>>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.<<
I would most certainly agree with you that going to the original texts is
the only proof of this and I most assuredly can not claim to have proven
this. However, I have a source, maybe one that is not liked, which makes
this assertion. In my very extensive library I have very little on Church
history and what little I have does not address issues like science and the
Bible. If anyone can either verify or refute White's statements about the
antipodes, I would certainly be interested. What little I remember from my
very brief and aborted philosophy education fits with what White says here
and elsewhere. It is also consistent with what I have observed of the way the
some believers deal with observational data as well as the way the
medievalists would use the Scriptures as a source for knowledge of the
observable world instead of actually making an observation.
But unfortunately, I will have to depend here on the conclusions of others
who have studied Augustine, Basil and Ambrose.
glenn