Galileo and the Church, Part Two

The Galileo episode (which I can never resist offering my two cents on) brought up two separate issues: Theological: To say "Copernicanism was in direct conflict with Scriptures," implies that the Church in Galileo's time always interpreted the Bible in a literal manner. In fact, the Church had been interpreting the Bible in an allegorical manner for centuries, so there was no special reason why it should not have been able to do so in this case. It was Galileo himself who put the matter in a nutshell in a daring piece of theology he wrote: If nature says one thing, and the Bible says another, who do you trust? Thomas Aquinas's answer had been (to simplify it), they can't conflict with each other. Galileo, on the other hand, believed that they could; he was, I believe, one of the first Christians to suggest that the Bible was not intended to be a scientific textbook, and that nature should be trusted over the literal words of the Bible. Scientific: This is the bit people usually forget when they rage about the injustice placed upon Galileo: Copernicanism was not a proven theory. The injustice lay in Galileo not being allowed the opportunity to argue his theories; the injustice did not lie in the Church suppressing scientific facts. In fact, absolute proof for Copernicanism didn't come along until the nineteenth century; in Galileo's day, Copernicanism was very much an unproven theory. What was horrendous about Copernicanism, from the scientific point of view, was that moving earth would require scientists to rewrite, not just astronomy, but the disciplines of physics, geology, meteorology, and a billion other subjects. Here's where the Church came in. The Church had very cleverly tied its theological beliefs in with the scientific theories of the day. You see that happening in the modern world, with people speculating about how the Big Bang fits in with a belief in a Creator God. But medieval Christianity had done this in a really serious fashion, welding the theology so closely to the scientific facts, as they were known at the time, that any challenge to science became a challenge to theology. You can get a better sense of what the Church was up against if you imagine a scientist today proclaiming his theory that the universe never had a beginning, and therefore could never have been created. Such a theory would of course be a direct challenge to a fundamental Christian belief; the churches today couldn't simply ignore it. Of course, the Church's solution in Galileo's case was to threaten him with the rack. So, yes, an injustice occurred, but it was over no trivial issue: the entire theology of the Church (not only Catholicism but Protestantism as well) was at stake. Heather [E-mail]   [Home Page]