Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt, Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Wheaton College:

God's Time in Our Hands: Reformation Bibles and the Reforming of Time.

The Protestant Reformation raised critical questions regarding the accepted theology, structure, and practices of the Roman Catholic Church with an impact that continues to shape Christian religious life in our world today. Reforming the church, as it turned out, also ushered in questions surrounding the observance of time in multifaceted ways across Europe. Reformation scholar and historian, Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt will deliver a lecture on the reformation of time with attention to French Bibles as multilayered time-keeping devices. At a time when printed Bibles were gaining newfound prominence in European life, the French Bible reflects and informs the perception and observance of human time at the intersection, overlap, and interplay with God's sacred presence, speech, and activity in the world.

Dr. Sara Schechner, recently retired Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University: 

Sundials and Matters of Faith

Since ancient times, sundials and time-finding instruments have been closely connected to religious practice.  Our 24-hour day originated in the ancient Egyptian religious practice of time finding by the stars and sun, and sundials have been used by Jews, Christians, and Muslims to determine times for prayer, the direction in which to pray, the way to Jerusalem, and the calendar of religious festivals tied to both solar and lunar cycles. 

The early Christian church adopted the Roman system of time reckoning and by the third century, daily prayers were scheduled at certain hours.  In monastic houses, time was regulated first by sundials and water clocks. Starting in the early seventh century, fixed sundials were placed over the doors of churches so that passersby would be reminded to stop and pray.  Others were placed in cloisters and churchyards to show canonical hours. 

A large variety of portable, pocket-sized sundials helped clerics as well as the laity manage their religious duties or express their piety.   Many had iconography and symbols—e.g., scenes from the life of Jesus, a portrait of the Virgin, a cross, or the monogram of Jesus (IHS)—while others had pious phrases.  The sundials themselves could be shaped as a prayer book or cross.  On cruciform dials, the arms of the cross were inscribed with hour lines, and their edges served as the sundial's gnomons.  The finest examples also served as reliquaries.  A variety of pocket dials had epact devices for calculating the date of Easter over a range of years according to both the Julian and Gregorian calendars.  Many had perpetual calendars listing saints’ days and tables for determining on what dates Sundays would fall in a given year.

Exceptional sundials had maps for finding the way to Rome, Jerusalem, and other pilgrimage sites. Many more portable dials were adjustable for latitude and had hour scales for use across Europe and according to regional time-reckoning conventions, which enabled pilgrims and travelers to find the local time en route.  These portable dials also found the length of the current day and night so that travel hours could be planned.  After dark, lunar volvelles enabled time finding by moonlight, and nocturnals, quadrants, and astrolabes could find time by the stars.

Not only did astronomers serve religion in devising these tools for time finding and pilgrimage, but religion also served astronomy.   Starting in 1475, astronomers were permitted to transform cathedrals into monumental sundials in order to determine the exact dates of the solstices and equinoxes, which were essential in better understanding the Sun in the Solar System.  These measurements were also essential for reforming the calendar to keep the date of Easter from drifting.

This talk will feature images of many historical sundials and time-finding instruments, and focus on the Christian religious context.

Rev. Dan Benson, minister, horologist, and theologian based in Toronto:

Beyond Paley’s Watch

Throughout history, the relationship between science and technology on the one hand, and theology on the other has often been a fractured one.  With the rise of science, empiricism, modernism, technology, and globalism, theological discourse struggles to both hold ground and engage authentically with the world.  Since Darwin’s theory of evolution first cast shadows of doubt over Genesis 1:1, Christian belief has been on the defensive; authors such as John Polkinghorne, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens debate in the popular press if faith and a modern world of technology can be reconciled. 

Paradoxically, we may then be surprised to realize that the Christian church from the 14th to well into the 19th  century was what modern sociologists call an early-adopter: it enthusiastically and quickly integrated a new technology into its practice, pedagogy, theological discourse, and even into its language and belief system.  That new technology was horology – the art and science of clock-making.

 This was not about refining and deepening an understanding of time, per se, but how the mechanics of gears, levers, springs, weights, dials and hands, and automatons, could deepen and expand the understanding of God and Creation for the layperson, the academic, and the theologian. However, those understandings, eventually and perhaps inevitably, became defined and limited by the same mechanistic metaphors, such that God came to be described as the “Divine Watchmaker.”

In this session, we’ll discuss the church’s exploitation of horology, both practically and theologically, in ways that still echo in our communities of faith today.