"Nonoverlapping Magisteria"

Natural History, March 1997

Nonoverlapping Magisteria

Science and religion are not in conflict, for their teachings occupy
distinctly different domains.

By Stephen Jay Gould


Incongruous places often inspire anomalous stories. In early 1984, I spent
several nights at the Vatican housed in a hotel built for itinerant priests.
While pondering over such puzzling issues as the intended function of the
bidets in each bathroom, and hungering for something other than plum jam on
my breakfast rolls (why did the basket only contain hundreds of identical
plum packets and not a one of, say, strawberry?), I encountered yet another
among the innumerable issues of contrasting cultures that can make life so
interesting. Our crowd (present in Rome for a meeting on nuclear winter
sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences) shared the hotel with a
group of French and Italian Jesuit priests who were also professional
scientists.

At lunch, the priests called me over to their table to pose a problem that
had been troubling them. What, they wanted to know, was going on in America
with all this talk about "scientific creationism"? One asked me: "Is
evolution really in some kind of trouble. and if so, what could such trouble
be? I have always been taught that no doctrinal conflict exists between
evolution and Catholic faith, and the evidence for evolution seems both
entirely satisfactory and utterly overwhelming. Have I missed something?"

A lively pastiche of French, Italian, and English conversation then ensued
for half an hour or so, but the priests all seemed reassured by my general
answer: Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments
have been offered. Creationism is a homegrown phenomenon of American
sociocultural history--a splinter movement (unfortunately rather more of a
beam these days) of Protestant fundamentalists who believe that every word
of the Bible must be literally true, whatever such a claim might mean. We
all left satisfied, but I certainly felt bemused by the anomaly of my role
as a Jewish agnostic, trying to reassure a group of Catholic priests that
evolution remained both true and entirely consistent with religious belief.

Another story in the same mold: I am often asked whether I ever encounter
creationism as a live issue among my Harvard undergraduate students. I reply
that only once, in nearly thirty years of teaching, did I experience such an
incident. A very sincere and serious freshman student came to my office
hours with the following question that had clearly been troubling him
deeply: "I am a devout Christian and have never had any reason to doubt
evolution, an idea that seems both exciting and particularly well
documented. But my roommate, a proselytizing Evangelical, has been insisting
with enormous vigor that I cannot be both a real Christian and an
evolutionist. So tell me, can a person believe both in God and evolution?"
Again, I gulped hard, did my intellectual duty, and reassured him that
evolution was both true and entirely compatible with Christian belief--a
position I hold sincerely, but still an odd situation for a Jewish agnostic.

These two stories illustrate a cardinal point, frequently unrecognized but
absolutely central to any understanding of the status and impact of the
politically potent, fundamentalist doctrine known by its self-proclaimed
oxymoron as "scientitic creationism"--the claim that the Bible is literally
true, that all organisms were created during six days of twenty-four hours,
that the earth is only a few thousand years old, and that evolution must
therefore be false. Creationism does not pit science against religion (as my
opening stories indicate), for no such conflict exists. Creationism does not
raise any unsettled intellectual issues about the nature of biology or the
history of life. Creationism is a local and parochial movement, powerful
only in the United States among Western nations, and prevalent only among
the few sectors of American Protestantism that choose to read the Bible as
an inerrant document, literally true in every jot and tittle.

I do not doubt that one could find an occasional nun who would prefer to
teach creationism in her parochial school biology class or an occasional
orthodox rabbi who does the same in his yeshiva, but creationism based on
biblical literalism makes little sense in either Catholicism or Judaism for
neither religion maintains any extensive tradition for reading the Bible as
literal truth rather than illuminating literature, based partly on metaphor
and allegory (essential components of all good writing) and demanding
interpretation for proper understanding. Most Protestant groups, of course,
take the same position--the fundamentalist fringe notwithstanding.

The position that I have just outlined by personal stories and general
statements represents the standard attitude of all major Western religions
(and of Western science) today. (I cannot, through ignorance, speak of
Eastern religions, although I suspect that the same position would prevail
in most cases.) The lack of conflict between science and religion arises
from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional
expertise--science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and
religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning
of our lives. The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive
attention to both domains--for a great book tells us that the truth can make
us free and that we will live in optimal harmony with our fellows when we
learn to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.

In the context of this standard position, I was enormously puzzled by a
statement issued by Pope John Paul II on October 22, 1996, to the Pontifical
Academy of Sciences, the same body that had sponsored my earlier trip to the
Vatican. In this document, entitled "Truth Cannot Contradict Truth," the
pope defended both the evidence for evolution and the consistency of the
theory with Catholic religious doctrine. Newspapers throughout the world
responded with frontpage headlines, as in the New York Times for October 25:

"Pope Bolsters Church's Support for Scientific View of Evolution."

Now I know about "slow news days" and I do admit that nothing else was
strongly competing for headlines at that particular moment.  (The Times
could muster nothing more exciting for a lead story than Ross Perot's
refusal to take Bob Dole's advice and quit the presidential race.) Still, I
couldn't help feeling immensely puzzled by all the attention paid to the
pope's statement (while being wryly pleased, of course, for we need all the
good press we can get, especially from respected outside sources). The
Catholic Church had never opposed evolution and had no reason to do so. Why
had the pope issued such a statement at all? And why had the press responded
with an orgy of worldwide, front-page coverage?

I could only conclude at first, and wrongly as I soon learned, that
journalists throughout the world must deeply misunderstand the relationship
between science and religion, and must therefore be elevating a minor papal
comment to unwarranted notice. Perhaps most people really do think that a
war exists between science and religion, and that (to cite a particularly
newsworthy case) evolution must be intrinsically opposed to Christianity. In
such a context, a papal admission of evolution's legitimate status might be
regarded as major news indeed--a sort of modern equivalent for a story that
never happened, but would have made the biggest journalistic splash of 1640:
Pope Urban VIII releases his most famous prisoner from house arrest and
humbly apologizes, "Sorry, Signor Galileo . . . the sun, er, is central."

But I then discovered that the prominent coverage of papal satisfaction with
evolution had not been an error of non-Catholic Anglophone journalists. The
Vatican itself had issued the statement as a major news release.  And
Italian newspapers had featured, if anything, even bigger headlines and
longer stories. The conservative Il Giornale, for example, shouted from its
masthead: "Pope Says We May Descend from Monkeys."

Clearly, I was out to lunch. Something novel or surprising must lurk within
the papal statement but what could it be?--especially given the accuracy of
my primary impression (as I later verified) that the Catholic Church values
scientific study, views science as no threat to religion in general or
Catholic doctrine in particular, and has long accepted both the legitimacy
of evolution as a field of study and the potential harmony of evolutionary
conclusions with Catholic faith.

As a former constituent of Tip O'Neill's, I certainly know that "all
politics is local"--and that the Vatican undoubtedly has its own interna1
reasons, quite opaque to me, for announcing papal support of evolution in a
major statement. Still, I knew that I was missing some important key, and I
felt frustrated. I then remembered the primary rule of intellectual life:
when puzzled, it never hurts to read the primary documents--a rather simple
and self-evident principle that has, nonetheless, completely disappeared
from large sectors of the American experience.

I knew that Pope Pius XII (not one of my favorite figures in
twentieth-century history, to say the least) had made the primary statement
in a 1950 encyclical entitled Humani Generis. I knew the main thrust of his
message: Catholics could believe whatever science determined about the
evolution of the human body, so long as they accepted that, at some time of
his choosing, God had infused the soul into such a creature. I also knew
that I had no problem with this statement, for whatever my private beliefs
about souls, science cannot touch such a subject and therefore cannot be
threatened by any theological position on such a legitimately and
intrinsically religious issue. Pope Pius XII, in other words, had properly
acknowledged and respected the separate domains of science and theology.
Thus, I found myself in total agreement with Humani Generis--but I had never
read the document in full (not much of an impediment to stating an opinion
these days).

I quickly got the relevant writings from, of all places, the Internet. (The
pope is prominently on-line, but a Luddite like me is not. So I got a
computer-literate associate to dredge up the documents. I do love the
fracture of stereotypes implied by finding religion so hep and a scientist
so square.) Having now read in full both Pope Pius's Humani Generis of 1950
and Pope John Paul's proclamation of October 1996, I finally understand why
the recent statement seems so new, revealing, and worthy of all those
headlines. And the message could not be more welcome for evolutionists and
friends of both science and religion.

The text of Humani Generis focuses on the magisterium (or teaching
authority) of the Church--a word derived not from any concept of majesty or
awe but from the different notion of teaching, for magister is Latin for
"teacher." We may, I think, adopt this word and concept to express the
central point of this essay and the principled resolution of supposed
"conflict" or "warfare" between science and religion. No such conflict
should exist because each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of
teaching authority--and these magisteria do not overlap (the principle that
I would like to designate as NOMA, or "nonoverlapping magisteria"). The net
of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why
does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions
of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they
encompass all inquiry (consider, for starters, the magisterium of art and
the meaning of beauty). To cite the arch cliches, we get the age of rocks,
and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they
determine how to go to heaven.

This resolution might remain all neat and clean if the nonoverlapping
magisteria (NOMA) of science and religion were separated by an extensive no
man's land. But, in fact, the two magisteria bump right up against each
other, interdigitating in wondrously complex ways along their joint border.
Many of our deepest questions call upon aspects of both for different parts
of a full answer--and the sorting of legitimate domains can become quite
complex and difficult. To cite just two broad questions involving both
evolutionary facts and moral arguments: Since evolution made us the only
earthly creatures with advanced consciousness, what responsibilities are so
entailed for our relations with other species? What do our genealogical ties
with other organisms imply about the meaning of human life?

Pius XII's Humani Generis is a highly traditionalist document by a deeply
conservative man forced to face all the "isms" and cynicisms that rode the
wake of World War II and informed the struggle to rebuild human decency from
the ashes of the Holocaust. The encyclical, subtitled "Concerning some false
opinions which threaten to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine"
begins with a statement of embattlement:

Disagreement and error among men on moral and religious matters have always
been a cause of profound sorrow to all good men, but above all to the true
and loyal sons of the Church, especially today, when we see the principles
of Christian culture being attacked on all sides.

Pius lashes out, in turn, at various external enemies of the Church:
pantheism, existentialism, dialectical materialism, historicism. and of
course and preeminently, communism. He then notes with sadness that some
well-meaning folks within the Church have fallen into a dangerous
relativism--"a theological pacifism and egalitarianism, in which all points
of view become equally valid"--in order to include people of wavering faith
who yearn for the embrace of Christian religion but do not wish to accept
the particularly Catholic magisterium.

What is this world coming to when these noxious novelties can so
discombobulate a revealed and established order? Speaking as a
conservative's conservative, Pius laments:

Novelties of this kind have already borne their deadly fruit in almost all
branches of theology.... Some question whether angels are personal beings,
and whether matter and spirit differ essentially....  Some even say that the
doctrine of Transubstantiation, based on an antiquated philosophic notion of
substance, should be so modified that the Real Presence of Christ in the
Holy Eucharist be reduced to a kind of symbolism.

Pius first mentions evolution to decry a misuse by overextension often
promulgated by zealous supporters of the anathematized "isms":

Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution . . . explains the
origin of all things....  Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so
that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal
God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical
materialism.

Pius's major statement on evolution occurs near the end ot the encyclical in
paragraphs 35 through 37. He accepts the standard model of NOMA and begins
by acknowledging that evolution lies in a difficult area where the domains
press hard against each other.  "It remains for US now to speak about those
questions which. although they pertain to the positive sciences, are
nevertheless more or less connected with the truths of the Christian
faith."*

Pius then writes the well-known words that permit Catholics to entertain the
evolution of the human body (a factual issue under the magisterium of
science), so long as they accept the divine Creation and infusion of the
soul (a theological notion under the magisterium of religion):

The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity
with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and
discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with
regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the
origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter--for
the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by
God.

I had, up to here, found nothing surprising in Humani Generis, and nothing
to relieve my puzzlement about the novelty of Pope John Paul's recent
statement. But I read further and realized that Pope Pius had said more
about evolution, something I had never seen quoted, and that made John
Paul's statement most interesting indeed. In short. Pius forcefully
proclaimed that while evolution may be legitimate in principle, the theory,
in fact, had not been proven and might well be entirely wrong. One gets the
strong impression, moreover. that Pius was rooting pretty hard for a verdict
of falsity.

Continuing directly from the last quotation, Pius advises us about the
proper study of evolution:

However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions,
that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and
judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure.... Some,
however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if
the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were
already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been
discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were
nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest
moderation and caution in this question.

To summarize, Pius generally accepts the NOMA principle of nonoverlapping
magisteria in permitting Catholics to entertain the hypothesis of evolution
for the human body so long as they accept the divine infusion of the soul.
But he then offers some (holy) fatherly advice to scientists about the
status of evolution as a scientific concept: the idea is not yet proven, and
vou all need to be especially cautious because evolution raises many
troubling issues right on the border of my magisterium. One may read this
second theme in two different ways: either as a gratuitous incursion into a
different magisterium or as a helpful perspective from an intelligent and
concerned outsider. As a man of good will, and in the interest of
conciliation, I am happy to embrace the latter reading.

In any case, this rarely quoted second claim (that evolution remains both
unproven and a bit dangerous)--and not the familiar first argument for the
NOMA principle (that Catholics may accept the evolution of the body so long
as they embrace the creation of the soul)--defines the novelty and the
interest of John Paul's recent statement.

John Paul begins by summarizing Pius's older encyclical of 195O, and
particularly by reaffirming the NOMA principle--nothing new here, and no
cause for extended publicity:

In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII had
already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the
doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation.

To emphasize the power of NOMA, John Paul poses a potential problem and a
sound resolution: How can we reconcile science's claim for physical
continuity in human evolution with Catholicism's insistence that the soul
must enter at a moment of divine infusion?

In conclusion. Pius had grudgingly admitted evolution as a legitimate
hypothesis that he regarded as only tentatively supported and potentially
(as I suspect he hoped) untrue. John Paul, nearly fifty years later,
reaffirms the legitimacy of evolution under the NOMA principle--no news
here--but then adds that additional data and theory have placed the
factuality of evolution beyond reasonable doubt. Sincere Christians must now
accept evolution not merely as a plausible possibility but also as an
effectively proven fact. In other words, official Catholic opinion on
evolution has moved from "say it ain't so, but we can deal with it if we
have to" (Pius's grudging view of 1950) to John Paul's entirely welcoming
"it has been proven true; we always celebrate nature's factuality, and we
look forward to interesting discussions of theological implications." I
happily endorse this turn of events as gospel--literally "good news." I may
represent the magisterium of science, but I welcome the support of a primary
leader from the other major magisterium of our complex lives. And I recall
the wisdom of King Solomon: "As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good
news from a far country (Prov. 25:25).

Just as religion must bear the cross of its hard-liners. I have some
scientific colleagues, including a few prominent enough to wield influence
by their writings, who view this rapprochement of the separate magisteria
with dismay. To colleagues like me--agnostic scientists who welcome and
celebrate thc rapprochement, especially the pope's latest statement--they
say: "C'mon, be honest; you know that religion is addle-pated,
superstitious, old-fashioned b.s.; you're only making those welcoming noises
because religion is so powerful, and we need to be diplomatic in order to
assure public support and funding for science." I do not think that this
attitude is common among scientists. but such a position fills me with
dismay--and I therefore end this essay with a personal statement about
religion, as a testimony to what I regard as a virtual consensus among
thoughtful scientists (who support the NOMA principle as firmly as the pope
does).

I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of
institutional commitment or practice. But I have enormous respect for
religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others
(with a few exceptions, like evolution, paleontology, and baseball). Much of
this fascination lies in the historical paradox that throughout Western
history organized religion has fostered both the most unspeakable horrors
and the most heart-rending examples of human goodness in the face of personal
danger. (The evil, I believe, lies in the occasional confluence of religion
with secular power. The Catholic Church has sponsored its share of horrors,
from Inquisitions to liquidations--but only because this institution held
such secular power during so much of Western history. When my folks held
similar power more briefly in Old Testament times, they committed just as
many atrocities with many of the same rationales.)

I believe, with all my heart. in a respectful. even loving concordat between
our magisteria--the NOMA solution. NOMA represents a principled position on
moral and intellectua] grounds. not a mere diplomatic stance. NOMA also cuts
both ways. If religion can no longer dictate the nature of factual
conclusions properly under the magisterium of science, then scientists
cannot claim higher insight into moral truth from any superior knowledge of
the world's empirical constitution. This mutual humility has important
practical consequences in a world of such diverse passions.

Religion is too important to too many people for any dismissal or
denigration of the comfort still sought by many folks from theology. I may,
for example, privately suspect that papal insistence on divine infusion of
the soul represents a sop to our fears, a device for maintaining a belief in
human superiority within an evolutionary world offering no privileged
position to any creature. But I also know that souls represent a subject
outside the magisterium of science. My world cannot prove or disprove such a
notion, and the concept of souls cannot threaten or impact my domain.
Moreover, while I cannot personally accept the Catholic view of souls, I
surely honor the metaphorical value of such a concept both for grounding
moral discussion and for expressing what we most value about human
potentiality: our decency, care, and all the ethical and intellectual
struggles that the evolution of consciousness imposed upon us.

As a moral position (and therefore not as a deduction from my knowledge of
nature's factuality), I prefer the "cold bath" theory that nature can be
truly "cruel" and "indifferent"--in the utterly inappropriate terms of our
ethical discourse--because nature was not constructed as our eventual abode,
didn't know we were coming (we are, after all, interlopers of the latest
geological microsecond), and doesn't give a damn about us (speaking
metaphorically). I regard such a position as liberating, not depressing,
because we then become free to conduct moral discourse--and nothing could be
more important--in our own terms, spared from the delusion that we might
read moral truth passively from nature's factuality.

But I recognize that such a position frightens many people, and that a more
spiritual view of nature retains broad appeal (acknowledging the factuality
of evolution and other phenomena, but still seeking some intrinsic meaning
in human terms, and from the magisterium of religion). I do appreciate, for
example, the struggles of a man who wrote to the New York Times on November
3, 1996, to state both his pain and his endorsement ofJohn Paul's statement:

Pope John Paul II's acceptance of evolution touches the doubt in my heart.
The problem of pain and suffering in a world created by a God who is all
love and light is hard enough to bear, even if one is a creationist. But at
least a creationist can say that the original creation, coming from the hand
of God was good, harmonious, innocent and gentle. What can one say about
evolution, even a spiritual theory of evolution? Pain and suffering,
mindless cruelty and terror are its means of creation. Evolution's engine is
the grinding of predatory teeth upon the screaming, living flesh and bones
of prey.... If evolution be true, my faith has rougher seas to sail.

I don't agree with this man, but we could have a wonderful argument. I would
push the "cold bath" theory: he would (presumably) advocate the theme of
inherent spiritual meaning in nature, however opaque the signal. But we
would both be enlightened and filled with better understanding of these deep
and ultimately unanswerable issues. Here, I believe, lies the greatest
strength and necessity of NOMA, the nonoverlapping magisteria of science and
religion. NOMA permits--indeed enjoins--the prospect of respectful
discourse, of constant input from both magisteria toward the common goal of
wisdom. If human beings are anything special, we are the creatures that must
ponder and talk. Pope John Paul II would surely point out to me that his
magisterium has always recognized this distinction, for "in principio, erat
verbum"--"In the beginning was the Word."

Stephen Jay Gould teaches biology, geology, and the history of science at
Harvard University. He is also Frederick P. Rose Honorary Curator in
Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History.

Postscript

Carl Sagan organized and attended the Latican meeting that introduces this
essay; he also shared my concern for fruitful cooperation between the
different but vital realms of science and religion. Carl was also one of my
dearest friends. I learned of his untimely death on the same day that I read
the proofs for this essay. I could only recall Nehru's observations on
Gandhi's death--that the light had gone out, and darkness reigned
everywhere. But I then contemplated what Carl had done in his short
sixty-two years and remembered John Dryden's ode for Henry Purcell, a great
musician who died even younger: "He long ere this had tuned the jarring
spheres, and left no hell below."

The days I spent with Carl in Rome were the best of our friendship. We
delighted in walking around the Eternal City, feasting on its history and
architecture--and its food! Carl took special delight in the anonymity that
he still enjoyed in a nation that had not yet aired Cosmos, the greatest
media work in popular science of all time.

I dedicate this essay to his memory. Carl also shared my personal suspicion
about the nonexistence of souls--but I cannot think of a better reason for
hoping we are wrong than the prospect of spending eternity roaming the
cosmos in friendship and conversation with this wonderful soul.

*Interestingly, the main thrust of these paragraphs does not address
evolution in general but lies in refuting a doctrine that Pius calls
"polygenism," or the notion of human ancestry from multiple parents--for he
regards such an idea as incompatible with the doctrine of original sin,
"which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and
which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his
own." In this one instance, Pius may be transgressing the NOMA
principle--but I cannot judge, for I do not understand the details of
Catholic theology and therefore do not know how symbolically such a
statement may be read. If Pius is arguing that we cannot entertain a theory
about derivation of all modern humans from an ancestral population rather
than through an ancestral individual (a potential fact) because such an idea
would question the doctrine of original sin (a theological construct), then
I would declare him out of line for letting the magisterium of religion
dictate a conclusion within the magisterium of science.