Doubt is a Precondition for Faith
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Kepler and Copernicus
The time immediately following the Resurrection was one of doubt, fear, and failure for many of those in the early church. So we’re going to talk a lot about these in the coming weeks. As we’ll see, each of these “negative” experiences can be profound gifts to our faith life.
I want to begin today by telling you the story of two scientists from the late 1500s: Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler. Both were German, and Copernicus published his life’s work in 1543, around 30 years before Kepler was born in 1571.
Theirs is a fascinating story of faith. Both were scientists – great scientists, as history would bear out. But both also had a deep and profound faith in God. And doubt is at the center of their story. Not doubt of their faith. Nor doubt of science. Doubt of their own assumptions.
Let’s start with Copernicus. Just before he died in 1543, he published a book entitled “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres,” and it was a really big deal. What was in this book led to what is now called “the Copernican Revolution.”
This revolution Copernicus caused was about what, exactly, was at the center of our solar system (and thus, to many, the center of the whole universe). Copernicus posited for the first time that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of the universe.
When Copernicus proposed that the Earth might not be the center of the universe, it was a great scandal. People at the time had been taught that, as the home of God’s creation and the place where human beings lived, everything we saw in the heavens revolved around Earth.
Copernicus, in fact, also began his intellectual life believing the same, that the Sun revolved around the Earth. He set out to prove some of the specifics by observing the motion of planets in our solar system. But what he found didn’t make mathematical sense.
Copernicus set out to prove that the Earth was the center of the universe, but ended up observing that it was the Sun around which all the planets revolved. The Earth, in fact, seemed to be just another planet. It didn’t seem like the Earth was the center of the universe.
In the minds of others at the time of Copernicus, this meant that the Earth was less special than they had thought. But Copernicus trusted his scientific observations, and it turns out he was correct. The Earth does revolve around the Sun.
Now back to Kepler. Johannes Kepler was taught the model of Copernicus. Kepler took for granted that the Earth revolved around the sun because of Copernicus. However, according to Copernicus, the Earth orbits the sun in a perfect circle.
Kepler set out to prove that planets orbited the Sun in perfect circles. But the observations Kepler made didn’t bear this out. Kepler made painstaking observations and kept extensive records. And what he saw going on didn’t make sense.
It turns out planets don’t orbit the sun in circles, but in what’s called an ellipse, which is kind of an oval. It sounds like a small change, but in the science of understanding the movements of something as big as the solar system, that small change made a big difference.
Like Copernicus, Kepler set out to prove one thing, but observed something different. Like Copernicus, Kepler doubted that what he observed in the world truly added up to the theories he was being taught. They doubted their assumptions.
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Science and Religion: Part I
Kepler and Copernicus are both very interesting cases in the history of science and Christianity – and especially in the intersection between the two. In fact, during the time of Copernicus and Kepler, there was no difference between science and religion.
Kepler was a man of science, he wanted to understand what he saw in the world around him. But he was also a man of profound faith. In fact, during Kepler’s lifetime, do you know how the field of mathematics was taught? In seminary school.
Kepler learned math as part of learning about God. In fact, Kepler's belief that God created the cosmos in an orderly fashion caused him to attempt to determine and comprehend the laws that govern the natural world, most profoundly in astronomy.
You see, Copernicus and Kepler both fully believed that the cosmos was created by God. In fact, they practiced science not to disprove their belief in God, but to enhance it. Kepler said that in studying the universe, he was “merely thinking God's thoughts after Him.”
Kepler wrote “those laws of nature are within the grasp of the human mind; God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts.”
Far from being two fields opposed to one another, faith and science were once one and the same. Scientists like Copernicus and Kepler weren’t interested in learning about the world around them to disprove their belief in God. Not at all.
In fact, quite the opposite. Because of the extent of their belief in God, they wanted to understand as much as they could about God’s creation. God created the cosmos, and He created in humans the ability to understand it.
What is especially interesting to me is the role doubt plays in the stories of both Copernicus and Kepler. Copernicus grew up thinking the Sun revolved around the Earth. Kepler grew up thinking the Earth revolved around the Sun, but in a perfect circle.
For 1500 years, people thought that as the center of God’s creation, the Earth must also be at the center of the cosmos. Even when Copernicus disproved this assumption, people still thought orbits would be perfect circles. But where did these theories come from?
They came from people’s assumptions. Assumptions not about the world around them, because they didn’t have the tools to observe that until the time of Copernicus and Kepler. These theories came from people’s assumptions about God and God’s creation.
People at the time were not able to reconcile between their assumptions about God and God’s creation – that the Earth must be at the center of the cosmos, that orbits must revolve in perfect circles – and what scientists like Copernicus and Kepler were telling them.
In fact, just one generation after the time of Copernicus and Kepler, another scientist named Galileo championing their ideas was met with opposition from within the Catholic Church. The matter was investigated by a formal inquisition in 1615, and Gelileo was found guilty of heresy.
You see, people are very slow to change their assumptions. They tend to be comfortable where they are, thinking what they already think, not wanting to update the ways in which they understand the world. People can be afraid to doubt themselves.
Doubt makes people uncomfortable. Because doubt asks questions, and questions might have answers we don’t like. But doubt can be a powerful tool, if used correctly. Because faith, also, is about questions and answers, isn’t it? Faith, then, might just be a little bit about doubt.
Not doubt about what we know of God from the Bible, tradition, and our prayer life. And not doubt about what we can observe of God’s creation in the cosmos around us. But doubt in our own assumptions – especially our assumptions about God and God’s creation.
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Doubt in the Bible
Doubt comes up time and again all through the Bible, starting from the very beginning. In Genesis chapter 3, after God tells Adam and Eve they shouldn’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge, Satan appears to help them doubt and question God’s instruction.
Satan asks Eve “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1). The devil casts doubt on God’s word and makes Eve insecure and confused. She subsequently falls into sin, because she doesn’t trust God and doubts His instruction.
Later in Genesis chapter 18, Sarah, the wife of Abraham, doubted when God told her she would have a son in her old age. She didn’t think it was possible, even though God told her, and she laughed.
In Genesis chapter 19, when Lot and his wife are fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot’s wife doubted God’s plan and looked back on her old life when she and her husband fled. The penalty was that she turned into a pillar of salt.
In the book of Job, When Job was afflicted and struggling to trust God in the midst of his terrible trials, his wife came to him and taunted him and said, “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9). Job’s response was: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10).
Later on, in the book of Exodus, the Israelites in the wilderness wanted to go back to Egypt and accused Moses of bringing them into the desert to die. They said, “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?
What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” (Exodus 14:11–12).
Doubt is all through the New Testament as well. In John, Nathaniel’s friend, Philip, told him that they had found the one about whom the Law and the Prophets had written, Jesus of Nazareth. But Nathanael asked, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46).
Nathanael was skeptical. He doubted the truthfulness of Philip’s words. Yet when he met Jesus, he said, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel” (John 1:49). In John, this is a theme that is repeated several times. “Come and see.”
The Pharisees kept asking Jesus for signs when He had already performed numerous signs right before their very eyes. After He had cleared the temple, they said, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” (John 2:18).
And again, when He had fed the multitudes, they said, “What sign then will you give us that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?” (John 6:30). Did you catch this: “that we may see it and believe” (the wording anticipates Jesus’ words to Thomas later on)?
They demanded tangible proof, or else they refused to believe. Now what did Jesus do? He simply told them that He was the Bread of Life, and challenged them to believe. As a result, many left and no longer followed Him, because they were offended.
At some point, even John the Baptist developed doubts about Jesus’ true identity. He sent some of his disciples to Jesus, and they asked Him, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:2).
John the Baptist had been thrown into prison, and he started to doubt that Jesus really was the Messiah. Amazing, isn’t it? His adverse circumstances made even the forerunner of Jesus doubt that He was who He claimed to be.
After the resurrection, when Jesus gave His disciples the “Great Commission”, the Bible says, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted” (Matthew 28:17). Even when the risen Jesus stood there right in front of them, some of His disciples doubted!
It obviously was not a problem of insufficient evidence, because what more evidence can you have than the resurrected Jesus standing right in front of you? The problem was in their hearts, in their assumptions. “People don’t come back from the dead.” So some of them doubted.
In Acts, we read that the philosophers in Athens sneered at Paul’s message and told him they wanted to hear him again another day (Acts 17:33). Only a few believed. As Paul writes in 1st Corinthians, the Greeks craved wisdom, but they missed the wisdom of God in Jesus Christ.
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Science and Religion: Part II
Fast forward a few centuries from Copernicus and Kepler to what we refer to as The Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was a transition to new manufacturing processes in Europe and the United States, from around 1760 to about 1840.
This transition included going from hand production methods to machines. New chemical manufacturing and iron production processes appeared. We started to use water and steam power, developed machine tools, and devised the mechanized factory system.
The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment. The entire Western hemisphere was reoriented around farming cotton, transporting it to England, and creating fabrics from it.
The Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in history, comparable only to humanity's adoption of agriculture with respect to material advancement. The Industrial Revolution influenced in some way almost every aspect of daily life.
Average income saw unprecedented and sustained growth. The standard of living for the general population in the Western world began to increase consistently for the first time in history. Life expectancies rose. People moved from a life of farming into cities for new jobs.
One of the main outcomes of the Industrial Revolution was an unfailing faith in human endeavors. If suddenly learning about science and engineering could help you create a new cotton gin and get rich, what was there not to be a fan of, right? Great!
Science during the Industrial Revolution, you see, had transformed from what it was in the time of Copernicus and Kepler. Science was no longer a way to understand God’s creation. It was a way to make money. It was a way to sit back and marvel at human accomplishments.
Thinkers during the Industrial Revolution likewise changed their perspective. They looked around and saw all the riches human ingenuity had brought to them, and they started to trust, more and more, human reasoning about the cosmos.
It became the same when it came to God. We looked around and saw human reasoning and ingenuity producing all the great stuff and the wealth and whatnot of the Industrial Revolution, and we started to trust our own abilities to create comfort in the world around us.
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Curiosity, Not Cynicism
Do you ever find yourself trying to reason your way to God? If your initial answer to this is a firm “no,” you might want to reconsider. I think most people do this from time to time. We read the Bible, we come to church, we pray in the hope we’ll gain more “understanding” of God.
As Earth-bound humans living in the material world, we are accustomed to understanding, explaining — even loving — “things.” But God is not a “thing.” God is not a concept. God is a set of actions, a way of life. A way to live.
Remember the quote we shared before Easter from Augustine’s “Confessions?” “Solvitur ambulando,” “it is solved by walking.” Remember, Jesus is the way first, and then the truth, and then the life.
We can and do certainly experience God. But in important ways, I think that experience is beyond what we mean when we say “understanding.” Think about Copernicus and Kepler. They thought they “understood” the cosmos, based on assumptions.
But as these two scientist-believers moved forward in their work, they doubted their assumptions. Augustine again “If you are pleased with what you are, you have stopped already. If you say, ‘It is enough,’ you are lost. Keep on walking, moving forward, trying for the goal.”
We might talk about God like He is a concept. In fact, to talk about God at all, we have to put words around his irreducible glory. But that is a function of the limitations of our human minds, of how we understand our material reality, and of how we use language. God is beyond all that.
When we say we “know” God, I think what we mean is that we experience God as part of the process of living out our lives in faith. While God is most certainly a “being” – in fact, God is very much The Being – the way we experience God is as a process of “becoming.”
So if you find yourself stuck in your own assumptions, I would suggest not trying to strengthen your faith, but strengthening your doubt. Instead of trusting your own reason to come to an understanding of God, try doubting your own reason entirely.
Try shutting your own reasoning down, and instead having an open mind about what God can prove to you. Sit in silence with God, and consider for a while that God had made the world, and your life in it, and the lives of everyone else. See how that makes you feel.
Know that God will take care of you. Don’t doubt that. Never doubt that God loves you. But some doubt can be very helpful to faith. When it comes to faith, it can be helpful to think about two sorts of doubt: cynicism and curiosity.
Cynicism is a sort of doubt that from the perspective of faith is very unhealthy. What is a cynic? Merriam-Webster defines a cynic as “a faultfinding, objectionable critic.” Synonyms of “cynic” include “critic,” “skeptic,” “naysayer,” and “pessimist.”
Where does the word “cynical” come from? Originally, a “Cynic" is an adherent of an ancient Greek school of philosophers. This school held the view that virtue is the only good, and that its essence lies in self-control and independence.
Cynics, you see, were sure not only that they knew what is “good,” but that they knew how to achieve a “good life” on their own. “Self-control.” “Independence.” Ever hear the phrase “manifest destiny?” This was popular reasoning during the Industrial Revolution.
To be cynical is to live in profound self-will. It’s a perspective that is all about placing yourself outside the order of things. A cynic stands on firm ground, from which they are able to criticize all else around them.
The cynic never has to come up with any real answers to life’s great questions, because they exist simply to question the answers others come up with. You say “this makes me happy,” and the cynic responds “happiness is just a mix of chemicals in your brain.” Right?
A cynic doesn’t need faith, because they think they have all the answers. They are too proud to doubt their own assumptions. But there is another kind of doubt that can be much more healthy: curiosity.
Curiosity as a form of doubt is highly underrated. In many profound ways, curiosity is the engine of our lives in their world. We get questions, and we don’t immediately see answers to them. The questions don’t go away. So we follow them.
Curiosity is about following questions, and getting some answers. But you can guess where I’m going with this, right? Those answers only lead to more questions. And on and on. This is the essence of why curiosity as a form of doubt is healthy for our faith.
You see, curiosity is all about humility. We don’t know, and that’s the starting point of curiosity. We’re coming from a place of being radically open. When we’re curious, it’s because we don’t know something – but we also know that we don’t know, and we’re open to the answer.
In fact, as people of faith, we are convinced that there is an entire cosmos behind the one we see and feel and touch with ourselves in this world. We are convinced that there is something more out there, something beyond ourselves.
Like the resurrection, curiosity leads us away from a static, conceptual view of God as a “thing,” and more towards something more dynamic, and vibrant, and alive. Something that moves within us, and guides our lives in profound ways.
