Re: antipodes

Asst Prof Clarence F Sills Jr (sills@nadn.navy.mil)
Tue, 3 Oct 1995 13:15:38 -0400 (EDT)

Just a brief comment. White is indeed a selective and polemical source;
his views have already been challenged. To simply reiterate his
CONCLUSIONS about the views of various figures in church history is poor
methodology. The texts you cite do not stack up well against the actual
writings of Basil, Ambrose, and Augustine, all of whom were in fact more
"open-minded" in their conjectures about the unknown than White makes
them out to be. He simply assumes and repeats a view of medieval
civilization which is highly questionable, to say the least.

On Tue, 3 Oct 1995 GRMorton@aol.com wrote:

> 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
>
>