antipodes

GRMorton@aol.com
Tue, 3 Oct 1995 00:35:31 -0400

Stephen Jones wrote:
>>>Now if Glenn could show: 1. a large number of important medieval
>scholars (eg. Aquinas, Anselm, Occam, etc), believed that there was no one
living at the antipodes; 2. it became part of official Catholic church
doctrine; and 3. when it and when it was discovered that there were people
living at the antipodes, it provoked a major crisis in the history of the
Church, with great controversy, new interpretations and doctrinal revisions,
then I would agree that White (and Glenn) had made his case.<<

Here is a start. I count 2 other than Augustine. I don't have time right now
to do more research for you Stephen.

"To all of them this idea seemed dangerous; to most of them
it seemed damnable. St. Basil and St. Ambrose were tolerant
enough to allow that a man might be saved who thought the earth
inhabited on its opposite sides; but the great majority of the
fathers doubted the possibility of salvation to such
misbelievers.
"The great champion of the orthodox view was St. Augustine.
Though he seemed inclined to yield a little in regard to the
sphericity of the earth, he fought the idea that men exist on the
other side of it saying that 'Scripture speaks of no such
descendants of Adam.' He insists that men could not be allowed
by the almighty to live there, since if they did they could not
see Christ at his second coming descending through the air. But
his most cogent appeal, one which we find echoed from theologian
to theologian during a thousand years afterward, is to the
nineteenth Psalm, and to its confirmation in the Epistle to the
Romans; to the words, 'Their line is gone out through all the
earth, and their words to the end of the world.' He dwells with
great force on the fact that St. Paul based one of his most
powerful arguments upon his declaration regarding the preachers
of the gospel, and that he declared even more explicitly that
'Verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words to
the ends of the world.' Thenceforth we find it constantly
declared that, as those preachers did not go to the antipodes, no
antipodes can exist; and hence that the supporters of this
geographical doctrine 'give the lie direct to King David and to
St. Paul, and therefore to the Holy Ghost.' Thus the great
Bishop of Hippo taught the whole world for over a thousand years
that, as there was no preaching the gospel on the opposite side
of the earth, there could be no human beings there."~Andrew D.
White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in
Christendom,1, (New York: George Braziller, 1955), p.103-104
**
"But in 1519 science gains a crushing victory. Magellan makes
his famous voyage. He proves the earth to be round, for his
expedition circumnavigates it; he proves the doctrine of the
antipodes, for his shipmates see the peoples of the antipodes.
Yet even this does not end the war. Many conscientious men
oppose the doctrine two hundred years longer. Then the French
astronomers make their measurements of degrees in equatorial and
polar regions, and add to their proofs thjat of the lengthened
pendulum. When this was donem when the deductions of science
were seen to be established by the simple test of measurement,
beautifully and perfectly, and when a long line of trustworthy
explorers, including devoted missionaries, had sent home accounts
of the antipodes, then and then only, this war of twelve
centuries ended."~Andrew D. White, A History of the Warfare of
Science with Theology in Christendom, 1,(New York: George
Braziller, 1955), p.109

glenn