Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: New Light Theory, Mormons, Neo-Catholics - a Debate on a Tangent Off a Video on Mormons · New blog on the kid: Must We Agree With St. Augustine on How to Keep Prestige Among Non-Christians?
The Bible contains two passages that seem to relate to the shape of the heavens. St. Augustine comments* on them here:
But someone may ask: "Is not Scripture opposed to those who hold that heaven is spherical, when it says, 'who stretches out heaven like a skin?' " Let it be opposed indeed if their statement is false. The truth is rather in what God reveals than in what groping men surmise. But if they are able to establish their doctrine with proofs that cannot be denied, we must show that this statement of Scripture about the skin is not opposed to the truth of their conclusions. If it were, it would be opposed also to Sacred Scripture itself in another passage where it says that heaven is suspended like a vault.
For what can be so different and contradictory as a skin stretched out flat and the curved shape of a vault? But if it is necessary, as it surely is, to interpret these two passages so that they are shown not to be contradictory but to be reconcilable, it is also necessary that both of these passages should not contradict the theories that may be supported by true evidence, by which heaven is said to be curved on all sides in the shape of a sphere, provided only that this is proved.
Let me quote again the last phrase:
the theories that may be supported by true evidence, by which heaven is said to be curved on all sides in the shape of a sphere, provided only that this is proved.
Yes, the very last phrase:
provided only that this is proved.
Please keep this in mind, as I quote the paragraph previous to the quoted passage:
But the credibility of Scripture is at stake, and as I have indicated more than once, there is danger that a man uninstructed in divine revelation, discovering something in Scripture or hearing from it something that seems to be at variance with the knowledge he has acquired, may resolutely withhold his assent in other matters where Scripture presents useful admonitions, narratives, or declarations. Hence, I must say briefly that in the matter of the shape of heaven the sacred writers knew the truth, but that the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, did not wish to teach men these facts that would be of no avail for their salvation.
So, when St. Augustine defers to the knowledge which non-Christians (or some neophytes or laymen) have acquired by natural and non-Biblical means, he means things that are proven.
provided only that this is proved.
That is one major reason to not use St. Augustine against Young Earth Creationists or Geocentrics.
A Universe that is 13.8 billion years or older has not been proven apart from stars measured at 13.8 billion light years away. Stellar distances, whether close or far, 4 light years or 13.8 light years, have not been proven apart from Heliocentrism. And Heliocentrism has not been proven apart from Atheism and Anangelism (or a very Deistic view of how God deals with Creation).
So, as St. Augustine meant "knowledge" as something which has been proved, and not simply "social knowledge" we cannot use him to silence even a Flat Earther, who on my view is obviously wrong (as well as on his view, at least his prudential estimate of where proofs went which he didn't fully enter into), unless one does so providing proof for earth being round. The simple fact that he is a liability for our credibility is very much insufficient, unless we add this criterium.
That is why I don't try to ignore a Flat Earther, but try to answer him, at least when he claims Flat Earth follows from the Bible.** And I did so without vague invocations of what St. Augustine said here, I did so with a very literalistic exegesis of each passage he cited. There is no mountain which by its simple height suffices to give Jesus the kind of view of all the world that the Eiffel Tower offers over Paris. But angels can provide TV shows. In The Latin Mass, an issue of some time in the 1990's or perhaps just the very early 2000's, I read Mgr. Thiandoum state that angels (and demons, as they are fallen angels) can do anything that scientists can do with science - because their mastery of material realities outside their own being is more direct and therefore more perfect. But while showing Jesus Luoyang by an Eiffel Tower kind of view from would have been impossible even with a Flat Earth, showing Jesus Luoyang by televised images and sounds would have been easy. And it would have allowed Satan closeups much better showing how China back then was under his dominion, so to speak "his to give" ... until Jesus took that away, at Calvary. The height of the mountain was just so Jesus and himself could be lonely.
But there is another issue.
St. Augustine gave this advice in the Roman Empire, which by 400 was very much saner, even among Pagans, than 150 years earlier. We live in a world which is pretty much madder, on most if not all issues, than 150 years ago.
We live in a world where we may face ridicule for saying that a raped girl doesn't have a right to abortion. Or for saying that while an abused wife can move away from her husband, she cannot divorce and find another one. Or for saying that God exists. By 400, Epicureans and Stoics were pretty much dead, everyone, either Pagan or Christian was a Theist, at least as much as Aristotle and Plato were, it was just a matter of which God.
Is it possible St. Augustine would have humoured and required Christians to humour pseudo-knowledge of his day, just because it was social knowledge? Well, maybe St. Augustine was in two minds on whether the earth was really a globe, maybe he was unsure if philosophers had actually prove Earth to be a globe. Let me give you the quote, it's in the Catholic Encyclopedia article*** on Antipodes:
Speculations concerning the rotundity of the earth and the possible existence of human beings "with their feet turned towards ours" were of interest to the Fathers of the Early Church only in so far as they seemed to encroach upon the fundamental Christian dogma of the unity of the human race, and the consequent universality of original sin and redemption. This is clearly seen from the following passage of St. Augustine (City of God XVI.9):
"As to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets on us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, there is no reason for believing it. Those who affirm it do not claim to possess any actual information; they merely conjecture that, since the earth is suspended within the concavity of the heavens, and there is as much room on the one side of it as on the other, therefore the part which is beneath cannot be void of human inhabitants. They fail to notice that, even should it be believed or demonstrated that the world is round or spherical in form, it does not follow that the part of the earth opposite to us is not completely covered with water, or that any conjectured dry land there should be inhabited by men. For Scripture, which confirms the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, teaches not falsehood; and it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man."
May I make a highlight again ? Not in the Cath-Enc. editor's text, but in St. Augustine's own ...
even should it be believed or demonstrated that the world is round or spherical in form,
Here° is the Latin:
etiamsi figura conglobata et rutunda mundus esse credatur siue aliqua ratione monstretur,
And "credatur" and "monstretur" are, as I expected from the excellent English translation, concessive subjunctives. St. Augustine is here saying basically "let's assume that earth is proven round like a globe" ... or "I'll grant you guys, that ..." - here obviously, requiring conformity to social knowledge which might be non-factual knowledge becomes a bit problematic.
But as it turns out, St. Augustine was right to grant the earth is round as a globe, as since his time Magellan and Elcano proved her so. But in our time socially accepted "knowledge" will include dangerous heresies like "thought is a by-product of biochemical processes in the brain" or "God does not exist" or things.
This means, we cannot base our tactics on what St. Augustine said in a very different social context. Especially if, as I have argued, heresies against the faith logically follow from granting too much to "science" ...
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Faust of Milan
7.VIII.2023
Mediolani sancti Fausti militis, qui, sub Aurelio Commodo, post multa certamina, martyrii palmam adeptus est.
* Saint Augustine
Comments by Dr Ken Smith (page is on No Answers in Genesis)
https://noanswersingenesis.org.au/saintaugustine.htm
** Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering a Few Claims of the Bible Disproving the Globe (Or Itself if the Globe is Proven)
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2023/08/answering-few-claims-of-bible.html
*** Antipodes
Catholic Encyclopedia (before 1917)
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01581a.htm
° AUGUSTINI DE CIVITATE DEI LIBER XVI
https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/augustine/civ16.shtml
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