260 Roberts
physical world speaks according to the appearances of things and the cur-
rent ideas of the times.” Acceptance of a “canon of interpretation” that
made science and biblical theology complementary rather than overlap-
ping enterprises enabled thinkers to exempt themselves from a position
that “makes Faith appear as a defendant, continually obliged to Science
for permission to live.”^14
A few Christians seeking to reconcile science and theology continued
to ascribe “otherwise inexplicable effects” in the realm of natural events to
supernatural agency. Most, however, concluded that “the natural and su-
pernatural are not two mutually exclusive spheres.” Those Christians typi-
cally embraced a division of labor that envisioned science as an enterprise
designed to answer “how” questions—in particular, to arrive at the “rules”
that described the operation of the cosmos—and religion as a source of
conceptual resources for answering “why” questions. According to this
arrangement, the law- like behavior of natural phenomena disclosed by
science simply revealed “the method by which God works.” Proponents
of this view, who included numerous clergy, theologians, and scientists,
commonly held that all force was simply the manifestation of immanent
divine “energy” and that as a result, “wherever in nature effi cient power
operates, that power is God.” Hence, whereas science described phenom-Figure 10.2. Keyword search of the Periodicals Contents Index for articles in English, “Religion and Sci-
ence,” 1825–1949.