Seminary is a great experience!
Coming out here I did not know what to expect. But one thing I did not want was to be given “the answer book” for Christianity. My faith and theology has taken a few punches, and it has also been built up. Honestly there have been times when I’ve thought “Professor, just tell me what I am ‘supposed’ to believe because my brain is starting to hurt with this intake of information.” But I am so very glad I am being challenged and forced to reconcile thoughts and theories for myself.
We have been studying for our Old Testament midterm this past week and I wanted to share this nugget of information with all of our readers (though many of you might already know this).
Hear what our great Reformation leaders had to say about Copernicus because he believed the earth went around the sun instead of the sun going around the earth.
“People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon…. This fool wishes to reverse the entire scheme of astrology; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth.” Martin Luther
“The world also is stabilized, that it cannot be moved” (citing Ps.93) “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?” John Calvin
Don’t get me wrong, I greatly appreciate these men for their contribution to the Christian faith!
It is just interesting to think about issues we call other people “fools” about today when they might just be right…
I am not thinking of anything in particular, just something to ponder.
(Sidenote: most people/scholars today who hold to the inerrancy of the Bible do include as a qualification that biblical writers used phenomenological language)
Title explanation: Galileo was excommunicated from the church because he also promoted the theory that the sun revolved around the earth… but then they let him back in during the 1990s J
P.S. More Old Testament stuff will be posted once we get our grades back from the essay portion of our tests.
