C
cassini
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Conall. Let us compare the two systems:
White on the Doctrine of Geocentricism
‘This doctrine was of the highest respectability: it had been developed at a very early period, and had been elaborated until it accounted well for the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies; its final name, ‘Ptolemaic theory,’ carried weight; and, having thus come from antiquity into the Christian world, St Clement of Alexandria demonstrated that the altar in the Jewish Tabernacle was ‘‘a symbol of the earth placed in the middle of the universe’’: nothing more was needed; the geocentric theory was fully adopted by the Church and universally held to agree with the letter and spirit of Scripture.
Wrought into this foundation, and based upon it, there was developed in the Middle Ages, mainly out of fragments of Chaldean and other early theories preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures, a new sacred system of astronomy, which became one of the great treasures of the universal Church – the last word of revelation.
Three great men mainly reared this structure. First was the unknown who gave to the world the treatises ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite. It was unhesitatingly believed that these were the work of St Paul’s Athenian convert, and therefore virtually of St Paul himself. They were then considered a treasure of inspiration, and an emperor of the East sent them to an emperor of the West as the most worthy of gifts. In the ninth century they were widely circulated in Western Europe, and became a fruitful source of thought especially on the whole celestial hierarchy. Thus the old ideas of astronomy were vastly developed, and the heavenly hosts were classed and named in accordance with indications scattered through the sacred Scriptures.
The next of these three great theologians was Peter Lombard, Professor at the University of Paris. About the middle of the twelfth century he gave forth his collection of Sentences, or statements by the Fathers, and this remained until the end of the Middle Ages the universal manual of theology. In it was especially developed the theological view of man’s relation to the universe. The author tells the world: ‘‘Just as man is made for the sake of God – that is, that he may serve Him, - so the universe is made for the sake of man – that is, that it may serve him; therefore is man placed at the middle point of the universe, that he may both serve and be served.’’ The vast significance of this view, and its power in resisting any real astronomical science, we shall see, especially in the time of Galileo.
The great triad of thinkers culminated in St Thomas Aquinas – the sainted theologian, the glory of the mediaeval Church, the ‘Angelic Doctor,’ the most marvellous intellect between Aristotle and Newton ; he to whom it was believed that an image of the crucified had spoken words praising his writings. Large of mind, strong, acute, yet just – even more than just – to his opponents, he gave forth, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, his Cyclopaedia of Theology, the Summa Theologica. In this he carried the sacred theory of the universe to its full development. With great power and clearness he brought the whole vast system, material and spiritual, into its relations to God and man.
Thus was the vast system developed by these three leaders of mediaeval thought; and now came the man who wrought it yet more deeply into European belief, the poet divinely inspired who made the system part of the world’s life. Pictured by Dante, the empyrean and the concentric heavens, paradise, purgatory, and hell, were seen by all; the God Triune, seated on his throne upon the circle of the heavens, as real as the Pope seated in the chair of St Peter; the seraphim, cherubim, and thrones, surrounding the Almighty, as real as the cardinals surrounding the Pope; the three great order of angels in heaven, as real as the three great orders, bishops, priests, and deacons, on earth; and the whole system of spheres, each revolving within the one above it, and all moving about the earth, subject to the primum mobile, as real as the feudal system of western Europe, subject to the Emperor.
Let us look into this vast creation – the highest achievement of theology – somewhat more closely. Its first feature shows a development out of earlier theological ideas. The earth is no longer a flat plain enclosed by four walls and solidly vaulted above, as theologians of previous centuries had believed it, under the inspiration of Cosmas; it is no longer a mere flat disk, with sun, moon, and stars hung up to give it light, as the earlier cathedral sculptors had figured it; it has become a globe at the centre of the universe. Encompassing it are successive transparent spheres, rotated by angels about the earth, and each carrying one or more of the heavenly bodies with it: that nearest the earth carrying the moon; the next, Mercury; the next, Venus; the next, the sun; the next three, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; the eighth carrying the fixed stars. The ninth was the primum mobile, and enclosing all was the tenth heaven, the Empyrean. This was immovable, a boundary between creation and the great outer void; and here, in a light which no one can enter, the Triune God sat enthroned, the ‘music of the spheres’ rising to Him as they moved. Thus was the old heathen doctrine of the spheres made Christian.
You have to keep in mind that all the mass in the universe affects everything else - and I’ll finish the point next.
No, God set everything in motion in the beginning, as the Church Fathers taught. So, to answer your questions, just imagine that God created a spherical, bounded universe so perfectly balanced and fine tuned that the earth is the immobile gravitational center. Go ahead and ask a scientist if this is feasible, reminding them, if necessary, about the mind boggling fine tuning of the universe that modern science has revealed. But keep in mind, every man is a liar, only God is true. :bowdown: So I’ll stick with the unanimous opinion of the Fathers based on their interpretation of Scripture. 