A scientific theology? William Robertson Smith's ‘dual life'

William Robertson Smith's (1846-1894) multifaceted career, as a Free Church minister, physicist, mathematician, philologist and, last but not least, scholar of comparative religion, is remarkably important in our historiographical account for a number of reasons.

Although born in a free and open family environment, Smith² was raised within the Free Church, an Evangelical branch that split from the Scottish Church in 1843 to adopt a Calvinist, rigidly traditional and anti-rationalist doctrine based on the human dependence on divine grace and the divine nature of the Bible-as-text (Wheeler­Barclay 2010: 142-3; cf. Black and Chrystal 1912a: 1-31). On a personal level, such a paradoxical mix of a liberal attitude open to scientific, critical discussion and non- negotiable dogmas would constitute the main feature of Smith's work as a scholar. While a believer and a minister of the Free Church since 1870, he adopted German ‘believing criticism', in which ‘an absolute affirmation of the fact of a supernatural divine revelation' was intertwined with the non-divine nature of the texts which recorded that very revelation.

Up until 1870, however, Smith had managed to pursue an astonishing and surprising ‘dual life' (Anonymous 1894: 557; cf. Wheeler-Barclay 2010: 147). In 1866, Smith was awarded both the prestigious Ferguson scholarship in Mathematics and Classics and the Fullerton and Moir Scholarship. He chose Edinburgh and was admitted to the New College (Beidelman 1974: 4). His examiner, Natural Philosophy professor Peter Guthrie Tait (1831-1901), was so impressed by Smith's scientific acumen that he offered him a position as assistant in his new Physical Laboratory (Anonymous 1894: 557).³ As recalled by Cargill G. Knott, another assistant of Tait as well as his future biographer, ‘when Robertson Smith saw that he could combine the duties of the post with his theological studies at the Free Church College, he accepted Tait's offer; and after training himself in physical manipulation during the summer months of 1868 undertook, the next winter session, the systematic teaching of students in practical physics' (Knott 1911: 71-2).⁴ While working at Tait's lab, Smith published on geometry, calculus and electricity (Black and Chrystal 1912b: vi; Livingstone 2014: 46).

An obituary published in Nature in 1894, probably written by Tait himself, explicitly lamented that ‘unfortunately for Science, and (in too many respects) for himself, his splendid intellectual power was diverted, early in his career, from Physics and Mathematics, in which he had given sure earnest of success' to ‘Eastern languages', cultures and - most of all - religions (Anonymous 1894: 557; see Knott 1911: 292). As the obituary recalls, ‘what Smith might have done in science' had been already foreshadowed by his early articles (e.g. ‘his masterly paper “On the Flow of Electricity in Conducting Surfaces”, Proc.

However, Smith believed in approaching theology as if it was a science, and his accommodationism resulted in the a priori logical compatibility of science and religion (cf. Coyne 2015: xii, 97). In a letter dated 29 December 1870, Smith wrote to his friend and mathematician Max Nother (1844-1921), explaining his views on the matter:

theology too is a Science & to be successfully handled must be subjected to the methods of all Science. I do not believe in a plurality of Scientific Methods or in any opposition between the mental qualities that fit men for different Scientific pursuits [...]. [T]he ultimate unity of all Science is not a mere distant ideal but a practical fact which every scientific worker will find it profitable to keep constantly before him. And if Science is bound to pay attention to everything real or ideal that forms an actual part of the Universe, there must also be a Science of Religion and especially of Christianity.

SBB Slg Darmstaedter 2d 1870; from Maier 2009: 133

The conclusion of the passage recalled by modern Smith biographer Bernhard Maier exemplifies the perspective of the Scottish scholar: ‘and so, my Theological Studies cannot withdraw me from interest in Science in general, but rather stimulate my interest in all those other enquiries in which I recognize an admirable harmony - not with everything that calls itself Theology - but with Theology which is itself scientific' (CUL 7449 A 15; from Maier 2009: 133).

Smith's own ‘scientific theology' was the result of a pioneering empirical research in sociology and social evolutionism (see Livingstone 2014: 53 contra Kippenberg 2002: 71), intertwined with a firm commitment to Christian dogmas, especially the non- negotiable nature of revelation as real and progressive, and an apparent refusal of merely materialistic and non-teleological biological evolution (Wheeler-Barclay 2010: 147, 169; Livingstone 2014: 51).

As anticipated above, Smith renounced a promising academic career in physics and mathematics in 1870, when he was appointed to the chair of Hebrew in Aberdeen. And yet, he remained in close contact with Tait and other scientists, corresponding and engaging in a series of quarrels concerning the relationship between science and theology. As a fierce critic of the view that saw science and faith as two opposing forces, in 1874 Smith wrote a newspaper article and harshly criticized both the materialistic, pro-e volutionary approach and the clear-c ut separation of science and theology heralded by John Tyndall (1820-1893) in his presidential and militant address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Maier 2009: 143; Livingstone 2014: 50-1; see Desmond and Moore 1991: 611). One year later, faithful to an accommodationist perspective opposed to any non-teleological biological evolution, Smith helped Tait and fellow physicist Balfour Stewart (1828-1887) write a volume entitled The Unseen Universe, in which the two authors set out to show the compatibility between science and religion while asserting that ‘recent research in physics rather pointed to the existence of a transcendental universe and the immortality of the soul' (Maier 2009: 143). The Unseen Universe was first published anonymously in 1875. One year later, Tait wrote to Smith to ask him whether he would agree to be added as contributor in the forthcoming fourth edition, but Smith refused to comply (Black and Chrystal 1912a: 163-6; Maier 2009: 143). This request coincided with the onset of the most turbulent period of Smith's life.