When Protestants and Catholics agreed: the sun revolves around the earth

Despite the mathematical proofs of the Greek mathematicians Pythagoras (580-500 BC) and Eratosthenes (276-194 BC), the later of whom calculated the earth's circumference within 2% by comparing the angles of shadows at different locations on the earth, it was still possible to find Early Church leaders hundreds of years later who rejected the notion of a spherical earth based upon references in the Scriptures to the "foundations of the earth, "corners of the earth", pillars of heaven", and the "waters above the firmament".  While the prevalence of those believing in a "flat earth" prior to Columbus is often over-stated by prideful modern people disdainful of the wisdom of the ancients, it is clearly true that some within the Church had theological reasons for doing so that had nothing to do with scientific observations.

Eventually the Church embraced the Ptolemaic system (Ptolemaeus AD 83-161) which continued to place the spherical earth at the center of the universe and posited ten concentric spheres which rotated around it containing the heavenly bodies.

"The geocentric model represented the best that science had to offer during the time when it was firmly held.  It was entirely consistent with both naked-eye observation and philosophy.  It was equally accepted and endorsed by both science and religion.  The problem is that while scientific conclusions are always tentative, the Christian Church - just as some did with the ancient cosmogony - decided to build an elaborate theological and scriptural defense of the geocentric model.  By failing to apply the lessons of the past, the church once again foolishly committed itself to a popular scientific theory supposedly based on the testimony of the Scriptures." (Gordon Glover, Beyond the Firmament: Understanding Science and the Theology of Creation)

In the 16th century, when Copernicus proposed that the earth and all the planetary bodies revolved around the sun, a theory which would soon be confirmed by observation's made by Galileo Galilei with the newly invented telescope, it became a theological issue rather than merely an astronomical one because the Church had previously decided that the Ptolemaic system had the support of Scripture.  Thus Copernicus and Galileo would eventually be condemned as heretics by the inquisition; a stain upon the reputation of the Church that remains to this day {Galileo was not officially rehabilitated by the Catholic Church until Pope John Paul II did so in 1992}.

Protestants might want to snicker at the following words of Pope Paul V in response to Galileo, but they might want to hold that thought.  "The first proposition, that the sun is the centre and does not revolve about the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.  The second proposition, that the earth is not the centre but revolves about the sun, is absurd, false in philosophy, and from a theological point of view at least, opposed to the true faith."

There were few issues of agreement between the leaders of Catholicism and Protestantism during the 16th and 17th centuries, the two sides couldn't even agree to present a united front against the ongoing threat of Ottoman invasions.  And yet, both sides had chosen to elevate the language of Scripture into the scientific realm, turning any contrary scientific observations and theories into challenges to Church authority and potentially heresy.

Martin Luther (1483-1546): "People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon.  Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best.  This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." (Martin Luther, Table Talk)

Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560): "The eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-four hours.  But certain men, either from the love of novelty, or to make a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves; and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves...Now, it is a want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious.  It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it." (Philipp Melanchthon, Elements of Physics)

John Calvin: "We indeed are not ignorant, that the circuit of the heavens is finite, and that the earth, like a little globe, is placed in the center." (John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis)

With hind-sight, the words of these respected and often brilliant theologians seem both appallingly arrogant and exceedingly foolish, and yet they are a symptom of a larger problem that even those gifted by God to lead his Church can fall victim to: The Pride of Certainty.  I'm all for certainty in its proper place, without it we have only shifting sands and chaos.  We, as a Church, must be certain about the core tenants of our faith and the essence of the Gospel.  But what happens when we elevate other issues, other ideas and interpretations to the level of dogma and with disdain dismiss those who disagree with us as heretics?  In that case, not only does the Church suffer a lack of humility and grace, not only does it foster anger and divisions, but it also appears foolish to the Lost, to those with whom we are called to share the Gospel.

Consider, then, how the lesson of these futile attempts to deny that the earth revolves around the sun might be applied to the Church in our world today.  Let us take great care to distinguish between the Truth revealed to us by God's Word, a Truth that never changes and has no fear of knowledge and fact, and the interpretations and theories of men, however brilliant we might think them to be.

Sermon Video: An immoral people cannot expect God's blessings - Haggai 2:10-19

Utilizing an illustration involving consecrated food and the defilement associated with touching a dead body, the LORD utilizes the prophet Haggai to show his people the danger of disobedience.  During the 16 years when the temple was not being rebuilt, the LORD tried to get his people to pay attention by affecting their harvests and limiting their material successes.  This was not evidently noticed by the people because they didn't act until the prophet made the connection clear to them.  Moving forward, however, God promises to once more bless his people because they are no longer disobedient.  What then is the connection for the Church?  While not under the blessings and curses of the Covenant of Moses, we too are held to a high standard of holiness and righteousness as well as being required to put away immorality.  We do not look to the harvest for confirmation of how we're doing, nor do we need to, for the Word of God has made clear to us our obligations and the Spirit of God now dwells with God's people.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

Faith, Science, and Creation, is there a way forward?

Something isn’t right in the modern western world in the interactions between Faith and Science.  We may not understand what the problem is, how it started, or how to solve it, but the tension is palpable, we can feel it.  Antagonism is the most visible interaction on the part of Christians (and/or those claiming to be Christians) with science, treating the two as mortal enemies, but we also see accommodation, a long-shot hope of wedding the two peacefully, and finally we see rejection, an attempt to pretend that science doesn’t exist or at least have anything useful to say.  This can’t be the way things are supposed to be, but are they the way they have to be?  Is there an option other than being enemies, part of a one-sided arranged marriage, or strangers?

                To trace the history of the relationship between science and faith is a massive undertaking, but one area in particular is a microcosm of the strange interactions between the two: Creation.  How did we get here, when, and why are universal and fundamental questions of humanity.  They have been asked and answered all over the globe since the beginning of recorded history in innumerable ways.  The people of Israel were given a definitive answer to the question of why in the book of Genesis: to fulfill the good pleasure and further the glory of God.  God created because God wanted to create, and beyond that, God created beings capable of interacting with him because he desired both love and worship from them.  As Christians, heirs to the philosophy/worldview of Judaism, we know why we are here.  We have a purpose and a direction given to us by faith.  Do we also know, from Holy Scripture, how and when?

                It was assumed that we did, that such questions had easy answers related to divine fiat in the not too distant past.  And then science came into its maturity and threw those assumptions into confusion.  Astronomy, archaeology, biology, chemistry, physics, and more have each taken a chunk out of the assumption that God created the universe, as we see it today, a few thousand years before the time of Abraham.  What then ought to be the response of faith to these assertions by science?

                Denial was the first response of the Church, beginning with Galileo and Copernicus, and denial still has a prominent role in various Christian responses.  These responses range from saying that the evidence proposed by scientists is wrong (either a claim of ignorance on the part of scientists who don’t understand their own fields, or a conspiracy theory by them to falsify their findings), to saying that the evidence is indeed what it is, but that the interpretation is wrong because the evidence itself is a ruse, a type of red herring, placed there by either God or the devil to lead non-believers astray.  In other words, the evidence is real that the universe is billions of years old, but it should be ignored.  In the discussion of Creation, a denial/aggression against science stance typically involves an attempt to take the text of Genesis “literally” (a word to be used with great caution in Biblical interpretation as it means different things to different people and is often abused as a cudgel against those who interpret a text differently), as in “literally six twenty-four-hour days”.  It also involves viewing the description of the six days of creation as a how-to guide explaining what God did and the order/time frame he did it in.  In this view there is no room for an old universe, no room for a Big Bang, and certainly no room for any type of evolutionary processes.  As Gordon Glover wrote in Beyond the Firmament, Understanding Science and the Theology of Creation, “If we raise our children to believe that supernatural explanations are in competition with natural ones, we are basically entrusting their salvation to ignorance and incredulity.” (P. 32) If Glover’s characterization of the various forms of denial offends you, keep reading and keep thinking.

                The second response of portions of the Church to the advancements of science in relation to Creation was accommodation.  If science says that the universe is billions of years old, the response is to find collaboration for that finding in the text of Genesis.  Thus Gap Theory and Day-Age Theory attempt to postulate an alliance between science and faith by molding the interpretation of Genesis to fit scientific theory.  So, rather than insisting upon a Young Earth like those antagonistic to science, accommodation allows for an old one, viewing either time gaps between various points in the story, or the “days” of Creation as the equivalent of eons.  Coupled with this interpretation are things like Intelligent Design and Theistic Evolution which preserve a role for God, behind the scenes as the architect, of the natural processes described by science.  Thus accommodation of Genesis with science no longer takes the text “literally”, but allows for both a Big Bang and Evolutionary processes, provided that God is the unseen force behind it all.  This might seem like a win-win scenario, one in which the text of Scripture still has something to contribute while science is not viewed as an enemy, provided that either Gap Theory or Day-Age Theory is a viable interpretation of the text of Genesis, an important caveat.

                The third response, ignoring what science has to say about the origins of the cosmos and humanity, is a self-defeating retreat that will be, at best, a Pyrrhic victory, like that of the Church over Galileo in 1633, a short-sighted decision whose negative consequences the Church continues to reap.

                But what if there is another option, one that retains a faithful commitment to the text of Holy Scripture and works within the framework of the plain meaning of the text, that treats it as God’s Word given to mankind according to his purposes (not ours), but that at the same time doesn’t promote an attitude of hostility to science, nor attempt to force them to exist in the same space, and also doesn’t resort to burying one’s head in the sand or yelling, “Not listening!  Not listening!”  For that to be the way forward, we would need to consider what the purpose of Genesis 1-3 was when it was written, how it was received by its original audience, and which questions it was intended to answer among our most common: How, when, and why.  In the end, it is possible that we can be more faithful to the text of Scripture by admitting that it answers everything we need to know about why (and who), but much less than we had assumed about how and when.

                Perhaps Genesis 1-3 is the story of how God gave the world its functions, taking it from formlessness to usefulness, and setting it up for humanity with God as its sovereign.  Instead of a how-to guide, the text of Genesis 1-3 can be viewed as a Cosmic Temple Inauguration (see John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate), one in which God assigns functions to things he had already created, assigns names to them, and then on the Seventh Day takes his “rest” with the Cosmos as his temple and mankind as his steward.  This viewpoint has the very positive aspect of being compatible with the viewpoints of those living in the Near East in the Ancient World, as most of the ancient accounts which still exist from that area/period involve the ordering of chaos into purpose by a god(s).  In that vein, the Genesis account is not different from them except in its understood assumption that only one God, the true God, is involved, and the clear lack of effort required by that God to make the Cosmos orderly, mere commands suffice to accomplish it.  To the people of Israel being led by Moses out of bondage, then, the story of Genesis would not be odd when compared to those told by the Egyptians or Babylonians except for its monotheism and the universal sovereignty claimed by God (as opposed to the typical local/shared sovereignty of the pantheon of gods).  In other words, perhaps God utilized a format for explaining humanity’s role/purpose that made sense to the ancient people he was telling it to rather than a format that would answer all of the questions asked of it by a naturalistic/materialistic society 3,500 years later.  That might seem like an easy point to arrive at, but human beings have a hard time setting aside their own worldviews in order to see things from the perspective of another culture or time period.  Modern human beings are so immersed in the post-Enlightenment naturalistic worldview of an ascendant science that we by default view ancient documents through our interpretive lens without even knowing it.

                Why would God choose to focus upon the functionality of the Cosmos in the account given to Moses rather than an explanation of the material origins of the universe?  Most importantly, it fit his purpose, which was not to share with his people how he created the Cosmos, but why.  When Job asked God for an explanation which his experience of injustice certainly seemed worthy of, he wasn’t given one, in part because God told Job that he did not have the capacity to understand the answers to his questions.  The collective human wisdom of modern science has scratched the surface of answering questions of how and when, and much remains beyond our grasp; in what way would a materialistic/scientific explanation be possible or even useful to those who lived 3,500 years ago?  When God brought his people out of Egypt with signs and wonders, he didn’t bother to explain to them how he turned Nile to blood or where the plagues of locusts or gnats came from.  How was immaterial, why was the key; they were signs of God’s power and warnings to Pharaoh.  The purpose of being told that God is responsible for an event in history (like Creation or the Plagues upon Egypt) is so that humanity can recognize God’s power, submit to his authority, and worship him.  The purpose is not to satisfy our curiosity, to answer all of our questions, or to convince the skeptical, as if God’s revelation of himself to us has to be on our terms; the “gap” between God’s proclamation (revelation) of his activity and our own understanding of it is the place filled by Faith.  If answers to our questions are available, that’s fine, but we don’t need them when we put our trust in the faithfulness of God.  We don’t need to know how and when if we know who and why.

                If Genesis is indeed not an attempt by God to explain how/when he created the Cosmos, including humanity, it leaves Christians free to accept scientific explanations if they prove plausible, and if those explanations are later refined or rejected thanks to new evidence or new theories, to not have that process impact our faith.  Faith is no longer on defense against science, forever trying to fend off its attacks, nor is it endlessly trying to accommodate science, hoping to be able to squeeze the latest developments in numerous scientific fields into the sparse text of Genesis 1-3.  Christians are thus free to focus upon the most important question: Why did God create us, however and whenever he did so, and what does that tell us about the purpose of our lives?  God is still the ultimate cause, God is still the intelligence behind the natural laws set up by his hand and maintained by his will, and God remains the final destination of each human soul.  Science cannot answer questions of why, it never could and it never will.  Philosophy and Religion are not scientific fields, they seek to answer questions beyond the materialistic realm of science, questions that cannot be verified or disproved by experimentation.  These are the questions which have been of the utmost importance to humanity throughout the ages.  Our ancient ancestors in the faith, the children of Abraham, had comparatively little scientific knowledge to work with, but it did not impact their ability to be a people of faith, dependent upon God and in obedience to his will.  Today we know many things about how the natural world works, but the truly important questions remain dependent upon revelation from the spiritual realm.

                Faith and Science are not enemies, nor are they bosom buddies, and they don’t have to be strangers; they answer different questions in different ways.  Science can make our lives better, faith makes our lives meaningful.  Science can fix some of the problems that humanity has brought upon itself, faith can fix humanity itself.   Science can expand what we can do, faith can tell us what we should do.   Science if forever learning and growing, faith rests upon a bedrock of Truth that stretches back beyond Abraham and calls us to live righteous lives by faith just as did our ancestors in the faith. 

Sermon Video: "In this place I will grant peace" Haggai 2:1-9,20-23

As the people have already returned to working on the temple following the urging of the prophet Haggai, what message does God have for them one month later?  Surprisingly, God chooses to point out to the people the vastly diminished scope of their effort in comparison to the glory achieved by their ancestors.  The Jewish remnant, now a province of Persia, have no hope of matching the results of their ancestors who built Solomon's magnificent temple during the height of the power and wealth of the Kingdom of Israel.  So why would God remind them of the fact that things are not what they once were?  Because they already knew it.  God chose to confront the issue head-on because he wanted to reassure the people that he was still with them, that his Spirit would still be among them, and that he would indeed be glorified in the temple they were rebuilding, even if it was but an imitation of the temple destroyed in 586 BC.
Here at 1st Baptist of Franklin we can understand the emotions of the Jewish remnant when they contemplated the glory of a few generations previously.  One hundred years ago our church building had 2,100 seats in the sanctuary (since renovated into an auditorium and recreation area, capacity now about 300), and the Sunday School attendance books show weeks with over 1,000 people.  Those huge numbers were doing the height of the oil boom, an era long past in Venango County.  What then do we do with less than 1/10th of their numbers?  Mourn the loss of that "golden age"?  No, we hold fast to the promises of God that he is with us in our generation as well, that God has a place for us in his will, that his Spirit remains among us, and that he most certainly will be glorified in our generation as he was in their generation.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

Sermon Video: Honoring God through the House of the LORD - Haggai 1

What is the value of the place at which the people of God gather?  We know that the Church is the people of God, not the buildings they meet in or the institutions they create to organize themselves, but does that negate the value (spiritual, primarily, but also emotional) of the worship space of God's people?  The prophet Haggai was sent by God to the Jewish people returned from exile in Babylon to Jerusalem to reassert the need for God's people to rebuild the temple of Solomon that had been destroyed in 586 B.C.  Why did they need to rebuild the temple?  "so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored" (Haggai 1:8).  The place in which God's people meet to worship and fellowship is of immense value.  The returned exiles had neglected for rebuild the temple for 16 years and had thus incurred God's displeasure.  The place where God's people meet doesn't have to be fancy, it doesn't have to be costly, but it does have to function as a meeting place where the presence of God can dwell among his people.  Whether a church meets in a storefront, a simple brick building, or a massive cathedral, they ought to treasure that sacred space, honorably maintain it, and put it to the use intended by God as the Spirit of God dwells among them when they are gathered in his name.

To watch the video, click on the link below: