A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew Dickenson WhiteA few of the larger-minded fathers of the Church, influenced possibly by Pythagorean traditions, but certainly by Aristotle and Plato, were willing to accept this view, but the majority of them took fright at once. To them it seemed fraught with dangers to Scripture, by which, of course, they meant their interpretation of Scripture. Among the first who took up arms against it was Eusebius. In view of the New Testament texts indicating the immediately approaching, end of the world, he endeavoured to turn off this idea by bringing scientific studies into contempt. Speaking of investigators, he said, "It is not through ignorance of the things admired by them, but through contempt of their useless labour, that we think little of these matters, turning our souls to better things." Basil of Caesarea declared it "a matter of no interest to us whether the earth is a sphere or a cylinder or a disk, or concave in the middle like a fan." Lactantius referred to the ideas of those studying astronomy as "bad and senseless," and opposed the doctrine of the earth's sphericity both from Scripture and reason. St. John Chrysostom also exerted his influence against this scientific belief; and Ephraem Syrus, the greatest man of the old Syrian Church, widely known as the "lute of the Holy Ghost," opposed it no less earnestly.
But the strictly biblical men of science, such eminent fathers and bishops as Theophilus of Antioch in the second century, and Clement of Alexandria in the third, with others in centuries following, were not content with merely opposing what they stigmatized as an old heathen theory; they drew from their Bibles a new Christian theory, to which one Church authority added one idea and another, until it was fully developed. Taking the survival of various early traditions, given in the seventh verse of the first chapter of Genesis, they insisted on the clear declarations of Scripture that the earth was, at creation, arched over with a solid vault, "a firmament," and to this they added the passages from Isaiah and the Psalms, in which it declared that the heavens are stretched out "like a curtain," and again "like a tent to dwell in." The universe, then, is like a house: the earth is its ground floor, the firmament its ceiling, under which the Almighty hangs out the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the night. This ceiling is also the floor of the apartment above, and in this is a cistern, shaped, as one of the authorities says, "like a bathing-tank," and containing "the waters which are above the firmament." These waters are let down upon the earth by the Almighty and his angels through the "windows of heaven." As to the movement of the sun, there was a citation of various passages in Genesis, mixed with metaphysics in various proportions, and this was thought to give ample proofs from the Bible that the earth could not be a sphere.(27)
(27) For Eusebius, see the Proep. Ev., xv, 61. For Basil, see the
Hexaemeron, Hom. ix. For Lactantius, see his Inst. Div., lib. iii, cap.
3; also citations in Whewell , Hist. Induct. Sciences, London, 1857, vol.
i, p. 194, and in St. Martin, Histoire de la Geographie, pp. 216, 217.
For the views of St. John Chrysostom, Ephraem Syrus, and other great
churchmen, see Kretschmer as above, chap i.nklhlbl
This book was written by a Protestant historian who hated the Catholic Church and thought he could make Her look stupid
by docuмenting the Church's position through saints and popes interpreting scripture as geocentric and flat.
There is more on the subject in the book which is
available to read for free online.
Also, highly recommended is the book Christian Topography by the Catholic monk, Cosmas Indiocopleustes also available
to read for free online. This book has a marvelous description of Moses and the tabernacle being a copy, a microcosm
of the earth itself.
I am going to stop here, having extended things a little in order to give you a clearer view of the Church's
geocentric flat earth position. With antiquity showing that pagans held the round earth theory even back in 550, this
round earth theory adopted by the majority of the pagan world today, remains a serious problem. When the Church
denounced Galileo, it denounced all the pagan notions of heliocentrism which includes round earth.
Topic: Why Sungenis's Geocentrism model is wrong (Read 29993 times)