Wesley, Calvin, Lincoln and Internet Quotes

While preparing for my youth group Bible study at River Church, I came across a quote by John Wesley that so beautifully sums up the nature of the topic up for discussion this week. Unfortunately, the web site didn't provide a citation. No problem. I just entered the entire quotation into my favorite search engine and, הִנֶּה (!), out popped a dozen or so additional websites with the same quote. Problem. NONE of these website provided a citation, either.

This reminded me of a similar rabbit trail I followed while writing my first book, Scripture and Cosmology. I had come across a quote by John Calvin on his rather negative views of the Copernican model of the cosmos: "Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?" Wow! Calvin was no fan of the new science, was he?

Like the Wesley quote above, this quote had no citation attached to it. I did some digging...and more digging, until I found the answer. Here's what I wrote in the book:

Until the latter half of the 20^th century, it was commonly thought that Calvin was directly at odds with Copernicus’ ideas. In 1896, Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University, claimed that Calvin asked indignantly, “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?”^[1] As it turns out, the quote attributed to Calvin by White has never been verified. Instead, it seems rather apparent that White had put words in Calvin’s mouth to make a stronger case for the ideological divide between science and faith.^[2] These apocryphal sayings of Calvin were then relayed and popularized in 1935 by the philosopher Bertrund Russell in his Religion and Science.^[3] As it turns out, Calvin appears to have offered little, if any, direct response to the new astronomy.

I don't know if the Wesley quote will pan out to be authentic, or not. But, these two little episodes remind us of what Abraham Lincoln once said, "The problem with quotes found on the internet is that they are often not true."

[1] Andew Dickson White, History of Warfare of Science with Theology, Vol. 1 (New York: Appleton, 1896), p. 127.

[2] Robert White, “Calvin and Copernicus: The Problem Reconsidered,” Calvin Theological Journal 15 (1980), p. 234.

[3] Edward Rosen, Copernicus and His Successors (London: Hambeldon, 1995), pp. 161–172.