Galileo Affair - Bible Argument

Bible Argument

From antiquity, the majority of educated people subscribed to the Aristotelian view of geocentrism that the earth was the center of the universe and that all heavenly bodies revolved around the Earth. Despite the use of Copernican theories to reform the calendar in 1582, this agreed with a literalist interpretation of Scripture in several places, such as 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, Psalm 104:5, Ecclesiastes 1:5. Heliocentrism, the theory that the Earth was a planet, which, along with all the others, revolved around the Sun, contradicted both geocentrism and the prevailing theological support of the theory.

One of the first suggestions of heresy that Galileo had to deal with came in 1613 from a professor of philosophy (what we would now call a professor of scientific theory), Cosimo Boscaglia, who was neither a theologian nor a priest. In conversation with Galileo's patron, Cosimo II de' Medici, Boscaglia gave the opinion that the telescopic discoveries were valid, but the motion of the Earth was obviously contrary to Scripture. Galileo was defended on the spot by a Benedictine abbot, Benedetto Castelli, who was also a professor of mathematics and a former student of Galileo's. This exchange, reported to Galileo by Castelli, led Galileo to write a letter to Castelli, expounding his views on what he considered the most appropriate way of treating scriptural passages which made assertions about natural phenomena. Later, in 1615, he expanded this into his much longer Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina.

Tommaso Caccini, a Dominican friar, appears to have made the first dangerous attack on Galileo. Preaching a sermon in Florence at the end of 1614, he denounced Galileo, his associates, and mathematicians in general (a category that included astronomers). The biblical text for the sermon on that day was Joshua 10, in which Joshua makes the Sun stand still; this was the story that Castelli had had to interpret for the Medici family the year before. It is said, though it is not verifiable, that Caccini also used the passage from Acts 1:11, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?".