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
>
>