How Much Authority Does Scripture Possess Regarding Science?
Harvard historian I. Bernard Cohen gives us the secular world’s view of the inevitable clash that would occur between Copernicanism and Scripture:
One necessary consequence of his system was the position that the literal interpretation of Scripture cannot be the ultimate test for scientific explanation of the observed phenomenon of the world of nature around us. Like it or not, De Revolutionibus could not avoid constituting a challenge to authority. A significant feature of the Scientific Revolution was to base knowledge on experiment and observation and to disdain any authorities other than nature herself. The motto of the Royal Society, founded a little over a century after the publication of De Revolutionibus, was “Nullius in verba” (On the word of no man). Whether or not Copernicus was actually a major figure in this revolutionary tilt of knowledge away from authority, he has come to symbolize the first mover in this direction of science and it is an honorable role….In arguing for the ‘reality’ of his own system, and in not going along with those for whom ‘reality’ was not a central question, Copernicus was certainly a rebel. It is even reasonable to call him a revolutionary.22
Someone once said, “Scripture is not a science book.” Although there is a certain degree of truth in that statement, unfortunately it has been badly misrepresented in arguments dealing with the Galileo affair. It has been used to politely take Scripture out of the jury room on whether Galileo’s hypothesis was correct. Advocates of the heliocentric theory often make a glib reference to a certain Cardinal Baronius who in 1598 is said to have made the following summation of the supposed dichotomy between science and Scripture:
“The Holy Spirit tells us how to get to heaven, not how the heavens go.”23
Various strains of this sentiment have been used throughout the last few centuries to silence theologians who seek to extract various truths from Scripture with which to build an understanding of the universe. For example, Catholic author George Sim Johnston writes:
Galileo accepted the inerrancy of Scripture; but he was also mindful of Cardinal Baronius’s quip that the bible “is intended to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”
And he pointed out correctly that both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the sacred writers in no way meant to teach a system of astronomy.
St. Augustine wrote that: One does not read in the Gospel that the Lord said: I will send you the Paraclete who will teach you about the course of the sun and moon. For He willed to make them Christians, not mathematicians. Unfortunately, there are still today biblical fundamentalists, both Protestant and Catholic, who do not understand this simple point:
the bible is not a scientific treatise. When Christ said that the mustard seed was the smallest of seeds (and it is about the size of a speck of dust), he was not laying down a principle of botany.
In fact, botanists tell us that there are smaller seeds. He was simply talking to the men of his time in their own language, and with reference to their own experience.24
It frequently occurs that in arguments defending Galileo various quotes are extracted from famous prelates and saints but often without thinking them through. Such is the case here. Although Scripture certainly does not reach the level of a science book, that does not mean it cannot, or does not, address scientific issues on various occasions. The difference is subtle, but it is very important. For example, we can all agree that the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution are not religious documents. Most categorize them as political documents. But every American will agree that when either of the two documents address a matter of religion, such as when the Declaration of Independence says:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” all ears stop to listen, since everyone acknowledges that the Declaration is giving factual and authoritative statements about religion that form the basis of the country’s foundation of government. The Declaration is certainly not a religious treatise, but it is, nevertheless, addressing an important area of religion in this particular instance, and it holds the same authority in that instance as it does when it speaks about political and governmental issues.
In the same way, although Scripture is not a science book and thus does not employ formulas such as E = mc2 or F = ma, nevertheless, when it touches upon an area of science, men need to listen, for it is giving factual and authoritative statements that form the basis of our cosmogony and cosmology. Discovering the scientific formulas that coincide with those foundational truths has been assigned to man’s labor under the six days God has given him to work by the sweat of his brow, and as such, man’s science can safely complement divine revelation. Revelation does not seek to impinge upon man’s freedoms and intellectual pursuits, but only to save him from the heartache and frustration of proceeding down the wrong scientific path, especially in areas regarding the creation of the world that no human being was present to witness, or with the structure of the cosmos from which no man has a high enough platform to determine which bodies are moving and which are not. As Pope St. Pius X once wrote:
Human science gains greatly from revelation, for the latter opens out new horizons and makes known sooner other truths of the natural order, and because it opens the true road to investigation and keeps it safe from errors of application and of method. Thus does the lighthouse show many things they otherwise would not see, while it points out the rocks on which the vessel would suffer shipwreck.25 Or as Gregory of Nazianzus once put it:
We, however, who extend the accuracy of the Spirit to the merest jot and tittle, will never admit the impious assertion that even the smallest matters were dealt with haphazardly by those who have recorded them.26
Scriptures Teaching on Geocentrism