Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.4 (2001) 611-631 [Access article in PDF] Galileo and Spinoza: Heroes, Heretics, and Hermeneutics T. M. Rudavsky Introduction My purpose in this paper is to explore what happens when a scientific methodology rooted in mathematical geometry is then applied to biblical hermeneutics. Galileo and Spinoza are both thinkers who, in their adoption of the methods of philosophy and science, challenged the limits of their social, intellectual, and theological margins. Both thinkers were regarded by their peers as threats to the institutional life of their respective communities; both espoused doctrines that were regarded as heretical by their governing bodies. What I shall try to demonstrate is that Galileo and Spinoza share a methodological program of natural science which, rooted in a mathematical view of nature, is then applied to Scripture. It is this methodological preoccupation that dooms them both and ultimately subjects them to the charge of heresy.In this paper I shall examine the circumstances, both personal and ideological, surrounding the excommunications of both Galileo and Spinoza. The implications of the ideological impetus for the excommunications I situate in the process of "secularization of theology," a term used by Funkenstein to describe the scientific turn in the seventeenth century. 1 I want to compare the hermeneutic methods which were developed in two controversial works, Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, completed in 1615, and Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise,published anonymously in 1670, but possibly commenced [End Page 611] much earlier, and then to explore the application of these hermeneutic methods to the proof-text adduced by both writers, namely, Joshua 10:12-13. Galileo and Spinoza: The Scientific Quest By suggesting that Galileo and Spinoza represent the tensions inherent between religion and science, I am not simply acquiescing to the adversarial model of the science-religion wars as they have been portrayed by late nineteenth-century historians of science. These scholars would have us believe that science has been persecuted by religion: more specifically, that western science has been persecuted by the Catholic Church. For example, in his enormously influential work History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, John William Draper argued that the Church "became a stumbling block in the intellectual advancement of Europe for more than a thousand years." 2 On this antagonistic model, the history of scientific development was presented as a war against a narrow-minded establishment that feared science; the conflicts between science and religion were seen as a one-sided affair in which the Church sought to suppress truth-seeking scientists. Jewish institutions were not castigated nearly as maliciously on this view (perhaps, the cynic may argue, because by this point in history Jews wielded so little power).But as Brooke, Funkenstein, Feldhay, and others have reminded us, the Draper-White model of conflict between science and religion is overly simplistic. It is important to recognize that, especially in the early modern period, religion, philosophy, and science were mutually influential upon one another. Of course the term "science" is itself anachronistic when used in the early modern period. Were it not for the ubiquity of references to the "science-religion" wars, the term "natural philosophy" would be more appropriate. Funkenstein and Brooke have, for example, articulated many examples in which theological concepts influenced scientific and philosophical modes of discourse in the seventeenth century. 3It must be recognized too, that many of the struggles which occur between religion and science are not merely ideological wars but have a human dimension as well; ultimately, it is people who interact, not theories--personalities loom large and can affect the outcome of a debate. That this is certainly the case with both Spinoza and Galileo should come as no surprise. Rivka Feldhay, for example, argues that most accounts of Galileo are based on "overriding binary [End Page 612] opposition: that of the Church versus science," 4 an opposition which she claims is myopic and narrow. Scientific truths are not simply waiting to be discovered; they are embedded in social constructs. While I agree with Feldhay that social construction...