The Center 

The question, whether the earth is stationary or rotates and/or revolves around the sun, was asked during antiquity. Some of the Pythagoreans were heliocentrists, and others too promoted the idea:

For many inquirers, the problems with this idea were more physical than theological, inasmuch as ancient physics had difficulty with the idea that the earth is moving rapidly, but people, houses and wagons don't go flying off. When you drop your keys, why do they fall perpendicularly under your hand, not slightly behind; why is it not necessary to ever be jogging back a bit to recover dropped items? It took the genius of Galileo to answer these questions in a convincing manner. Does the Bible address the topic? Who believes which theory, and why?:

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 honorable 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.

Beautiful Simplicity

The Ptolemaic system, at least before it was weighted down with innumerable epicycles, and the Copernican system, which also sports epicycles, both share a certain conceptual simplicity. Not so Tycho Brahe's composite kludge:

The composite system loses the advantages of both of the two opposite standpoints it seeks to weave together. Not to say that the Ptolemaic system in its purity is any wonder of clarity and simplicity; it is not.

When a candidate for baptism presents himself to our church, we do not ask, 'What is your position on heliocentrism?' Back during the race to the moon, they took public opinion polls in the countries which were the main two contestants, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, asking people whether they thought the sun travelled around the earth or the earth orbited the sun. A sizeable minority in both countries got it wrong. But getting it right sets you up where on your spiritual journey? Given the popularity of flat earthism on the internet today, the candidate for baptism might even be a flat earther, a far worse error! Would it matter? Not to us. Why would it? It's an irrelevancy, it's neither here nor there. Likewise if they say, 'I disbelieve in quantum mechanics,' or, 'you know, I never really believed there are atoms. I can't see them.' They are mistaken, but on matters which fall outside the church's proper sphere. The gospel isn't about quantum mechanics or atoms.

The church, properly speaking, does not have an astronomy, because considerations of this sort make up no part of the deposit of faith entrusted to the church. The faith once for all delivered to the saints is not a set of propositions about astronomy. The gospel says nothing about this matter. Observing the dispute between Galileo and the astronomers, the Catholic Church should have said, 'we don't have a dog in this fight.' They did, though, not because of the Bible, but because they had baptized a pagan: Aristotle.

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 like Averroes and Avicenna:

"Averroes may not have been influential in Islam, but he was in Christianity; if he represents an end-point for Arabic Islamic philosophy, for medieval Christian philosophy he represents a beginning. . .Thus, Christianity inherited the Arabic philosophy of Islam." (Hans Kung, Islam, Past, Present and Future, pp. 379-380).

Since this philosophy was taken up in the first place in a spirit of 'keeping-up-with-the-Joneses,' i.e. the Muslims, some skepticism may be in order. Wasn't it, after all, an Islamic Caliph, al-Ma'mun, who saw Aristotle in a dream: "His special interest in foreign culture and philosophy is commemorated in the story that Aristotle appeared to him in a dream and spoke words of encouragement to him." (Soheil M. Afnan, Avicenna, His Life and Works, p. 7). To this Aristotelian-Arab 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! The beautiful, simple circular orbits became weighted down with epicycles. How did epicycles even work? 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. It is stunning how many people imagine that Copernicus ditched epicycles: "What are the differences between these two mathematical explanations of the solar system?. . .A good model explains much about the world without employing too many special assumptions — such as the epicycles — and without requiring too many complex notions and tools." (Amir C. Aczel, Why Science Does not Disprove God, pp. 66-67). He did not! Nevertheless, he made 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, or nine: sun, moon, five planets, fixed stars and the outermost sphere). 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.

One would like to think that the durable link between the old pagan astronomy and astrology was nothing but a negative to be overlooked in the scholastic evaluation of this science. One would like to think. That is why it is disappointing to realize that Thomas specifically leaves in his system a back door open to this pagan science:

"Now, the celestial bodies, alone among bodily things, are inalterable; their condition shows this, for it is always the same. So, the celestial body is the cause of all alteration in things that are changed by alternation. . .Thus, it is evident that lower bodies are ruled by God through the celestial bodies." (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Three, Chapter 82, That Lower Bodies are Ruled by God through Celestial Bodies, p. 277).

By the time of the Reformation, people were already sick of this pagan/Christian hybrid, with good reason:

"What else are the universities, if their present condition remains unchanged, than as the book of Maccabees says, Gymnasia Epheborum et Graecae gloriae [2 Macc. 4:9, 12], in which loose living prevails, the Holy Scriptures and the Christian faith are little taught, and the blind, heathen master Aristotle rules alone, even more than Christ. . .I venture to say that any potter has more knowledge of nature than is written in these books. It grieves me to the heart that this damned, conceited, rascally heathen has with his false words deluded and made fools of so many of the best Christians." (Martin Luther, An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate, Kindle location 1723, Works of Martin Luther, Volume II, Part III, Section 25).

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. That's the long and the short of it. Thomas lived too early to have encountered Tycho Brahe's innovative theory, so defense of that theory, neither in the original nor in its Jesuitical refinement, cannot vindicate Thomas. And it was Thomas they cared about. They thought that medieval inquiries had nailed down a comprehensive 'theory-of-everything,' which might bear improvement in small details, but could not be substantially wrong. 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. If Venus is drawn below the sun, as commonly represented, it could not appear as an illuminated circle; reversing the positions does not fix the problem. But Galileo had seen it and wanted to shout it from the roof-tops. Venus goes through all the phases, like the moon. 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 conflict with Galileo.

Ptolemy and Copernicus did not in general make dramatically different predictions about the appearance of the heavens. The Ptolemaic system did not fail to save the appearances. However advocates for the Copernican system ferreted out a few subtle clues. The apparent size of Venus, even to the naked eye, is a stumbling block for the Ptolemaic system, or so they felt. 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 might vary, but not to the extent observed. Nor would it display the full menu of phases, as it does. To the naked eye, the phases cannot be distinguished; a crescent Venus is a dim Venus, but the introduction of the telescope pried apart the two questions. The heliocentric system explains this change in visible size handily, because as the planets race around their nested race-tracks, the distance between them can vary quite a lot, and Venus is also liberated to display the lunar-like phases it shows to the telescopic observer. Admittedly, this point remained open to dispute, with some hold-outs alleging the observed variation in Venus' apparent size is not as great as it should be under the Copernican system. But on this point the two systems do make divergent predictions, opening up the debate to potential empirical test. The phases of Venus are a problem for Ptolemy, not for Tycho, in whose system Venus orbits the sun, just like it does in Copernicus. But Tycho lacks traditional advocates.

An additional observation difficult for geocentrism is that of a swinging pendulum, suspended from a pivot made as frictionless as possible; it will trace a circle, why? People who think Ptolemy can be vindicated in the end should just give it up. And vindicating someone other than Ptolemy serves no purpose. 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. As late as the nineteenth century they were demanding fealty to his teachings. That is why Galileo was indigestible to the Church. The Catholic Church does, or did, have an astronomy, and that astronomy is Ptolemaic. The Catholic Church does, or did, have a physics, and that physics is Aristotelian. Neither Ptolemy nor Aristotle, pagans both, knew or cared about the Bible. That, in a nutshell, is why heliocentrism proved hard for the Catholics, but easy, in the end, for the Protestants; who were not necessarily, however, early adopters.

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 then again. . .:

Some go even further and claim the Bible teaches, not only geocentrism, but flat-earthism. This includes both those deluded enough to believe that a.) the Bible teaches flat-earthism, and b.) the earth actually is flat, in addition to those who allege this merely with the intent of ridiculing and discrediting Christianity, such as the nineteenth century historians of science, John William Draper and Andrew D. White:

As noted, there are Bible verses that describe a stable and motionless earth. . .But these verses quoted aren't them, these verses describe an earth which is shaking, rattling and rolling! If you quote only the 'stable' verses and neglect to quote any of the 'shake, rattle, and roll' verses, you might create the misimpression that the Bible intends to teach geocentrism. 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.

Galileo saw a book title in a catalog, and felt he just had to lay hands on it:

"In 1608, for example, Galileo came across a book in a catalogue whose title was De motu terrae, On the Movement of the Earth, and naturally tried to get hold of a copy; two years later he was still trying to track one down, appealing to Kepler for help. . .Had he obtained a copy, he would have been disappointed, as its subject is earthquakes, not Copernicanism." (The Invention of Science, David Wootton, p. 358).

When you hear that the 'earth' is moving, you should ask, by comparison with what? What moves, and what holds steady, and under what circumstances? If the answer is, some other portion of the land-mass or other component of the world system, we are not doing astronomy.

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.

The modern Catholic geocentrists point out that heliocentrism was condemned by the Council of Trent and several popes. Pope Alexander VII signed a papal bull, Speculatores domus Israel, which in 1664 was attached to the Index of Forbidden Books, condemning "all books which affirm the motion of the earth," binding the consciences of the faithful. This is a problem for Catholic apologists like Robert Sungenis, because the modern popes have proclaimed themselves infallible. What possible way out is there for the Catholic who wants to agree? Perhaps the geocentrist popes 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; although if in fact what they endorsed is the unanimous consent of the early church fathers, that is somewhat different. Living when they did, the early church writers did by and large subscribe to the common secular astronomy of their day, which was Ptolemaic. Some, like Basil, regarded cosmography as a matter of indifference, not addressed in scripture:

"Those who have written about the nature of the universe have discussed at length the shape of the earth. If it be spherical or cylindrical, if it resemble a disc and is equally rounded in all parts, or if it has the forth of a winnowing basket and is hollow in the middle; all these conjectures have been suggested by cosmographers, each one upsetting that of his predecessor. It will not lead me to give less importance to the creation of the universe, that the servant of God, Moses, is silent as to shapes; he has not said that the earth is a hundred and eighty thousand furlongs in circumference; he has not measured into what extent of air its shadow projects itself whilst the sun revolves around it, nor stated how this shadow, casting itself upon the moon, produces eclipses. He has passed over in silence, as useless, all that is unimportant for us." (Basil, Hexaemeron, Homily 9, Section 1).

Augustine, though unhappy about the antipodes, was otherwise an agnostic on matters of astronomy.

Why should these issues trouble Protestants? Some Protestants also disliked Copernicus, as did Martin Luther, who said, "There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must needs invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth." (Martin Luther, Table-Talk). John Calvin did not like helicocentrism either: "We will see some who are so deranged, not only in religion but who in all things reveal their monstrous nature, that they will say that the sun does not move, and that it is the earth which shifts and turns. When we see such minds we must indeed confess that the devil possesses them, and that God sets them before us as mirrors, in order to keep us in his fear." (John Calvin, “Sermon on 1 Corinthians 10:19-24”, Calvini Opera Selecta, Corpus Refomatorum,Vol 49, 677, trans. by Robert White in “Calvin and Copernicus: the Problem Reconsidered“, Calvin Theological Journal 15 (1980), pp. 233-243, at 236-237, quoted at BioLogos).

Presumably with these worthies, the lack of familiarity of the new system was a sticking point, because unlike the Catholics, these people were not necessarily committed to the pagan philosopher Aristotle or followers of his school like Thomas Aquinas. Many of the reformers are on record criticizing the captivity to the pagan thinker Aristotle into which Christian thought had been led by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. For instance, Martin Luther spoke hopefully of independence, "It is false to say that no one can become a theologian without Aristotle. I state this in opposition to common opinion." (Martin Luther, 'Disputation Against Scholastic Theology,' No. 43). However, it is one thing to criticize Thomism, it is another to break free of it.

Since there is no Protestant Thomas Aquinas, there should be no difficulty, in principle, in jettisoning a theory about astronomy which is not found in scripture and substituting another, better one. One thing you can't avoid noticing about Ptolemy, though, is that his system seems to exite fond feelings in those initiated into its whirring spheres. The poet Dante, for example, can't think about the journey to heaven without thinking about spheres. Instead of saying, 'who needs this egg-beater contraption, anyway,' which is nowhere described in scripture, an incredibly complicated mechanism with epicycles piled upon epicycles, they were genuinely horrified to think it would be taken away from them. But Copernicus also has his beauties.

When the Protestant Reformers took up their cry of 'to the sources' and went back to the Bible to verify aspects of their religion which had grown suspect, how surprised they must have been to find Aristotle there, waiting for them! They were already sick and tired of him. What a marvel to find his circular orbits, which require no special explanation,— because circular motion is natural. What a marvel to find the seven heavens, the nested concentric spheres, beloved of heavenly tourists. These are mentioned in the Koran but, oddly enough, are absent from the Bible. What a marvel to discover that, while things of earth are comprised of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, the things above are made of the quintessence, the fifth element. Except none of these things can be found in the Bible. They aren't there. The Ptolemaic system is missing and unaccounted for when it comes to the Bible. None of its familiar features are mentioned or even hinted at. Which is not to say that Ptolemaic enthusiasts, like Moses Maimonides, haven't tried to find it, even in the least likely places, like Ezekiel's vision of the chariot throne:

Or is the magisterial Protestant Reformers' alarm at the Copernican system really Biblical after all? Are there, in fact, real Bible problems with heliocentrism? 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 in daily life:

“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. As is often pointed out, Copernicus in his magnum opus provided an index of times of 'sunrise' and 'sunset,' without intending to abandon his central thesis. This language is phenomenological; it means, from the observer's point of reference, the sun is moving. The observer is not invoking any absolute point of reference. Deny it, and you'll hear the rejoinder, 'Look!'— a perfectly adequate response. 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 must intersect, for example, the sun and Mars. What were the orbits: were they just paths? Some people thought they were a lot more than that: in some instantiations of the older astronomy, they are solid crystalline structures and indeed are involved in imparting movement to the bodies they carry. Compounding the difficulty, in Tycho's day, comets had come to be understood to be way up high, astronomical actors and not phenomena of the lower atmosphere as Aristotle had thought. So there is the little problem that as they go careening toward the sun on their highly elliptic orbits, they go bowling through the spheres. What is to be done with the spheres? How are they to be repaired? Tycho's solution was to get rid of them: "In 1588 Brahe published Concerning the Recent Phenomena of the Aetherial World. . . .Since his calculations implied that comets moved through the crystalline spheres of the planets, and since his geoheliocentric system required Mars to cut through the sphere of the sun, Brahe abandoned the whole theory of solid spheres, and argued that the sun, moon and planets floated freely in the heavens, like fish in the sea." (The Invention of Science, David Wootton, p. 230). In Tycho's system, adopted by our author, the other planets revolve around the sun, while the sun, and the outermost heavens, revolve around the earth. We modern people are generally quite happy to see the solid spheres gone; we do not even miss them.

But if the world system is made up of concentric spheres as Aristotle and Thomas thought, can there be any such intersecting orbits? From the start, some perceived the mathematical orbits as notional, not 'sensible,' i.e., visible and tactile: "So that when we speak of circles in the heavens, of contacts, bisections, and equalities, we speak accurately, as not speaking about sensibles." (Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus of Plato, All Five Books, translated by Thomas Taylor, Book II, p. 297). However there was a tendency toward reification, so that some in the Middle Ages were visualizing crystalline spheres, nested like Russian dolls. If the main spheres are concentric, as are Ptolemy's, this is not a problem; otherwise there may be some major china breakage as the spheres go crashing into one another. If these authors want to revert to the earlier conception of the orbits as mathematical constructs, there is no problem; however some of their Popes likely thought, and said, there were solid spheres up there. Our author wants to be a conservative, but is he conserving what his authorities really care about? Did anybody really ever care about the 'Seven Heavens,' i.e., the seven heavenly spheres which were thought to be up there, but which are now generally conceded not to be up there?:

One can only speculate about the eternal destinies of individuals. Is the angelic doctor now singing in the choir of the blessed? If so, how did they ever break it to him that there ain't no spheres? Perhaps no one had the heart to tell him, and so they handed him some rusty old lever and said, 'Here, Thomas, we'll put you in charge of operating the spheres.' Our author represents himself as a conservative, as someone who wants to conserve what was important in the views of prior authorities. But he does this by introducing something entirely new! Tycho Brahe's system is not the Ptolemaic system that Thomas believed in, nor is the Keplerian system modern people believe in. Is he absolutely sure, as he dismantles the seven heavenly spheres, none of his authorities will even notice they are gone, much less miss them? But how can people not miss something so pretty? Our author is an innovator, not a conservative. The 'seven heavens' are not Biblical, but they are very much part of Islam, and they were also beloved by some of the medieval authors. Our author has smashed them to bits.

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.

While there hasn't been a stampeded of support for Mr. Sungenis' geocentric ideas, that does not mean he is a lone ranger. Several Saudi clerics have in recent years espoused geocentrism, including Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari:

"Beginning his bizarre summary, Sheikh al-Khaibari 'First of all, where are we now? We go to Sharjah airport [in the United Arab Emirates] to travel to China by plane, clear?'

"Holding a cup of water aloft, the cleric adds: 'Focus with me, this is Earth'.

"Over the next 30 seconds, Sheikh al-Khaibari enters into a baffling explanation of his point of view, claiming that if the Earth truly was rotating, then airliners could just stop in the air and wait for the country to arrive beneath them, rather than waste time actually flying.

"'China would be coming towards it,' he argues.

"On the other hand, he said, if the Earth was moving in the opposite direction the plane would never be able to reach its destination because 'China is also rotating'.

"On concluding his baffling explanation, Sheikh al-Khaibari went on to claim the NASA lunar mission was Hollywood fabrication and that humans have never been to the moon, according to Al Arabiya." ('Saudi cleric becomes online laughing stock after telling student the sun rotates around the Earth as otherwise planes would not be able to fly,' Daily Mail, February 17, 2015).

The corrective for this conundrum is Copernicus' simile of the ship, moving evenly through the waters. Could a passenger who wished to travel, the easy way, to the dining room on his Carnival Cruise liner leap high into the air, then come down closer to his his destination as the ship rotates beneath him? No, because he is moving at the same rate as the ship. He is not independent of the ship; the ship, its passengers, and to a limited extent the circumambient air are all part of the same moving construct. Momentarily losing contact with the deck is not enough for him to 'lift off' into another realm. The airplane on the runway is moving with the rotating earth; they make a unit: as far as the airliner is concerned, the earth is stationary. Rising into the air does not in an instant dissipate all that inherited momentum, leaving the airliner free to 'wait' for its destination to come to it. There are physical effects of the rotation of the earth, but they are subtle; it's not the kind of thing you can notice by jumping up and checking to see where you land. You land underneath where you jumped, because you're rotating, too. It's not so easy to escape the general trend.

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 any major 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 travel times. The telescope, which came into use after Copernicus, proved a great friend to his theory. That Venus displays phases, much like the moon, is an observation confirmed by the telescope but inexplicable under Ptolemy's astronomy. In a general vein, the Aristotelian idea that change applies in the sublunary sphere but not in the heavenly spheres was also disconfirmed by the telescope:

"Copernicus' theory, for example, suggested that planets should be like the earth, that Venus should show phases, and that the universe must be vastly larger than had previously been supposed. As a result, when sixty years after his death the telescope suddenly displayed mountains on the moon, the phases of Venus, and an immense number of previously unsuspected stars, those observations brought the new theory a great many converts, particularly among non-astronomers." (Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 153).

It is often pointed out by advocates for these theories that NASA makes its computations for rocket launches based on the premise of a stationary earth. This may well be the case, for all I know, for lifting satellites into orbit or even travel to the moon, especially since the earth is a fixed station as far as we are concerned. Why plot a course between one moving object and another, when it is not necessary? But, in plotting the appropriate trajectories to guide its exploratory satellites on complex itineraries to arrive at their final intended destinations, Mars and beyond, I would imagine NASA ultimately must incorporate Copernican revelations, as the way these bodies are moving relatively to one another is not correctly modeled by the Ptolemaic system.

There is one task the Ptolemaic system proposes to itself, and that is to save the appearances: it must predict what the sun, moon, stars and planets will look like from the earth on the requested date. It does that, impressively. Ask the astrologers; this is a practical technology after all. It never set itself the task of accurately pinning down their respective positions and locations. May I suggest that, plotting a course for a Voyager type mission would be a massive flub for a system that was never really designed to do that? Perhaps these geniuses can set themselves to the task, and see if they can recreate a successful mission of that type under their assumptions and premises, since they seem to have a lot of time on their hands.

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. There were dissidents in the early Christian centuries who were able to identify problems with the Ptolemaic system, though unable themselves to stand up a credible rival system:

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 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).

To Plato also, this outermost sphere, the "sphere of the self-moved," had been a "blessed god:" "Such was the whole plan of the eternal God about the god that was to be, to whom for this reason he gave a body, smooth and even, having a surface in every direction equidistant from the centre, a body entire and perfect, and formed out of perfect bodies. . .and he made the universe a circle moving in a circle, one and solitary, yet by reason of its excellence able to converse with itself, and needing no other friendship or acquaintance. Having these purposes in view he created the world a blessed god." (Plato, Timaeus).

This outermost sphere is in fact a god also to Aristotle, 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 for good:

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, finding a 'fit' in the seven-branched candlestick, if the sun is taken as the central element:

"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).

Admittedly Philo elsewhere takes for granted the common Ptolemaic understanding, that the earth is at the center: "But perhaps we ought to look on these things as spoken in an allegorical sense; for some say the tree of life belongs to the earth, inasmuch as it is the earth which produces everything which is of use for life, whether it be the life of mankind or of any other animal; since God has appointed the situation in the center for this plant, and the center of the universe is the earth." (Philo Judaeus, Questions and Answers in Genesis, Book 1, Question 10). But his mind remains open, and why shouldn't it? In this same tract he refers to the outer sphere as motionless, which it is not in the conventional Ptolemaic arrangement: "For in this, also, there is a report that the outermost sphere, which is destitute of motion, is preserved without being divided, but that the inner one is divided into six portions, and thus completes the seven circles of what are called the planets. . ." (Philo Judaeus, Who is the Heir of Divine Things? Chapter XLVIII).

For most of history, heliocentrism was the path not taken. I'm not aware of medieval heliocentrists other than Nicholas of Cusa. In antiquity there's Aristarchus of Samos and likely Pythagoras. The ancient Greek astronomers were certainly aware of the heliocentric option, but did not choose it owing to unresolved physical problems.

As noted above, the leading figures of the magisterial reformation were not really any more open to heliocentrism than were the Catholics of the day. Were they more committed to open inquiry? Not necessarily; one of the charges against Michael Servetus, executed at Geneva as a heretic, was making annotations to Ptolemy's Geography. Some of the radical reformers, though, had already articulated the principle of freedom of thought, as clearly as ever it was articulated in the early church era:

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.

Not to be unduly suspicious, but one must wonder at the motivation of those who wish to revive the old idea of the luminiferous aether, discredited since Michelson and Morley's ground-breaking experiment. This elastic, tenuous, universal medium was important for a wide variety of not-necessarily-Christian folk, including the theosophists. Madame Blavatsky, it will be recalled, was entranced with the stuff, believing it an integral element of the Ancient Wisdom world-view she cultivated: ". . .the anima mundi proper was considered as composed of a fine, igneous, and ethereal nature spread throughout the universe, in short— ether." (Helena P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled and the Secret Doctrine, Complete Illustrated Edition, Kindle location 10954, p. 317):