber goes so far as to claim that “the English, Dutch, and American Puritans were characterized by the exact opposite of the joy of living.”
The careful study of God’s work in the natural world is a righteous calling.
Another contribution to this issue by Erik Matson explores the Puritan as entrepreneur. But the understanding of calling that Weber rightly understands as important but wrongly construes as joyless is significant not only for the development of modern economics but also for modern science. And here we must turn to another less-famous but perhaps no less influential thesis, the so-called “Merton thesis,” named for the American sociologist Robert K. Merton (1910–2003). Merton’s work, particularly in his 1938 essay “Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England,” argued for a positive connection between the piety and devotional life of Puritanism and the character of experimental science in the early modern period.
Merton observed something significant about the British Puritan ethic that contributed to an outsize impact on the development of science, as evidenced by the Puritan representation among the membership in The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, for instance, founded in 1660. The Puritan ethic affirmed a subsidiary and yet substantial role for human reason in responding to the duty to glorify God. “With the Puritans, who so fully exemplify a mercantile and scientific age, the term reason takes on a new connotation: the rational consideration of empirical data,” writes Merton. “The test of reality,” he continues, “comes not from scholastic logic, which adds nothing to knowledge and may perpetuate falsehood, but from the observation of facts. It was this accent, coupled with an ‘irrational’ faith in the efficacy and utility of science, which characterizes both Puritanism and modern science.”
This empirical focus, associated with Francis Bacon (1561–1626), is for the Puritan rooted in the order and rationality embedded in the created order by God. It is thus an entirely legitimate, and indeed an honorable and socially beneficial, calling to explore the inherent logic and order of the material world. Natural science becomes a kind of spiritual endeavor, as Christians learn about the character of God from his works. Human reason is itself one of God’s good gifts, and the Puritan sensibility held that all such gifts were to be put to proper and productive use. God has provided human beings with sense perception and reason to bring order to what is observed, to draw out implications, to speculate and hypothesize, to test and to experiment. All these basic elements of modern experimental science are borne out in a religious context that sees the world as an expression of God’s grace and glory.
Much as the Puritan ethic legitimized entrepreneurship, so too did the Puritan ethic legitimize science as a God-honoring and neighbor-serving vocation. As the historian Joel Mokyr observes, “It is not easy to associate Puritanism as such directly with any specific scientific advance, but Puritans greatly enhanced the social prestige of experimental science, and thus helped prepare the ground for the Industrial Enlightenment.”
In some cases, the relationship between Protestantism more generally and Puritanism in particular and modernity is cast as a kind of unintended or accidental causal one. Thus the historian Brad S. Gregory describes an “unintended” Reformation, and Merton claims “that the most significant influence of Puritanism upon science was largely unintended by the Puritan leaders.” When applied to the rise of secularism, rationalism, and contemporary ideologies and the deployment of advanced technologies, such characterizations are largely indisputable. But it is nevertheless the case that there are important inherent and cogent factors that led Protestants—perhaps especially Calvinists and Puritans—to emphasize the importance of engaging the observable world created by God. Thus Merton’s observation is worth interrogating: “That Calvin himself deprecated science only enhances the paradox that from him stemmed a vigorous movement which furthered interest in this very field.”
Calvinism, like its progeny Puritanism, is oft-misunderstood and misrepresented. Some consider Calvinism to be a form of metaphysical determinism and even fatalism. Calvin’s contemporary Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) referred to Calvin as “Zeno,” an allusion to the ancient Stoic philosopher associated with fatalist necessitarianism.
On his own terms, however, Calvin affirmed the importance of the natural world and temporal causality. The proper valuation of eternal blessedness does not derogate but rather infuses the created order with significance. The twofold knowledge of God as creator and redeemer are bound together in Calvin’s thought. While these can be distinguished, they must be held together and in proper relationship. As Calvin writes,
It is one thing to feel that God as our Maker supports us by his power, governs us by his providence, nourishes us by his goodness, and attends us with all sorts of blessings—and another thing to embrace the grace of reconciliation offered to us in Christ. First, as much in the fashioning of the universe as in the general teaching of Scripture the Lord shows himself to be simply the Creator. Then in the face of Christ [cf. 2 Cor. 4:6] he shows himself the Redeemer.
Likewise the relationship between general and special revelation must be properly maintained. The Bible provides clear and compelling saving knowledge of God and his works. It also corrects and clarifies our fallible understanding of the natural world. So Scripture is necessary for correction, but the world itself, particularly when effectively grounded in special revelation, teaches us about God.
This is a view of the world that is deeply sacramental, in the sense that all creation is the result of and manifests God’s grace. “Wherever you cast your eyes,” writes Calvin, “there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his glory. You cannot in one glance survey this most vast and beautiful system of the universe, in its wide expanse, without being completely overwhelmed by the boundless force of its brightness.” Nature, “the order prescribed by God,” is a “magnificent theater of heaven and earth.”
‘With the Puritans … the term reason takes on a new connotation: the rational consideration of empirical data.’
The Reformed tradition uses the imagery of “two books” to describe the difference between special and general revelation. The Belgic Confession of 1561 affirms two distinct “means” for God’s self-revelation. One is “by the creation, preservation and government of the universe.” The order of creation “is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to ‘see clearly the invisible things of God, even his everlasting power and divinity,’” quoting Paul’s letter to the Romans. There is a second book, another means by which God reveals himself. God “makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word,” that is, in the book of Holy Scripture.
These two books are to be read together. In Calvin’s words, “Just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a most beautiful volume, even if they recognize it to be some sort of writing, yet can scarcely construe two words, but with the aid of spectacles will begin to read distinctly; so Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God.” Scripture gives us clear and correct saving knowledge of God, and like a pair of reading glasses allows us to more distinctly and rightly see God at work in the creation, preservation, and governance of the natural world.
In this way, the task of theologians is primarily to parse the proper understanding of the book of Scripture, but there is also a legitimate and indeed righteous calling for others to explore the book of nature. “The Christian heart,” writes Calvin, “since it has been thoroughly persuaded that all things happen by God’s plan, and that nothing takes place by chance, will ever look to him as the principal cause of things, yet will give attention to the secondary causes in their proper place.” There is not a zero-sum relationship between primary and secondary causality, or between due diligence for the Scriptures and for natural science. Some are called to be theologians and pastors, while others are called to be merchants and magistrates. And still others are called to be scholars and scientists. Calvin and the Reformed tradition thus ennoble the scientific calling, since, as Calvin writes, “a godly man will not overlook the secondary causes” by which God makes himself known and through which he teaches us about himself, ourselves, and the workings of his world.
Works in the 17th century like those of the Presbyterian John Flavel (c. 1627–1691) aimed at marrying piety and practical science. Flavel’s Husbandry Spiritualized and Navigation Spiritualized focused on providing guidance for spiritual growth and development for those employed as farmers and seafarers. But these treatises also sought to advance practical knowledge of agriculture, geography, and other sciences. As Flavel put it, one purpose of such works was to give direction “to the most excellent improvements of their common employments.” In the Netherlands, Petrus Plancius (1552–1622) is a noteworthy figure, credited with advancements in astronomy and cartography that helped provide the Dutch with the scientific understanding to build a vast seafaring network of trade, exploration, and colonization.
‘Take not your physics as separated from or independent of theology, but as the study of God in his works, and of his works as leading to himself.’
The nonconformist pastor and theologian Richard Baxter (1615–1691) is typically seen as the leading representative of Puritanism in 17th-century England. His many works across a wide variety of genres evince a synthesis of intellectual rigor and spiritual devotion. A recent study by historical theologian David S. Sytsma, Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers, explores his polemical engagements with the “new” philosophy of figures like Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) and René Descartes (1596–1650).
Mechanical philosophers in general were inspired by a renewal of ancient Epicureanism and atomism and focused on material causes. Baxter was intent on critiquing the shortcomings of such approaches. Materialist and mechanical metaphysical conceptions of reality were reductive and hostile to orthodox understandings of God and spiritual reality. But Baxter was also intent on promoting a proper Christian approach to natural philosophy. This involved a restrained but reformed use of human reason to delve into the nuances and details of the interactions of created realities.
Mechanical philosophy in the early modern period bracketed concerns about primal and final causality, two of the significant categories bequeathed by a Christian Aristotelianism. By restricting inquiry merely to secondary causes, a secularized scientific approach became increasingly plausible. But more than simply eliminating grounding in first and final causes, the mechanical philosophers were inclined to elide all secondary causes into material and merely physical causation. While this did not necessarily deny spiritual realities, it did enable a strictly materialistic methodology and explanatory apparatus. Baxter diagnosed these shortcomings even as he affirmed the use of philosophy and reason, rightly understood.
As Sytsma puts it, “Baxter could not accept the reduction of activity in nature to explanations of matter in motion, however complex such explanations might be.” And while Baxter’s own philosophical theology could be understood as eclectic or even idiosyncratic, his approach to the relationship of reason and revelation fits well within the tradition of Reformed orthodoxy. He was active in London in 1660, at both the Restoration and the founding of the Royal Society. He was also a correspondent and a collocutor with the luminaries of British intellectual circles, including Robert Boyle, Henry More, and Matthew Hale.
Human reason, rightly ordered and properly constrained, can be used to better understand and articulate theological truth.
Philosophy, including natural philosophy, should be understood as an aid to theology and the study of the Sacred Scriptures. This broadly Thomistic understanding of the relationship between nature and grace and between reason and revelation undergirds Baxter’s constrained affirmation of rational human inquiry. As Sytsma puts it, “In the study of natural philosophy, Baxter advised that the Christian should study it in relation to God as to the beginning and end of all things and not as if it were in some sense an independent principle.” He quotes Baxter’s instructions from his Christian Directory:
Join together the study of physics and theology; and take not your physics as separated from or independent of theology, but as the study of God in his works, and of his works as leading to himself. Otherwise you will be but like a scrivener or printer who maketh his letters well but knoweth not what they signify.
If Baxter was the leading British Puritan of the 17th century, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was the leading American Puritan theologian of the 18th. And Edwards’ approach to natural philosophy, human reason, and scientific inquiry continues the general Puritan affirmation of these endeavors as legitimate and honorable callings.
Science, understood as the exercise of the human faculty of reason to explore and understand the created order, is a way of glorifying God and serving one’s neighbor. Human reason, rightly ordered and properly constrained, can be used to better understand and articulate theological truth even as it can also be used to advance human knowledge of the world and God’s works within it.
For Edwards as for many Puritan thinkers, deep theological reflection and pious contemplation of God was a motivation toward sustained appreciation for and consideration of the natural world. As the historian H.G. Townsend wrote of Edwards in 1940, “Given sufficient patience and discernment, one can find in his published writings some evidence that he did retain throughout his life an active interest in nature and a sharp eye to discern her moods and secrets, notwithstanding his absorbed preoccupation with clerical duties and theological disputes.”
Many modern scholars since the work of Merton have appreciated this positive relationship between Puritanism and science. Contra many modern interpretations, however, this fruitful relationship was not accidental or paradoxical. The Puritan was as much a scientist as he was a theologian and an entrepreneur, and all these were lauded as righteous callings within a perspective that joyfully celebrated the world as a theater of God’s glory and grace.
