93:1 The LORD reigns!
He is robed in majesty,
the LORD is robed,
he wears strength around his waist.
Indeed, the world is established, it cannot be moved.
The world is established, it cannot be moved – Calvin is said to have rejected Copernicus and his demonstration of the earth’s orbit around the Sun, by referring to this text, and asking: ‘Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?’
Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, put this exclamation in Calvin’s mouth without giving a source for it. It is evident, however, that Russell got it from A.D. White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, ‘to which’, he declared elsewhere, ‘I am much indebted.’
White writes:
‘Calvin took the lead, in his Commentary on Genesis, by condemning all who asserted that the earth is not at the centre of the universe. He clinched the matter by the usual reference to the first verse of the ninety-third Psalm, and asked, “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit? “‘
White gives as his source of Calvin’s purported anti-Copernicus sentiment F.W. Farrar’s History of Interpretation. But here the trail goes cold. Truth is, no source has ever been found in Calvin’s extant writings. But none of this has prevented the story from being passed uncritically from one writer to another as a kind of ‘urban myth’.
What, in actual fact, was Calvin’s attitude towards Copernicus and his theory?
In the ‘Argument’ prefacing his commentary on Genesis, Calvin rather mildly writes:
‘We indeed are not ignorant, that the circuit of the heavens is finite, and that the earth, like a little globe, is placed in the centre.’
There is no condemnation of those who take a different view.
And on Psa 93:1 he comments:
‘The heavens revolve daily, and, immense as is their fabric and inconceivable the rapidity of their revolutions, we experience no concussion-no disturbance in the harmony of their motion. The sun, though varying its course every diurnal revolution, returns annually to the same point. The planets, in all their wanderings, maintain their respective positions. How could the earth hang suspended in the air were it not upheld by God’s hand? By what means could it maintain itself unmoved, while the heavens above are in constant rapid motion, did not its Divine Maker fix and establish it.’
Calvin’s comments on Ps. 19:4-6, 75:3, 104:5, 119:90, Jeremiah 10:12, and Job 26:7 similarly evince a cosmology that was preCopernican, not anti-Copernican. He never mentions Copernicus in any of his extant writings, and, far from opposing Copernicus and his theory, it seems unlikely that he had ever heard of either. (Copernicus’ Revolutions was published 20 years or so before Calvin’s death.)
That Calvin was open to further discoveries in this area is testified by his comment on Gen 1:16 –
‘Astronomers . . . investigate with great labor whatever the keenness of man’s intellect is able to discover. Such study is certainly not to be disapproved, nor science condemned with the insolence of some fanatics who habitually reject whatever is unknown to them. The study of astronomy not only gives pleasure but is also extremely useful. And no one can deny that it admirably reveals the wisdom of God. Therefore, clever men who expend their labor upon it are to be praised and those who have ability and leisure ought not to neglect work of that kind.’
When we read Calvin’s comments on Ps. 19:4-6, 75:3, 93:1, 104:5, 119:90, Jeremiah 10:12, and Job 26:7, we find strong reasons to suppose that he, far from opposing Copernicus, had never heard of him or his theory.
Rosen, Edward (1960) ‘Calvin’s Attitude Towards Copernicus’ Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1960), pp. 431-441 (11 pages)