Posing Problems in the Westminster Confession of Faith

[JohnMartin]

In case anyone is wondering its very rare for the Catholic Church to make a big proclamation of something, unless there's a problem that needs to be addressed. Most decisions are off the books more or less. One of them was the suspension of the liturgical law that required that women wear veils in churches, which was done away with in the seventies. You won't find a document precisely declaring this, yet all the bishops are unanimous in their opinion that this has happened.

That being said many women still wear veils out of a sense of tradition, the frequency of which varies from place to place.

The Galileo affair involved big proclamations. The results of the congregations decisions were made public througout the Catholic academic world to enforce the will of the Pope against the moving earth theory. The stationary earth was a staple of Catholic belief for centuries and was considered to have been revealed by God in the scriptures.

JM

[Leonhard]

According to Leo XIII the unanimous consent of the fathers is a binding rule of faith. The fathers were unanimous on the stationary earth as revealed by God, hence that position of the fathers is binding.

But unanimous consent of the fathers is binding only on faith and morals, and nothing else. What is to be judged as binding is relegated to the magisterium, and they have never made it binding on Catholic's that only geocentrism be taught. As the question of geocentrism is a question of natural fact.

There are not less than 30 passages in the OT that teach geocentrism. You are wrong to assert there are only a handful of verses.

This doesn't change anything. I will only discuss the Joshua verse as that is by far the clearest and strongest case, and in that case a straight forward alternative is that its using phenomenological language. No error is admitted by admitting that the Bible uses such language. Its quite uncontroversial.

You have admitted the geocentric claim is the plainest, then provided no evidence from the text of any reason to understand that text, or any other relevant text as teaching a moving earth.

You keep misquoting me. I don't claim that it teaches a moving earth. I simple point out that St. Bellarmine is was wrong to think that it taught geocentrism. Rather he's importing his cosmology into the text. Its 'natural' to do so because of the phenomenological language, but in light of modern science, it was a mistake.

One point that is definitely consistent with Sungenis's claims is the modern church (only within the general population of Catholics and not the magisterium formally) has dropped teaching/believing the fullness of the faith. In doing so the modern Catholic has an eclectic worldview that takes some theories from science and makes those theories the normative rule of belief. I see this where you have reduced the truth of geocentrism as revealed in scripture to an error, by assuming the truth of GR as the normative rule of your belief. In effect what you have done is take an invented man made theory, and make that theory the benchmark of belief and then compare that human benchmark with the truth of scripture. In doing so, you are forced to deny the truth of geocentrism as contained within scripture. Your method is typical of the modern Catholic who does not take the fullness of the deposit of faith seriously, in accord with the teaching of the Popes and the church fathers. Your example is typical of what occurs in other areas of revealed truth, which are systematically questioned, or denied.

All that you're telling me here is that you lack fidelity towards the bishops. That's your problem, and Sungenis for that matter.

So a Pope has a private opinion that contradicts scripture, the fathers, the catechism of the council of Trent and Pope Urban VIII Papal Bull.

The writing of Pope Benedict XVth did in no way contradict scripture, the fathers, the catechism of the council of Trent. And Pope Urban VIII never wrote a Papal Bull in 1633. You keep calling it a papal bull, but that doesn't make it one. If it were a papal Bull it would start with Pope Urban name, his title would be invoked, amongst other things and it would end with a personal seal used only for Papal Bulls. He wrote precisely four bulls in his life, the two closest to 1633 were his condemnation of the use of astrology in 1631, and the one in 1639 where he forbade the enslavement of indigenous people.

You have already stated in the past that private opinions of Popes have erred and this is one such example. Pope Benedict XV has contradicted Pope Urban VIII.

Pope Benedict XVth in no way contradicts Pope Urban VIII, neither privately nor publically. Pope Urban VIII wrote nothing about geocentrism in any formal statement.

The fact that these works were later shown not to be dangerous, plus the fact that maintaining the index was practically impossible, were one among many reasons for the timely ending of that project. When you have a collection that contains perfectly good books, in between genuinely damaging works, then its lost its practical utility.

[JohnMartin]

Quote Originally Posted by JohnMartin View Post
According to Leo XIII the unanimous consent of the fathers is a binding rule of faith. The fathers were unanimous on the stationary earth as revealed by God, hence that position of the fathers is binding.

But unanimous consent of the fathers is binding only on faith and morals, and nothing else. What is to be judged as binding is relegated to the magisterium, and they have never made it binding on Catholic's that only geocentrism be taught. As the question of geocentrism is a question of natural fact.

The consent is consistent with the scriptures, the Papal decree and the catechism of Trent. The consent is also consistent with the psalms used liturgically that speak of the stationary earth and the sensus fidei of the faithful. The consent involves many fathers teaching in agreement with the other sources of faith, and the faith as practiced for centuries. The fathers consent was so because the stationary earth is found in the sources of revelation, just as baptism and the Eucharist are also found.

You have only asserted that the Church need to make a statement that geo is binding for it to be binding. Yet many truths of the scriptures are binding, for the entire document is from God. So when God says Moses spoke to God, the faithful are meant to believe Moses spoke to God and not some other phenomenological understanding, based upon a human theory. Similarly, when God says the earth is stationary, the earth really is not moving, and no human theory can overturn that truth.

The counter position against geocentrism is always eclectic and special pleads some Papal opinions over authoritative Papal statements. The anti geo position is simply not tenable. All of the sources naturally fit the stationary earth truth and the counter position must always assume the sources never actually say what the plain sense of the text always says.

There are not less than 30 passages in the OT that teach geocentrism. You are wrong to assert there are only a handful of verses.
This doesn't change anything. I will only discuss the Joshua verse as that is by far the clearest and strongest case, and in that case a straight forward alternative is that its using phenomenological language. No error is admitted by admitting that the Bible uses such language. Its quite uncontroversial.

You have admitted the geocentric claim is the plainest, then provided no evidence from the text of any reason to understand that text, or any other relevant text as teaching a moving earth.
You keep misquoting me. I don't claim that it teaches a moving earth. I simple point out that St. Bellarmine is was wrong to think that it taught geocentrism. Rather he's importing his cosmology into the text. Its 'natural' to do so because of the phenomenological language, but in light of modern science, it was a mistake.

One point that is definitely consistent with Sungenis's claims is the modern church (only within the general population of Catholics and not the magisterium formally) has dropped teaching/believing the fullness of the faith. In doing so the modern Catholic has an eclectic worldview that takes some theories from science and makes those theories the normative rule of belief. I see this where you have reduced the truth of geocentrism as revealed in scripture to an error, by assuming the truth of GR as the normative rule of your belief. In effect what you have done is take an invented man made theory, and make that theory the benchmark of belief and then compare that human benchmark with the truth of scripture. In doing so, you are forced to deny the truth of geocentrism as contained within scripture. Your method is typical of the modern Catholic who does not take the fullness of the deposit of faith seriously, in accord with the teaching of the Popes and the church fathers. Your example is typical of what occurs in other areas of revealed truth, which are systematically questioned, or denied.

All that you're telling me here is that you lack fidelity towards the bishops. That's your problem, and Sungenis for that matter.

Its the other way around. You lack fidelity to all the sources of revelation, and the decree of Urban VIII and he sensus fidei.

So a Pope has a private opinion that contradicts scripture, the fathers, the catechism of the council of Trent and Pope Urban VIII Papal Bull.

The writing of Pope Benedict XVth did in no way contradict scripture, the fathers, the catechism of the council of Trent. And Pope Urban VIII never wrote a Papal Bull in 1633. You keep calling it a papal bull, but that doesn't make it one. If it were a papal Bull it would start with Pope Urban name, his title would be invoked, amongst other things and it would end with a personal seal used only for Papal Bulls. He wrote precisely four bulls in his life, the two closest to 1633 were his condemnation of the use of astrology in 1631, and the one in 1639 where he forbade the enslavement of indigenous people.

So we have two opinions on what the Popes have said and done.

To be continued.

JM

[Leonhard]

In the long-winded reply you wrote, you failed to answer my charge that the Church Fathers, like the Bishops or even the Pope speaking Ex Cathedra, is binding if and only if they're addressing faith and morals. The only way a statement on faith or morals could ever require belief in natural facts being a certain way, is if the truth or falsehood of some faith or morals, required those natural facts to be a certain way. Hence we're not free to dismiss the idea that all of humanity descended from Adam and Eve, even though we are allowed as Humani Generis teaches quite clearly (and also seemingly in the face of the opinions of the Church Fathers) that the idea that evolution of species takes place, is permitted as belief for Catholics.

The Church Fathers grew up in a world that considered the Sun as moving around the Earth. This is not doctrine, it is simple what appeared to be true. The Sun moving around the Earth or vice versa, or neither as in modern cosmology, impacts no faith or moral, and renders no verse in the Bible false.

The Joshua miracle story requires no complex exegesis. One simple takes the description of the sun, as being plainly, what a person would be seeing.

Its up to you to defend that something important for the Christian faith is at stake with geocentrism. Some important doctrine is under attack. Yet nothing like that is the case. At least St. Augustine, when he erroniously argued that there didn't exist people on the other side of the globe (walking upside down - antipodes), then it was because he was dismissing the idea that somewhere on this Earth there existed tribes of people not descended from Adam and Eve.

What doctrine is possible at stake with geocentrism? At best there's a classical but unimportant reading of the text. St. Bellarmine didn't know any modern science, and it would be quite a few decades before telescopes had improved well enough to find the parallax that Galileo's ideas predicted.

Note that no geocentric model ever predicted parallaxes. They had to retrofit their models to account for it.

[One Bad Pig]

You do not have the authority to declare what is and is not of faith. The fathers and the Popes do have the authority. Your root problem is one of confusion over authority within the Church.

JM

When your popes depend on the spurious Donation of Constantine and the False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore for their authority, the only confusion is over why anyone would take their claims seriously.

On an entirely different note, I've been reading through the Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition. Having read through to c. 1550, I have yet to see any mention of geocentrism, or the four elements, or the four bodily humours, East or West, Catholic or Reform. This would indicate that these topics are perhaps not nearly as significant as you make them out.

[JohnMartin]

When your popes depend on the spurious Donation of Constantine and the False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore for their authority, the only confusion is over why anyone would take their claims seriously.

When the Orthodox, or Protestants fabricate problems with the Papacy, as you have done above, Catholic no longer take your claims seriously.

On an entirely different note, I've been reading through the Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition. Having read through to c. 1550, I have yet to see any mention of geocentrism, or the four elements, or the four bodily humours, East or West, Catholic or Reform. This would indicate that these topics are perhaps not nearly as significant as you make them out.

Geocentrism need not be explicit in a creed or a confession of faith to have been revealed by God. The doctrine may be contained within another doctrine of God creating the universe, and God writing the scriptures. God then teaches the universe was created by God, which rotates once per day around the earth. The doctrine is found in the sensus fidei, the consent of the fathers, the liturgy, the catechism of Trent, scripture, Hildegard's approved visions, and is assumed to have been revealed by God in the 1633 condemnation of Galileo by the congregation under Pope Urban VIII.

The same truth taught in all of these sources has ever been recanted or revoked by the Church.

JM

[JohnMartin]

In the long-winded reply you wrote, you failed to answer my charge that the Church Fathers, like the Bishops or even the Pope speaking Ex Cathedra, is binding if and only if they're addressing faith and morals. The only way a statement on faith or morals could ever require belief in natural facts being a certain way, is if the truth or falsehood of some faith or morals, required those natural facts to be a certain way. Hence we're not free to dismiss the idea that all of humanity descended from Adam and Eve, even though we are allowed as Humani Generis teaches quite clearly (and also seemingly in the face of the opinions of the Church Fathers) that the idea that evolution of species takes place, is permitted as belief for Catholics.

I am unconvinced that your criteria are true, simply because matters of faith include all truths revealed in the sources of faith. It is a matter of faith that everything stated in the sources of faith is true, because God as the source of the truths is Himself truth. So when the scriptures teach David was a king, that truth is a matter of history and faith. Faith is required, because God has revealed it to be true. Likewise, because God has revealed the earth is stationary, then that natural fact also falls under the ambit of God revealing. Hence the immobile earth is a matter of faith. This is how the congregation under Pope Urban VIII understood the matter of the stationary earth. The moving earth theory is against scripture and hence a heresy, as an error against a truth revealed by God.

The Church Fathers grew up in a world that considered the Sun as moving around the Earth. This is not doctrine, it is simple what appeared to be true. The Sun moving around the Earth or vice versa, or neither as in modern cosmology, impacts no faith or moral, and renders no verse in the Bible false.

The Greeks had two schools of thought on the issue of the earth's motion, or lack of motion in space. If the Fathers grew up in a culture that had a geocentric based cosmology, then all the better for the Fathers. All that means is the geo cosmology was accepted in part via scripture from the OT, and was transmitted orally within the culture. Not everyone believed it, as is known from the Greeks. But the Fathers new the doctrine was contained within the OT, hence they taught that doctrine as true.

The Joshua miracle story requires no complex exegesis. One simple takes the description of the sun, as being plainly, what a person would be seeing.

This is only another statement that avoids the problems with taking your approach. Some problems are as follows -

1) There are several other passages which clearly state the earth is stationary. If you reduce the Joshua long day down to phenomena to solve the problem of the immobile earth assumed in the passage, you have to do so at odds with clearer passages that teach the earth's immobility. For example, - RSV Psalm 93:1 The LORD reigns; he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed, he is girded with strength. Yea, the world is established; it shall never be moved; 2 thy throne is established from of old; thou art from everlasting. 3 The floods have lifted up, O LORD, the floods have lifted up their voice, the floods lift up their roaring.

The earth as the world is established and cannot be moved, indicating the earth is immobile as God's throne is everlasting.

Psalm 96:9-11 9 Worship the LORD in holy array; tremble before him, all the earth! 10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns! Yea, the world is established, it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity." 11 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it;

God's judgement is a dependable as the earth is immobile.

Psalm 104:5 5 Thou didst set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be shaken.

1 Chronicles 16:29-31 29 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come before him! Worship the LORD in holy array; 30 tremble before him, all the earth; yea, the world stands firm, never to be moved.

Its up to you to defend that something important for the Christian faith is at stake with geocentrism. Some important doctrine is under attack. Yet nothing like that is the case. At least St. Augustine, when he erroneously argued that there didn't exist people on the other side of the globe (walking upside down - antipodes), then it was because he was dismissing the idea that somewhere on this Earth there existed tribes of people not descended from Adam and Eve.

What doctrine is possible at stake with geocentrism? At best there's a classical but unimportant reading of the text. St. Bellarmine didn't know any modern science, and it would be quite a few decades before telescopes had improved well enough to find the parallax that Galileo's ideas predicted.

The modern geo models account for parallax, so even if parallax were known in the age of Bellarmine and Galileo, the congregation would have come to the same conclusion. The scriptures teach an immobile earth, so a moving earth theory is always heresy. Also, again you have equated the observed phenomena of parallax with a cosmological truth that is not taught in scripture as being the normative guide to determining the meaning of scriptural texts and the value of Bellarmine's judgments. Your method is flawed, because you have applied a natural fact (which is not proven to be true), which you believe is a real truth of nature, which you believe then determines the doctrinal truth of scripture with regard to the texts that speak of the immobile earth.

If a truth is given in the sources of revelation, then that truth is from God an must be the normative rule for understanding nature. The sources contain the truth that the earth is stationary, and hence all claims of science that as used to apparently demonstrate, or prove the earth is mobile and in no special place in the universe are automatically false.

Note that no geocentric model ever predicted parallaxes. They had to retrofit their models to account for it.

[hansgeorg]

But unanimous consent of the fathers is binding only on faith and morals, and nothing else. What is to be judged as binding is relegated to the magisterium, and they have never made it binding on Catholic's that only geocentrism be taught. As the question of geocentrism is a question of natural fact.

1) where do you get "only" and "nothing else" from?

I am reminded of St Paul writing "justified by faith" and Luther forging a translation "justified by faith alone" without a good reason to add the word alone, at least as far as Biblical text was concerned.

2) you are supposing gratuitously that the condemnations of Index Congregation and the judgements on persons which were publically published over the Catholic world are no part of the Magisterium.

The Galileo trial of 1633 was published all over the Catholic world, precisely as the condemnation over another particular case, with quite a few more condemned propositions, the Quesnel case (coming after Baius and Jansenius cases).

3) How can one be sure words about natural phenomena do not belong to the faith?

St Augustine uses the identical horoscopes of Jacob and Esau (in Confessiones, as I recall) as proof that astrology is worthless. But what if Bible doesn't infallibly and inerrantly teach that Jacob held Esau's heel when coming out?

This doesn't change anything. I will only discuss the Joshua verse as that is by far the clearest and strongest case, and in that case a straight forward alternative is that its using phenomenological language. No error is admitted by admitting that the Bible uses such language. Its quite uncontroversial.

How can you possibly argue that Joshua X:12 can have any purely phenomenological reading? We aren't quoting a mere author telling us how things looked, but a miracle worker who is adressing the things which miraculously are to change behaviour next verse.

Also, "the Sun and Moon stood still in their orbits", the latter is at least stretching the phenomenological interpretation very thin.

You keep misquoting me. I don't claim that it teaches a moving earth. I simple point out that St. Bellarmine is was wrong to think that it taught geocentrism. Rather he's importing his cosmology into the text. Its 'natural' to do so because of the phenomenological language, but in light of modern science, it was a mistake.

St. Bellarmine offers the famous passage from Joshua. And in the absence of any evidence for a moving Earth, a geocentric reading is the plainest. However since there is evidence that the Earth moves, especially in the fullest form of General Relativity which makes absolute geocentrism completely untenable, this reading cannot be defended. And in fact it not only isn't defended, but no Pope has spoken explicitly on it in all the hundreds of years since Galileo. Which probably means you think the current leadership is failing us, which is certainly what Sungenis is implying, and I consider that to be disrespect of the authority of the bishops to teach and defend the faith.

There is still no good evidence for a moving Earth, and claiming general relativity as such simply begs the question, as it is itself based on denying Geocentrism. Michelson Morley + aether = Earth is not moving around the Sun. Einstein invented GR or SpR (whichever) to come around that.

That is no argument against a plain reading of Joshua.

On the contrary Pope Benedict XVth spoke with admission that the earth no longer considered motionless, while commenting on Dante. And it is without doubt that the Vatican has allowed the printing with papal permission, of books teaching heliocentrism.

Have you studied the Latin text to see exactly how flimsy and indirect this admission is? Also, have you considered that neither he nor Leo XIII explicitly brought Helio/Geo up in any encyclical or document on astronomy? It seems they considered this a hot potato.

All that you're telling me here is that you lack fidelity towards the bishops. That's your problem, and Sungenis for that matter.

When the bishop of San Diego is competing with Swedish Church in being pro-gay, the bishops you speak of can hardly represent the Church of Christ.

The writing of Pope Benedict XVth did in no way contradict scripture, the fathers, the catechism of the council of Trent. And Pope Urban VIII never wrote a Papal Bull in 1633. You keep calling it a papal bull, but that doesn't make it one. If it were a papal Bull it would start with Pope Urban name, his title would be invoked, amongst other things and it would end with a personal seal used only for Papal Bulls. He wrote precisely four bulls in his life, the two closest to 1633 were his condemnation of the use of astrology in 1631, and the one in 1639 where he forbade the enslavement of indigenous people.

The writing of Benedict XV in no way told us that or why Geocentrism should be certainly rejected, therefore it (at least barely) doesn't.

I am not sure that you are not being anachronistic on what constituted Papal teaching back then ...

Pope Benedict XVth in no way contradicts Pope Urban VIII, neither privately nor publically. Pope Urban VIII wrote nothing about geocentrism in any formal statement.

But he did order the Galileo judgement to be made known to the Catholic world.

Also, in your criteria, did Pius VII ever use a bull to say Settele's work was licit?

The fact that these works were later shown not to be dangerous, plus the fact that maintaining the index was practically impossible, were one among many reasons for the timely ending of that project. When you have a collection that contains perfectly good books, in between genuinely damaging works, then its lost its practical utility.

I would like to know:

* which books formerly on the index you consider as good
* and by when you consider the project to have lost its utility.

[hansgeorg]

The same truth taught in all of these sources has ever been recanted or revoked by the Church.

Never, rather than ever, I suppose?

[hansgeorg]

It is phenomenological language. It describes things as they appear to one observing it.

So you pretend that a miracle worker would use phenomenal language in saying the words basically of God to the creature?

I find that horrible, it is like the Protestant Accomodation theory a hundred years ago, that when Jesus drove out demons with words expressing His real belief in existence of demons, this was just an accomodation to a cultural surrounding which believed in them.

[hansgeorg]

The Greeks had two schools of thought on the issue of the earth's motion, or lack of motion in space. If the Fathers grew up in a culture that had a geocentric based cosmology, then all the better for the Fathers. All that means is the geo cosmology was accepted in part via scripture from the OT, and was transmitted orally within the culture. Not everyone believed it, as is known from the Greeks. But the Fathers new the doctrine was contained within the OT, hence they taught that doctrine as true.

Sungenis is flawed on this point.

Greek philosophy by the time of the Fathers no longer even had the Neo-Pythagorean school, which in its turn had not tried to revive the Heliocentrism of older Pythagoreans.

Sorry, don't take this as backstabbing!

[hansgeorg]

The modern geo models account for parallax, so even if parallax were known in the age of Bellarmine and Galileo, the congregation would have come to the same conclusion. The scriptures teach an immobile earth, so a moving earth theory is always heresy. Also, again you have equated the observed phenomena of parallax with a cosmological truth that is not taught in scripture as being the normative guide to determining the meaning of scriptural texts and the value of Bellarmine's judgments. Your method is flawed, because you have applied a natural fact (which is not proven to be true), which you believe is a real truth of nature, which you believe then determines the doctrinal truth of scripture with regard to the texts that speak of the immobile earth.

If angels can move fix stars around, then parallax, as well as aberration can be angels moving stars.

Precisely as retrogrades are angels moving planets. (Not denying Tychonian orbits).

This way Geocentrism also deals with Distant Starlight Paradox, since the 13.5 billion light years away objects, which with normal speed of light contradict Biblical and therefore Liturgic Chronology, can be taken as only one light day away.

[hansgeorg]

What doctrine is possible at stake with geocentrism? At best there's a classical but unimportant reading of the text. St. Bellarmine didn't know any modern science, and it would be quite a few decades before telescopes had improved well enough to find the parallax that Galileo's ideas predicted.

The parallax predicted by Galileo could just possibly have been the Bradley phenomenon, which was promptly stamped as aberration of light instead of parallax, because taking it as parallax would have reintroduced a sphere of fix stars, which one was trying to get rid of. On Newtonian and therefore ideological grounds.

What is at stake is not just the honesty of Joshua or of the Holy Spirit inspiring his words in Joshua X:12, but, since parallax has been taken into an argument involving "Distant Starlight Paradox", also the words "from the beginning of time", Mark 10:6, where Christ identifies the time when Adam and Eve were created with the beginning of all time.

Note that no geocentric model ever predicted parallaxes. They had to retrofit their models to account for it.

The "parallax" viewed by Bessel was certainly not predicted by Galileo or required by St Robert.

It is a new thing compared with the parallax they were discussing, built partly on interpreting the Bessel phenomenon as parallax to fit it with the 18th C. ideological preference for an infinite universe uniformly filled with stars like our sun - a rehash of Bruno, in fact.

[hansgeorg]

When your popes depend on the spurious Donation of Constantine and the False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore for their authority, the only confusion is over why anyone would take their claims seriously.

When a Catholic John Martin and a Catholic Leonhard discuss what the authority of Popes binds us to, an Orthodox comes popping in and ignores Matthew 16:19 ...

[JohnMartin]

Never, rather than ever, I suppose?

Correct. Never, rather than ever.

JM