The Center 

The Center

According to atheists and even some believers, the choice between Ptolemy's geocentric astronomy and Copernicus' heliocentric theory boils down to a choice between God and atheism:

Is it indeed true that modern astronomy is a conspiracy designed to hide the evidence for God? Would it, in fact, be evidence for creation if the earth were in the center of the universe? Does the Bible give us any warrant for such an expectation?

The argument runs as follows: God chooses what is big, central, and imposing. If the earth is not big, central and imposing relative to its surroundings, then God cannot possibly have chosen this world to become incarnate, because it is just too unimportant. Does God think like this?

God chose Gideon: "And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house." (Judges 6:15). God chooses the younger over the elder, Jacob over Esau; He takes David, from tending sheep, over his brothers. There were big and imposing places in the ancient world, like Egypt and Babylon. But God did not choose them, He chose little Israel:

He chose the downtrodden, despised slaves of the mighty Egyptians to be a people for His name, not the Egyptians, who were everything the atheists would wish them to be: powerful, central, prominent. He does the opposite of what the atheists expect He will do. Supposing God to be consistent with His pattern of acting in the Bible, then if the earth were centrally located and obviously important, He would not have chosen this as a place for His name, but somewhere else.

By the atheist way of thinking, a box-car is more excellent than a baby, a slag-heap than a hummingbird. Our earth is "insignificant" because not central:

"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." (Carl Sagan, Cosmos, p. 193, Wikiquotes).

Size matters, position matters. But where has God ever endorsed these yardsticks? God does not see as man sees:

"But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7).

The New Atheists are ever telling us this is a small, inconsequential, out-of-the-way planet in an unimportant galaxy. How one reckons the importance of a galaxy, they do not say; but they are certain this one isn't. The undeniable fact that this is a popular argument does not make it a good argument. It certainly isn't a Biblical argument, given God's documented preference for the small, the poor, the despised:

The Magnificat

Mary sang a song of praise when told she would bear the Lord:

Some people are too busy praising Mary to listen to what she has to say! What's that, Mary? God chooses the mighty, the central, the important? No, God chooses the weak, the peripheral, the discarded:

"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence." (1 Corinthians 1:27-29).

Jesus did not instruct His followers to take the noblest place open to them, but the lowest, "When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." (Luke 14:8-11). There is a disconnect between the word's way of reckoning importance and God's.

Pagan Philosophy

The system of philosophy which Thomas Aquinas adopted for his own was borrowed from the pagan philosopher Aristotle, whose works came to Thomas mediated through Muslim and Arab interpreters. To this framework Thomas welded on an overlay of Christian theology. The resultant comprehensive 'theory of everything' included a science of astronomy, which was Aristotle's astronomy with a few corrections. Aristotle taught that the heavens were eternal, but inasmuch as this conflicted with Genesis 1:1, Thomas was obliged to give it up:

"It should be noted that these arguments of Aristotle are directed against the position that posits a world produced by generation and indestructible either of its very nature or through the will of God. But according to the Catholic faith, we hold that it began to be, not through a process of generation as from nature, but by flowing from a first principle whose power was not bound to give it existence in infinite time but as it willed, after previous non-existence, in order to manifest the excellence of its power over the totality of being, namely, that the totality of being depends entirely on it and its power is not confined or determined to the production of some given being." (Thomas Aquinas, 'On the Heavens, Book I, Lecture 29, 286.)

One might have thought these people would have been impatient to strike out on their own; after all, Aristotle's astronomy had been around for 1,500 years. But Thomas is no innovator in these matters. Their timidity is striking. Thomas retains the basic structure of Aristotle's astronomy, which features eight nested spheres clustered around a central, unmoving earth:

Thomas realized that Aristotle's simple and attractive visionary model had not quite worked out in practice. When Ptolemy traced out the orbits in the second century A.D., he had inherited from Aristotle two basic rules: the heavens, the planets, the sun and the moon must orbit around a point at the center of the earth, and they must do so in uniform circular motion, which according to Aristotle is 'natural,' i.e. according to nature, and thus requires no further explanation. Unfortunately by the time Ptolemy got done, both these starting requirements were reduced to little more than legal fictions: the Ptolemaic planets revolve, not around a common, fixed point, but around moving points in eccentric circles, and their uniformity of motion is preserved with reference, not to the circle about which they are revolving, but to another point called the 'equant' which may be moving in its own orbit! Thomas realized things hadn't quite worked out for Aristotle's vision:

"Therefore Hipparchus and Ptolemy posited for each planet a single sphere which however was not concentric with the supreme sphere but had a center other than the earth, [i.e., an "eccentric"], in such a way that when the planet is in that portion of the sphere that is farther from us, the body of the planet is seen as smaller and slower moving; but when it is in the opposite region, it is seen as larger and faster. In addition to this, they posited certain small circles which they call "epicycles," which are in motion upon these spheres in such a way that the bodies of the planets are in motion in these epicycles, not as though fixed in such circles, but as though turning through them with a progressive motion." (Thomas Aquinas, 'On the Heavens,' Lecture 17, 454).

Copernicus advertised his heliocentric system as the only way to realize Aristotle's postulate of uniform circular motion. While Copernicus retained deferants and epicycles, he was able to discard the equant. This is real progress toward simplicity. Ptolemaic astronomy had bought its high predictive value at the cost of departing from its founding physical principles. This was the best secular science of astronomy available in the world which the early church writers inhabited, and most of them accepted it. The early Christian writers, however, never showed as much enthusiasm for the system as did the medievals, nor their own contemporaries the gnostics. The gnostic authors busied themselves with travel plans for the trip between the spheres (eight: sun, moon, five planets and the outermost sphere of the fixed stars). The star-traveller had to know the passwords and secret handshakes required to pass each custom house.

Perhaps the early writers understood the intimate connection between the Ptolemaic system and pagan theology, including the practical 'science' of astrology, and thus could not really warm up to this system. Thomas latches on to this system as if it were the greatest thing ever. So if you get rid of it, you discredit him. He does, however, show a gift for disregarding what does not suit his purpose; the Ptolemaic system, in Thomas' hands, ends up considerably demythologized from its pagan original.

Galileo's Crime

Why did the Catholic Church feel obliged to protect Ptolemaic astronomy against Galileo's attacks? And where is it taught in the Bible? It is not found in the Bible, but in the works of Thomas Aquinas. Copernicus himself, no publicity hog, had flown under the radar, but Galileo wanted the public to understand that Ptolemaic astronomy had been decisively refuted. Venus displays phases, just like the moon, and he had looked through his telescope and seen them — seen them all, although the Ptolemaic orbits do not allow Venus to stand opposed to the sun, thus appearing fully lit from earth. But Galileo had seen it and wanted to shout it from the roof-tops. Because the sun never sees a shadow, the phases of Venus give us another viewpoint besides our own. The licentious Renaissance popes lived under the banner, 'Do whatever you like, dear, only don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.' They had not cared about Copernicus, but could not avoid Galileo.

The apparent size of Venus had long been a stumbling block for the Ptolemaic system. At its biggest and brightest, Venus alarms people into calling 911 and reporting it as a UFO. But sometimes it is inconspicuous. If the Ptolemaic system were correct and Venus were orbiting in a circle about the earth (albeit an eccentric circle, and albeit carried on an epicycle), its distance from earth and consequently its apparent size should not vary that much. The heliocentric system explains this change in visible size very handily, because as the planets race around their nested race-tracks, the distance between them can vary quite a lot.

Two books were placed on the altar at the counter-reformation Council of Trent: the Bible and Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. The Catholic Church had placed all its bets on this medieval author; when reformers like Martin Luther mounted Biblical arguments against practices built on Thomas' doctrinal innovations, such as indulgences, the battle lines were drawn. They would not abandon this uninspired if brilliant author, who then and thereafter became an idol to the Roman Catholic Church.

The Stable Earth

Some readers think that, while the Bible does not teach Ptolemaic astronomy in any detail, it does teach an unmoving earth and a moving sun. Thus authors Robert Sungenis and Robert Bennett claim that they are following "tradition" in reviving Tycho Brahe's geo-heliocentrism, even though no one in Catholicism except a small party of seventeenth-century Jesuits ever embraced that composite, compromise system. Does the Bible really teach these two points? Even though these two survivors represent a starved, impoverished and minimalist reduction of the Ptolemaic system, are they Biblical? Certainly there are many verses which teach a stable and unmoving earth:

...But these aren't them, these verses describe an earth which is shaking, rattling and rolling! Before atheist readers busy themselves constructing a little snow globe that can tremble out of its orbit, notice that these 'tremble' verses often recount specific historic events, like the visitation at Sinai:

"And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly." Exodus 19:18).

Events like Noah's flood, or the earthquake at Sinai, do not require any novel cosmology. Similar events will mark the end-times. To a reader who does not often read the psalms, it may be impressive to be shown a verse like Psalm 93:1: "The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved." But is it not apparent that, whatever the 'unmoved' verses mean, it must be the flip side of what the 'tremble' verses mean? If one group of verses has been sequestered to refer to astronomic orbits, charted with reference to the solar system, Cartesian co-ordinates or a Newtonian grid, then what is left for the other group to describe? Planets falling out of orbit? God's blessing, gracious promise of peace and proffer of the rainbow sign mean stability; God's curse, judgment, just verdict and wrath mean the earth will shake and fall. These mirror-image verses, of stability and shaking, have been unnaturally severed one from another and wrenched into a foreign context to give support to geocentrism, which is not in the Bible author's view.

The Moving Sun

In defense of this idea are offered Psalm 19 and Joshua's miracle:

When told a thing moves, one must ask, 'With reference to what?' When told, with reference to the observer, that is manifestly true, and should not excite controversy. We use language like this today when we talk about the sun rising and the sun going down. No one need apologize for using this language; it is not 'wrong,' if correctly understood. If one says, 'No, these authors mean the sun moves with reference to a grid imposed upon the solar system as a whole,' the objector must prove the speakers had any such Newtonian grid in mind.

During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church formed ambitions similar to those of the builders of the Tower of Babel. The popes desired to rule the world, they raised armies, they fought wars, and they desired to lay down the laws for all human studies. There was no sphere of human activity from which they modestly withdrew. In return for their overweening ambition they received several black eyes, including military defeats and the embarrassment of their house arrest of Galileo (who recanted to avoid worse). The conflict between Galileo and the Catholic Church is often summarized as a conflict between 'science' and 'religion.' This leads to misunderstanding if the 'religion' referenced is assumed to be the Bible; it is not, rather medieval scholasticism, a system which incorporates both science and religion into its all-encompassing 'theory of everything.' If Galileo was right, Thomas Aquinas was wrong; the Catholic Church of that day took its stand on the premise that Thomas could not be wrong. He was wrong, however. And as was pointed out by the reformers, he was not altogether on the Bible bus when it came to Christian doctrine either. Combining Aristotelian psychology and anthropology with the gospel of amazing grace had produced strange distortions which required correction.

Heliocentrism was condemned by the Council of Trent and several popes. As to the popes, no doubt they were not speaking ex cathedra (there are no well-defined rules for determining when a pope is speaking ex cathedra (from the chair) and when he is not, so any embarrassing or inconvenient papal statement can be tossed aside by invoking that rule). But the Council of Trent's endorsement of a flat-out wrong system of astronomy should concern Catholics and make them wonder about what else that erring conventicle endorsed. Why it should trouble Protestants is not apparent.

In order to 'find' geocentrism in the Bible, one must be willing to interpret phrases like 'the sun rises' as meaning something completely different in scripture than when we use them:

“One can easily surmise from language such as 'the sun rises or 'the sun sets' that although Scripture may express the appearance of the movement from the perspective of the observer on Earth, nevertheless, Scripture confidently affirms the scientific fact that, of the two bodies, one of them moves and the other does not. In that particular scientific category, Scripture is adamant that it is the sun that moves, not the Earth.” (Robert Sungenis and Robert Bennett, Galileo Was Wrong, The Church Was Right, Volume II, p. 57).

Are we "adamant" that it is the sun which moves when we say "the sun rises"? Do we "confidently affirm" any such verity? Of course not; this thesis, like the moving earth, rests upon nothing. It is certainly true that the Catholic Church, on many occasions, affirmed geocentrism over heliocentrism, but no such accusation can be levelled against the Bible.

Galileo pointed out that Joshua's miracle of stopping the sun cannot be understood 'literally' under the Ptolemaic system any more than under the Copernican system, because in the Ptolemaic system, the only proper motion belonging to the sun is its seasonal march along the ecliptic; the daily rotation is not due to the sun, but to the outermost sphere. Thus stopping the sun would hinder only that seasonal motion, not the daily rotation. Thus Joshua's miracle is no argument in favor of Ptolemy's astronomy. Moreover, as Galileo pointed out, the Bible text plainly situates the sun "in the midst of heaven:" "So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day." (Joshua 10:13.) This is right where Copernicus, but not Ptolemy, situates that luminary. This very 'literal' reading plainly interrogates too sharply a text which does not intend to address the point, but Galileo's 'literal' reading of Joshua 10:13 is no more, nor less, foolish than those offered by the adherents of Ptolemy's astronomy, much less by the 'Neo-Tychonians.' All of these 'interpreters' want to force this passage to testify on a point not addressed.

Tycho Brahe

Is Tycho Brahe's geo-heliocentric mixed system practically the same thing as the Ptolemaic system championed by Thomas Aquinas? One problem,— though it did not seem a problem to the Lutheran Tycho Brahe,— is that his orbits intersect, for example, the sun and Mars. (In Tycho's system, the other planets revolve around the sun, while the sun, and the outermost heavens, revolve around the earth.) But if the world system is made up of concentric spheres as Aristotle and Thomas thought, can there be any such intersecting orbits?

The daily rotation of the sphere of the fixed stars requires an immense object to move very rapidly. With the nested, touching spheres, it is at least possible to visualize this outermost sphere transferring its motion to the inner spheres. Once Tycho Brahe shatters his colliding spheres by smashing them into one another, how is this transfer accomplished? The old astronomy is gone, with shattered shards of crystalline spheres littering the cosmos, and so we have already discarded scholastic tradition. Claudio Ptolemy, working centuries after Aristotle, traced out his circular orbits with little thought of their parent spheres, yet Thomas returned in his astronomy to Aristotle's focus on these nested spheres. With the crystalline spheres, now re-made into bumper cars, in bits and pieces after Tycho's compromise between Ptolemy and Copernicus, any 'tradition' of interest to Catholics has departed with them.

Both the pure heliocentric and the pure geocentric models display a certain conceptual clarity which no compound system can rival. Reviving this compromise system brings back confusion. What a waste of time that certain Catholic apologists have gone to the trouble! Nor have they even been able to revive it. Tycho's main complaint against heliocentrism was the failure to observe stellar parallax. Our authors understand that Tycho centered the stars around the earth, as geocentrism would also demand:

"One stumbling block toward understanding the equivalence between the heliocentric and geocentric concepts of parallax is that the original model of geocentrism advocated by Tycho Brahe did not have the stars centered on the sun; they were centered on the Earth. That being the case, no parallax would be forthcoming, at least based on the above mechanics and geometric proportions." (Galileo Was Wrong, Robert Sungenis and Robert Bennett, p. 108).

Indeed, Tycho rejected heliocentrism because stellar parallax had not yet been observed, but it finally was observed in the nineteenth century, when improvements in observation made it possible to notice a change in the scenery as the earth moved in its yearly trip around the sun. So our authors have 'improved' Tycho by making him even less geocentric, no longer centering the sphere of the fixed stars on the earth but the sun. If this trend continues, they will advance all the way to heliocentrism!:

At that point, they will have nothing in common with Thomas' revived Aristotelian universe. As it is, they have very little in common with him, because Aristotle, 'The Philosopher,' was not a geo-heliocentrist like Tycho, but the real thing, a geocentrist. Our authors understand this word in their own private sense: "Consequently, the geocentric model that had the stars centered on the sun never gained its rightful place in the halls of astronomy." (Galileo Was Wrong, Robert Sungenis and Robert Bennett, p. 108). Dictionary in hand, dear reader, you may correct that sentence to read, 'Consequently, a geocentric model does not have the stars centered on the sun but rather on the earth.' 'Geocentric' means 'centered on the earth,' and 'heliocentric' means 'centered around the sun.' The dictionary is the reason why no one, before our authors, ever discovered that you can make a 'geocentric' system work by centering things around the sun. To be sure, it does work a lot better that way!

Neither are our nouveau-geocentrists concerned to preserve uniform circular motion, Aristotle's minimum demand: they like Kepler's ellipses better. There is a lot more to Thomistic/Aristotelian astronomy than geocentrism. To be sure, unlike our authors, Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle were true geocentrists, but there is more: for example, it is asserted that change and decay are confined to the sublunary sphere; the heavenly bodies are unchanging. Can that assertion be tested? Sure; look through a telescope at the red spot of Jupiter, if it ever changes, Thomas' astronomy is disconfirmed. Our authors are holding onto a small fraction of a large, complex, and coherent world system. Since they've thrown out 90 per cent of the system, why bother holding on to the tiny remnant they retain? What these authors are promoting isn't Aristotle, it isn't Thomas, and it most emphatically is not the Bible; it's just really bad astronomy.

Pagan Religion

The Ptolemaic system is a serious, scientific astronomy intended to 'save the appearances:' the intent is for the modeled planetary orbits to come out where the observed exemplars are actually found. As such it is fairly successful; it has high predictive value. Copernican astronomy was not an improvement on this score, except in the matter of Venus. Though as observed from earth the heavenly bodies come out in roughly the same places, they are in fact situated quite differently in the different systems, which will affect matters like apparent size, not to mention the appropriate trajectories for NASA to plot for its satellites to arrive at their intended destinations. When we look for a physical explanation for the movements of the heavenly bodies, here heliocentrism shines, with Newton's law of gravitation providing a credible motive force. How, after all, is a very small body like the earth going to exert the attraction needed to keep a very large body like the sun in orbit around it? One big advantage to the heliocentric system is that we can understand what makes it go.

By contrast Ptolemaic astronomy has. . .the idea that circular motion is 'natural.' It is a very rapid motion at that: "Therefore the swiftest of all motions is the motion of the heaven." (Thomas Aquinas, 'On the Heavens,' Book II, Lecture 6, Section 356). Our latter-day geocentrists are aware but untroubled: "Geocentrism says only that the universe rotates around the Earth once per day, and in that rotation it carries the stars with it." (Galileo Was Wrong, p. 118, Robert Sungenis and Robert Bennett [these authors, incidentally, do not really think "the universe" rotates around the earth at all, though they persistently make statements like this; in their system the fixed stars rotate around the sun not the earth]). There is of course desire, love and fore-thought. . . though when you come right down to it, Christians are no more comfortable than atheists at ascribing such features to spheres.

Atheists often talk as if the Ptolemaic system were an instance of Christian wish fulfillment: the system displays the features that it does because these are the features Christians would want or expect to find in the world. This would be odd indeed if true, because the system was not invented by Christians, but by Greek pagans. When Thomas took it over and incorporated it into his system of the world, it was already 1,500 years old. Thomas has a gift for ignoring what he does not want to notice, and some of what he cannot avoid noticing he does correct. The system remains, however, more pagan than Christian.

In the pagan Greek mind, if it moves, it is animate; it has purpose, it is ensouled. Ptolemaic astronomy is not reductive materialism. The objects of which it treats were thought to be gods, especially the outermost sphere, which sets the whole world-system in motion. The reader may reflect that Joshua's miracle is 'easier' in the heliocentric system than in the pagan Greek system, because stopping the outermost sphere which carries out the daily revolution would bring cosmic disaster in its wake; this sphere's motion sets the whole world going, there can be no change in the lower world without its motion:

"But it is better to say that if the motion of the heavens were to cease, so too would the motion of all lower bodies, as Simplicius said. For the powers of the lower bodies are as matter and instruments in relation to the heavenly powers, and hence do not move unless moved." (Thomas Aquinas, 'On the Heavens,' Book II, Lecture 4, Section 342).

By contrast, in Copernicus' system, it is simply a matter of stopping the rotation of one body; no cosmic catastrophe would be expected to ensue, no birds stopping in mid-flight nor falling bodies halting in mid-air. Joshua's miracle is thus an argument for heliocentrism, not geocentrism. In the pagan astronomy, the outermost sphere is a god, indeed Aristotle's highest god:

"He [Aristotle] says therefore first [214] that, because we are inclined to believe in the eternity of the world from what has preceded, it follows that a man shows himself easily persuasable by the dictums of the ancients -- not, however, by those of any who erred but principally by those of our fathers, who, namely, schooled us in divine worship. We should be inclined to believe their words to be true, to the effect that there is something immortal and divine, not only among the number of the immobile substances, which are totally separated from matter, but also among bodies which have motion, such, however, that of the motion of the divine and immortal body there be no end, by which, namely, it might be terminated; rather its motion is the end of all other motions. Now the reason he attributed this to the ancient sayings of the ancestors is because all those who established a form of divine worship among the gentiles sought to have divine worship given to the heaven as to a divine and immortal body whose motion is endless." (Thomas Aquinas, On the Heavens, Book II, Lecture 1, Section 290).

This outermost sphere is in fact a god, it is the unmoved mover. But Thomas will ultimately commit deicide against it. He robs the heavens of their eternity and ultimately shuts them down:

Thomas finds a prophecy of this cosmic shut-down in Job 14:12: "So man when he is fallen asleep shall not rise again; till the heavens be broken, he shall not awake, nor rise up out of his sleep." (Job 14:12, Douay-Rheims Challoner; 18:6); "sic homo cum dormierit non resurget donec adteratur caelum non evigilabit nec consurget de somno suo." (Vulgate). This is deicide by pagan lights. The pagans commonly deified major constituents of the world-system; Poseidon is the sea, Demeter the wheat crop, etc. They did the same with their astronomy. Christian theology of course can have none of this, because God is a spirit: "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." (John 4:26). There is only one God, and He is not identified with any constituent of the world-system.

Pagan theology kept pace with the advances of pagan astronomy. The pagans had always deified the planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars et al are all, of course, gods. They deified also the celestial spheres when they were invented. Seneca, making fun of the deification of Claudius (Roman emperors were routinely deified upon their decease if not sooner), finds the portly Claudius already suited to god-status, because he was built for comfort, not for speed, and gods, according to the Stoics, are supposed to be "globular:" "Only do say what species of god you want the fellow to be made. An Epicurean god he cannot be: for they have no troubles and cause none. A Stoic, then? How can he be globular, as Varro says, without a head or any other projection? There is in him something of the Stoic god, as I can see now: he has neither heart nor head." (Seneca, Pumpkinification of Claudius); sphericity is next to godliness. Thomas goes very far to demythologize Ptolemy's system, but the fact remains the system was 'not invented here;' it is not a system of Christian astronomy as the atheists imagine. Further demythologization is desirable, all the way to heliocentrism and beyond.

Philo Judaeus

By contrast with the geocentric pagan philosophers, Philo Judaeus, a monotheist, kept an open mind to the possibility of heliocentrism (though he is not consistent), finding a 'fit' in the seven-branched candlestick:

"This much alone we must remind our readers of at this moment, that the sacred candlestick and the seven lights upon it are an imitation of the wandering of the seven planets through the heaven.  How so? some one will say.  Because, we will reply, in the same manner as the lights, so also does every one of the planets shed its rays.  They therefore, being more brilliant, do transmit more brilliant beams to the earth, and brilliant beyond them all is he who is the center one of the seven, the sun.  And I call him the center, not merely because he has the central position, as some have thought, but also because he has on many other accounts a right to be ministered unto and attended by the others accompanying him as bodyguards on each side, by reason of his dignity and his magnitude, and the great benefits which he pours upon all earthly things." (Who is the Heir of Divine Things, XLV, 221-223).

The Revolution

The 'Scientific Revolution' dethroned Aristotle. Why Christian folk should feel solicitude for this pagan philosopher's declining fortunes is unclear. Some of the ideas that animated men like Isaac Newton, a Bible student, were Biblical. To pagan Greek ears, the phrase 'natural law' would have sounded like an oxymoron; 'law' rules men, not nature, in Greek philosophy. But in the Bible, God's command is law equally for nature as for man:

"He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who hath hardened himself against him, and hath prospered? Which removeth the mountains, and they know not: which overturneth them in his anger. Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble. Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not; and sealeth up the stars. Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea. Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south. Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.' (Job 9:4-10).

Since modern science's foundation stones are laid closer to Christianity than those of Aristotle, why should Christian folk long for that old pagan? And if by chance they did want him back, then bring him back, spheres and all, not some mixed-up modern production which has nothing to do with him. . .or Thomas, or anyone else.

As an aside, notice the familiar pattern of the quoted verse: "Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble." The earth, Biblically, does both: it moves and does not move. God does both: He shakes the earth from its foundations when He comes in judgment, and He also preserves the earth in peace and stability by His gracious pardon and blessing. The disastrous deflection of the earth associated with God's wrath and judgment is the earthquake, where the surface crust moves relative to its foundations deep within the earth, not relative to other planets or heavenly bodies. Sequestering one set of verses (move/doesn't move) from the other can mislead the reader into mistaking the topic in view.

The earth is like a picture-book, ordained by God to show forth His wonders, and the earth-quake, though not always accompanying His theophany nor assigned as the instrument of His judgment, is a perfect picture of it. This God-ordained imagery is blotted out by a fanciful reconstruction which assigns these verses a meaning pertaining to 'orbits.' What have orbits to do with God's judgment? Quite whimsically and arbitrarily, our modern-day neo-geocentrists think that all the 'totter' and 'shake' verses are talking about something different than the 'stable' verses: “Here the 'tottering' refers to the Earth’s land mass, not the Earth’s position in space. . .Similar to all the other Psalms that speak in this same way, the movement attributed to the Earth refers to its internal structure, not its spatial position in the cosmos.” (Robert Bennett and Robert Sungenis, Galileo Was Wrong, the Church Was Right, Volume 11, page 76). This way of reading the Bible is just whimsical, not 'literal.' Literally, shaking and not-shaking are two sides of the same coin.

There is something backwards about elevating the pagan Aristotle above an earnest, even if misguided, Bible student like Isaac Newton. Messrs. Sungenis and Bennett's thesis discredits the Christian testimony of professing Christian astronomers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, including the heliocentric pioneer, Copernicus, with no evidence beyond guilt by association and animadversion. To be sure these men were not Aristotelians. Atheists offer a warped and biased interpretation of this history for their own reasons. No case can be made for Christians to adopt the atheist story as if it were factual.