DW,
I'm trying to call you are you on dial up?
Did you shut down Call waiting
space.com dates Noah's flood to 2350 B.C.
by aChristian 251 Replies latest jw friends
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D wiltshire
Clash I'm get the line open by getting off the net now, please call as soon as you can.
If someone lived a trillion X longer than you, and had a billion X more reasoning ability would he come to the same conclusions as you?
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IslandWoman
D wiltshire,
What did I mean? I feel that sincerity is a valuable thing but truth an elusive thing, a thing which at times masquerades as what seems to be sound reasoning but in reality is based on false beliefs.
IW
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D wiltshire
IW,
What did I mean? I feel that sincerity is a valuable thing but truth an elusive thing, a thing which at times masquerades as what seems to be sound reasoning but in reality is based on false beliefs.
So are you definitely saying, they in "truth", are wrong.
If someone lived a trillion X longer than you, and had a billion X more reasoning ability would he come to the same conclusions as you?
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aChristian
IW,
You wrote: It is my firm belief that even though you both may be sincere, you will without a doubt both be deeply disappointed.
What makes you so certain my faith is founded on falsehoods? I was surprised to see you write this. From some things you wrote earlier I thought you were a believer.
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Faithful2Jah
Clash: I have a scripture verse for you.
1 Peter 3:15 - "Be ready ALWAYS to GIVE AN ANSWER to EVERY MAN that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you."
I'm still waiting for you to answer my questions.
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IslandWoman
"I was surprised to see you write this. From some things you wrote earlier I thought you were a believer."
aChristian,
I am not a believer in the miracles reported in the NT. I do respect the man who is reported to have said the words of his Father, words that have enlightened and freed so many. In this I believe, for someone DID teach these things, the rest though is suspect IMO.
What appeared to you as belief was merely an attempt to show Clash that his beliefs concerning women's place in the congregation is contrary to the place that Jesus(in the writings of the Apostle John) gave women, as opposed to Paul's writings.
As a side thought, I believe Paul went right back to his Pharisaical roots, he established rules, procedures, acceptable behavior etc., he IMO never really came to know Jesus' teachings, which would help to explain the fact that Jesus' teachings, illustrations, parables, etc., are not referred to by Paul. He really is silent on these things.
He did not spread the word of his Master. If the Gospels had been lost and only Paul's letters remained we would never have known what Jesus taught, his love, his magnificence! The early congregations did not have the Gospels in hand, they had Paul's letters, letters which do not explain or remind them of the words of Jesus, Paul's Lord!!
While claiming Jesus as the foundation, Paul chose to complete the building according to his own design!
IW
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aChristian
IW,
You wrote: I am not a believer in the miracles reported in the NT. I do respect the man who is reported to have said the words of his Father, words that have enlightened and freed so many.
If we do not believe the miracles which the gospel writers recorded as actually having taken place, how can we really believe that a man named Jesus spoke the words those same writers attributed to him? After all, many of the words they quote him as having said were words they tell us he said in the course of performing the very miracles you do not believe ever took place. If they made up all those words, why should we believe they did not also make up most of the rest?
You wrote: What appeared to you as belief was merely an attempt to show Clash that his beliefs concerning women's place in the congregation is contrary to the place that Jesus (in the writings of the Apostle John) gave women, as opposed to Paul's writings.
I believe you are wrong about Paul's writings concerning women's place in the congregation.
I strongly believe that the words written by the apostle Paul, which are often understood to say that women are not allowed to hold positions of authority in Christian Churches, did not actually reflect the apostle Paul's own beliefs. The context of Paul's writings clearly indicates that Paul was in those passages actually citing false teachings then being promoted by others for the purpose of correcting those false teachings. This is not just my belief. Several books and articles have been written on this subject matter. I have explained this on this forum before. See this thread, a few posts down from the top:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=17102&site=3
If you have not read this essay, I hope you will do so before discussing this subject further. (In other words, try not to follow the example of Crash.)You wrote: Jesus' teachings, illustrations, parables, etc., are not referred to by Paul. He really is silent on these things.
The same could be said just as easily of the writings of James, John, and Peter. Paul's letters and all the other writings which make up the New Testament were obviously not written as commentaries on the gospels. However, just because Paul did not extensively quote or comment on Christ's words does not indicate that he and his writings were not greatly influenced by the teachings of Jesus Christ. Paul taught extensively on the importance of showing love to others, as did Jesus Christ. Paul taught extensively on the importance of our Christian freedom, which Christ said his teachings would give us. When Paul said things like, "I have not coveted anyone's silver or gold or clothing," and "It is more blessed to give than to receive," he obviously had in mind "words the Lord Jesus himself said." (Acts 20:33-35; Matt. 10:8-10; Luke 6:38)
You wrote: The early congregations did not have the Gospels in hand, they had Paul's letters.
Many scholars disagree with you on that. There is, however, little disagreement among scholars that all of Paul's letters were written between the years AD 50 and 64, most of them in the later years of that time frame. John A. T. Robinson who is not a "conservative" Christian, with the help of much historical evidence, dates the writing of Matthew to AD 40! (Redating The New Testament - 1976) The fact is, even many quite liberal scholars believe that a very lengthy written account of the life of Christ was widely circulated among Christians before the year AD 50. They believe both Matthew and Mark based their gospels upon this document, which they refer to as "Q."
The early church fathers tell us that Matthew wrote his account first. Many modern critics say Mark wrote his first. In either case, almost everyone agrees that they both wrote before Luke. So, let's figure this out. It is evident that the book of Acts was written in approximately AD 62. Why? First, because it does not mention the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, an event which would have been impossible to omit since Jerusalem is central to so much of Acts. Second, neither is anything mentioned about Nero's great persecution of Christians in AD 64. Third, Acts ends with Paul in Rome under the confinement of Nero. But it does not mention his martyrdom in AD 64. Why not? After all, it records the deaths of both Stephen and James.
With such things in mind, it is widely understood that Acts was almost certainly written in about the year AD 61. And since it was, the gospel of Luke must have been written even earlier, probably in the late 50s. Why? Because Luke wrote Acts and in doing so he referred back to the writing of his earlier gospel account when he said, "The first account I composed, Theophilus (the Roman official to whom Luke addressed the book of Acts and his account of Christ's life and teachings), about all that Jesus began to do and teach." (Acts 1:1; Luke 1:1-3) So, since we know that Acts was written in about AD 61, and that Luke was written before Acts, and that Matthew and Mark were written before Luke, and that most of Paul's letters were written in the late 50s and early 60s, we have every reason to believe that any early congregations which possessed Paul's letters or copies of them also possessed copies of Matthew's, Mark's and Luke's gospels.
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clash_city_rockers
My experience has been that when one begins discussing this issue, most of the evidence presented against six day creation is scientific evidence, not Biblical evidence. I believe the Biblical evidence should be the foremost concern because Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith and practice.
One argument for the day age theory is based on a comparison of day six in Genesis chapter one and the creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter two. Genesis 1:26-28 involves the creation of man male and female. At the end of day six, God proclaimed His creation very good; chapter two makes clear that the situation was not totally good until Eve was created: "It is not good that man should be alone." Before God created Eve from the rib of Adam, Adam gave names "to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field." The argument is that all this could not be done in a 24 hour period. The problem with this argument is that one can envision the described activity in different ways to fit different understandings of the length of the sixth day. If one envisions the large variety of animals we see today and if one assumes that Adam had to spend a good bit of time with each animal to discern the name which best fit its characteristics, then this activity could have taken years. One can also assume that a much more limited number of animals was involved. For example, Adam did not have to deal with every type of dog which we know today but only with the original dog from which all the current canine diversity developed. Also, Adam was not by himself when he accomplished this task. God brought the animals to him. It is possible that Adam was able to accomplish this task rather quickly with God's help. Leupold argues that Adam named only the limited number of animals who inhabited the garden.1
Some also argue that the activity of the third day when the dry land appeared and brought forth vegetation including fruit trees, could not have all occurred in 24 hours. This argument forgets that the entire work of creation was a miracle. God could have accomplished the whole work in an instant if He had so chosen. The fact that God chose to take six days does not mean that He limited Himself to the slower processes which we today observe in God's more routine providence. As it says in Psalm 148:5, "He commanded, and they were created."
A second argument for the day age theory relates to the seventh day. Genesis one ends the discussion of each of the first six days with a statement about evening and morning. There is, however, no mention of evening and morning related to the seventh day. On the seventh day, God ceased from His special work of creation, and He has rested from that work ever since. So, it is argued, the seventh day is a long age which still continues. Therefore the first six days must also be long ages. I do not find this argument convincing. The repeated clause which mentions evening and morning and then states each day's number, is used as a literary device to conclude each paragraph about the work completed on each of the first six days. The seventh day is different in that no work is done on that day. The paragraph about the seventh day ends thus with a different clause:
Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
God's rest from His work of original creation began on the original seventh day. That divine rest also continues because that work has been completed once and for all. Yet God's rest which took place during the original seventh day is something in the past, not because God's rest has ceased, but because the original seventh day is history. The passage states that God rested (past tense) on the seventh day, not that He is resting (present tense) on the seventh day. The original seventh day is not an ongoing age but the original 24 hour day of rest which is remembered in the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:8-11). Israel is commanded to hallow the weekly Sabbath and to do no work each seventh day because God rested on the original seventh day and hallowed the original Sabbath.
Notice the following from Cassuto's commentary:
It may be asked: In what way is the seventh day different from the succeeding days, since on them, too, God did no additional work? In answer to the question it may be said: (1) that the difference consists in the novel character of the seventh day; after a series of six days on each of which some work of creation was wrought, came a day on which God did not work or add anything to his creation; hence the remembrance of this abstinence from labour remained linked with the day on which this situation arose; (2) that ... seven days are considered a period [unit of time]; consequently, the seventh day, following on the six days of creation, completed the first period, and in every subsequent period the first day calls to mind the creation of light, the second the creation of the heavens, and so forth, and the seventh reminds us of the day on which God did no work at all.2
Joey Pipa makes the following comments regarding the seventh day as a type of eternal rest:
In Gen. 2:1-3, the eternal rest is the reality and the Sabbath day is a type and offer of that rest. We must not confuse the reality with the type otherwise the type loses its significance. In order for the day to serve as a type, Moses leaves the record of the end of the day open-ended.
The fact that he leaves out its conclusion does not imply it was not a regular day. Moses uses this same device in Genesis 14, when he introduces Melchizedek. According to Hebrews 5:6-10 and Hebrews 7:1-4, Melchizedek was a type of Christ, signifying how the Christ could serve as priest while not being of the house of Aaron. The writer of Hebrews uses the silence of Genesis 14 to say that Melchizedek had no genealogy, parents, or death, that he might be a type of the eternal priest who received office by God's appointment and not by lineage. Most commentators agree that Melchizedek was a real person, who had parents and did die. Moses omits these facts from the record so as to lay the foundation of the typology. This is how we are to take the record of the seventh day.3
In other words, there is a parallel between the silence of Genesis on the evening and morning of the seventh day and the silence of Genesis on the birth and death of Melchizedek. The author of Hebrews uses both silences to develop typological fulfillments. Someone who argues from Hebrews 4 that the seventh day of creation must be an ongoing, unending day should also, to be consistent, teach that Hebrews 7 implies that the king of Salem named Melchizedek literally had no parents and never died. Such interpretation improperly reads back into the prefiguring type a fullness of glory which properly belongs only to the antitype.
A third argument is that the word translated day can be a metaphor for an extended period of time or age. It is pointed out that the word is used that very way in the creation account in Genesis 2:4:
This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
The problem with this argument is that the Hebrew here translated "in the day" is an idiomatic expression which means "when" (cf. Genesis 2:17; 3:5).4 The usage of the word translated day in this idiom does not give evidence on its usage apart from the idiom elsewhere in the passage.
The plural of the Hebrew word translated day is the primary form for expressing an extended temporal sense "in which the focus of the meaning is not on the 'day' as such, but on a 'time' or situation characterized in a particular way."5 This metaphorical sense is obvious in phrases such as "days of mourning" (Genesis 27:41) or "days of old" (Amos 9:11), but not in a clause such as "in six days the LORD made heaven and earth." This extended sense can also be true of the singular, but again it is usually self-evident as in phrases such as "the day of the Lord" or "the day of harvest" (Proverbs 25:13). Genesis one defines its usage in terms of evening and morning and thus points to a more literal day. When evening and morning are used in a figurative context in Psalm 90:6, they represent not long ages but the brevity of life. Also, phraseology such as "second day" and "third day" is nowhere else used in Scripture to refer to an extended age. There is simply no evidence that the six days of Genesis one are metaphors for extended ages.
Some seem attracted to the day age theory because they want to accommodate Scripture to current scientific theory. In reality, the day age theory creates more problems than it solves in this regard. According to the day age theory, trees and vegetation appear upon the earth during day three, but the sun, moon and stars are not created until the next extended age (day four). Fruit trees (day three) are created before fish (day five). Fish and birds (day five) are created before reptiles and insects (creeping things of day six). All of these orders of events contradict modern scientific theory.
These orders of events also cause some simple pragmatic difficulties if the six days of creation were indeed extended ages. For example, there are symbiotic relationships between certain plants and animals. Much of the vegetation created on day three is dependent on creatures created on days five and six for pollination. How did these plants survive all those many years without birds, bats or insects? Also, the six days of creation were days each with one morning and one evening, a situation which would hardly apply to geological ages. How could any life survive a series of geological ages each consisting of one long period of light followed by one long period of darkness?6
There is also the question of when death entered the world. According to Romans 5, death entered the world at the time of Adam's sin. That is when the curse descended upon creation. The first death found in the Scriptural account of history is the death implied by God's use of an animal's skin to clothe the naked sinners Adam and Eve. Genesis implies that all creatures were vegetarians before the fall (Genesis 1:29-30; cf. 9:3). Isaiah 11 gives us a description of paradise restored: the wolf lies down with the lamb and the lion eats straw like an ox. Do those who believe in extended ages believe that the "law of the jungle" and carnivorous behavior did not begin until after the fall? Or do they believe it was present before the fall in the extended age called day 6 contrary to what the Bible reveals about life before the fall?1 H.C. Leupold, A Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1942), pages 130-131.
2 U. Cassuto, A Commenatary on the Book of Genesis: Part I, From Adam to Noah (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1961), page 64.
3 Joseph A. Pipa, Jr., From Chaos to Cosmos: A Critique of the Framework Hypothesis (unpublished paper, January 13, 1998 draft).
4 U. Cassuto, Ibid., page 99; Collins, Ibid., page 110; cf. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, editors, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Volume VI (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990), pages 15 (II.3.c.), 25 (III.2.).
5 G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, editors, Ibid., page 25; cf. pages 21-22.
6 Louis Berkhof, Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1939,1941)., pages 154-155. -
clash_city_rockers
Some would argue that if one rejects this scientific version of natural theology, then one is forced to believe in a static earth and a geocentric universe because that is what the Bible infallibly teaches. No, the Bible does not teach this because the Bible is silent on this scientific issue. Some Bible verses in poetic contexts do state that the earth cannot be moved (1 Chronicles 16:30; Psalm 93:1; 96:10; 104:5; contrast Job 9:6, a poetic verse which refers to the earth and motion). These verses can refer to the general stability of the world as opposed to the absolute motionlessness of the physical earth. Psalm 19's description of the sun's daily race from one end of heaven to the other is obviously poetic. Other verses refer to the sun's rising or setting (Ecclesiastes 1:5) or to the miracle of the sun's standing still (Joshua 10:12-14). This language, of course, can refer to how an event appears from the human perspective. We today still use terms such as "sunrise" and "sunset." We have invented the modern term "outer space." We do not mean to imply by these terms that we today believe in a physically geocentric universe. Neither should we assume such implications from the use of "sunrise" and "sunset" in Scripture. Their use is incidental rather than the substance of some teaching about the nature of creation.
The reason there was controversy over the heliocentric versus the geocentric universe was not because of the Bible but because of the philosophy of Aristotle. "Aristotle conceived of the universe as a set of concentric spheres, with the earth stationary at the center."1 "The Aristotelian world view was the single most important source and support for the pre-Copernican tradition of astronomical practice." "During the last centuries of the Middle Ages the setting of Christian life, both terrestrial and celestial, was a fully Aristotelian universe."2 Thomas Kuhn gives the following description of the Aristotelian astronomy:
For Aristotle the entire universe was contained within the sphere of the stars.... The largest part of the interior is filled with a single element, the aether, which aggregates in a homocentric set of nesting shells to form a gigantic hollow sphere whose surfaces are the outside of the sphere of the stars and the inner surface of the homocentric sphere carrying the lowest planet, the moon. Aether is the celestial element -- a crystalline solid in Aristotle's writings, though its solidity was frequently questioned by his successors. Unlike substances known on earth, it is pure and unalterable, transparent and weightless. From it are made the planets and stars as well as the nest of concentric spherical shells whose rotations account for the celestial motions.3
According to Aristotle, the underside of the sphere of the moon divides the universe into two totally disparate regions, filled with different sorts of matter and subject to different laws. The terrestrial region in which man lives is the region of variety, change, birth and death, generation and corruption. The celestial region is, in contrast, eternal and changeless. Only aether, of all the elements, is pure and incorruptible. Only the interlocked celestial spheres move naturally and eternally in circles, never varying their rate, always occupying exactly the same region of space, forever turning back upon themselves. The substance and motion of the celestial spheres are the only ones compatible with the immutability and majesty of the heavens, and it is the heavens that produce and control all variety and change on earth.4
It is instructive to note exactly how the heliocentric Copernican system defeated the geocentric Ptolemaic system:
Because the Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems are mathematically equivalent, there was no conceivable observational test that could distinguish between them, at least so far as the solar system was concerned. And in any case Copernicus was no great observer.
...
If it was impossible to refute Ptolemy directly, it was much easier to dispose of Aristotle and his crystalline spheres. The astronomers, who did not care for such things, might shrug their shoulders and accept Copernicanism as merely an alternative philosophical scheme to Ptolemy. The common man still thought in Aristotelian terms and his universe was certainly in for some shocks. When they came it was in a series of most remarkable coincidences.
In 1572 an omen appeared in the European skies that proved to be a new star -- an exceedingly rare supernova. What was remarkable was not just its brightness (visible even at midday), but the observation made by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe that it was in the region of no-parallax, i.e., very far away and far beyond the orbit of the moon. But its location way out in space was in flat contradiction with the teachings of Aristotle and the schoolmen. According to them changes (like new stars) simply did not occur so far from the earth. Nor were matters improved when Tycho discovered a similar remoteness for another celestial novelty, a new comet, five years later. That posed the additional problem of having to make its way through the crystalline spheres to which the planets were attached. Then, when Galileo became the first man to peer at the skies through a telescope (in 1610), he found the planet Jupiter had its own retinue of four attendant moons, the 'perfect' sun had spots on its face, Venus had phases like the moon, and much else that shook ancient cosmology to its foundations. Finally we may record that a meticulous examination of Tycho's matchless observational data by his heir-apparent, Kepler, led the latter to conclude that there was an 8-minute discrepancy between the observed orbit of Jupiter and the best prediction based on circular motion. His proposal that the planet moved in an ellipse not merely paved the way for the Newtonian synthesis. It was the final blow to Aristotelian astronomy.5
The Christian church had not immediately adopted an Aristotelian universe:
In the early centuries of the Christian era the Church Fathers were crusaders and proselytizers for a new faith, fighting for its very existence. Their calling itself demanded that they deprecate the pagan learning of their predecessors ... In the writings of Augustine's less liberal contemporaries and successors, his deprecation of pagan science was usually coupled with an outright rejection of its content. Astronomy, because of its ties to astrology, was particularly scorned ...
...
By the time that Christian Europe reestablished commercial and cultural ties with the Eastern Church in Byzantium and with the Moslems of Spain, Syria, and Africa, the Church's attitude toward pagan wisdom had changed. The main areas of continental Europe had been converted; the Church's intellectual and spiritual authority was complete; the hierarchy of ecclesiastical administration was fixed. Pagan and secular learning were no longer a threat, provided that the Church could maintain intellectual leadership by absorbing them. ...
We have been calling the process by which Christians discovered that they lived in an Aristotelian universe a recovery of ancient learning, but 'recovery' is clearly an inadequate word. What occurred was far more nearly a revolution in both Christian thought and the ancient scientific tradition. From the fourth century on, Aristotle, Ptolemy, and other Greek writers had been attacked by Churchmen because of the conflict between their cosmological opinions and Scripture. Those conflicts still existed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and they were recognized. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council issued a similar, though more restricted, anti-Aristotelian edict. Other interdictions issued from the papacy throughout the century. There were unsuccessful, winning lip service alone, but they are not insignificant. The edicts testify to the impossibility of simply adding ancient secular learning to the existing body of medieval theology. Both ancient texts and Scripture required modification in the creation of a new fabric of coherent Christian doctrine. When the new fabric was completed, theology had become an important bulwark for the ancient concept of a central stationary earth.
The physical and cosmological structure of the new Christian universe was predominately Aristotelian. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) [was] the scholastic who contributed most to the final pattern of the fabric ...6
Thomas Kuhn comments on Aquinas' efforts to bend Scripture to fit the Aristotelian mold:
For example, in discussing the scriptural text, 'Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters' (Genesis 1:6), Aquinas first outlined a cosmological theory that would preserve the literal sense of the passage and then said:
As, however, this theory can be shown to be false by solid reasons, it cannot be held to be the sense of Holy Scripture. It should rather be considered that Moses was speaking to ignorant people, and that out of condescension to their weakness he put before them only such things as are apparent to sense. Now even the most educated can perceive by their senses that earth and water are corporeal, whereas it is not evident to all that air also is corporeal. ... Moses, then, while he expressly mentions water and earth, makes no express mention of air by name, to avoid setting before ignorant persons something beyond their knowledge.7
By reading 'water' as 'air' or 'transparent substance' the integrity of Scripture is preserved. But in the process the Bible becomes, in some sense, a propaganda instrument, composed for an ignorant audience. The device is typical; the scholastics employed it again and again.
The painstaking thoroughness with which Aquinas and his contemporaries attacked the task of reconciliation is illustrated by the difficulties they discovered in the Biblical account of the Ascension. According to Scripture Christ "ascended up far beyond all heavens, that he might fill all things" (Ephesians 4:10). Aquinas succeeded in fitting this bit of Christian history into a universe of spheres, but to do so he had to resolve many varied problems ...8
Scripture was distorted when interpreted in the light of Aristotle9, just as Scripture is distorted when interpreted in the light of science. Scripture should be accepted as the shining light compared to which all other lights are flickering candles. Rather than teaching us the need to interpret Scripture in light of infallible science, the Copernican revolution teaches us the danger of any two-source theory of truth which compromises the status of Scripture as the only infallible rule of faith and practice.1 W.T. Jones, The Classical Mind: A History of Western Philosophy, Second Edition (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970), page 232.
2 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), pages 94, 108.
3 Thomas S. Kuhn, Ibid., page 78.
4 Thomas S. Kuhn, Ibid., page 90.
5 Colin A. Russell, Cross-currents: Interactions between Science and Faith (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1985), pages 38-39. Cf. chapter 6: "The Assimilation of Copernican Astronomy" in Thomas S. Kuhn, Ibid., pages 185 - 228. The mathematical inaccuracy of Copernicus' theory was due to his belief that the planets traveled in circular orbits at uniform speeds.
6 Thomas S. Kuhn, Ibid., pages 106 - 108.
7 In this section of Question 68 in Book 1 of Summa Theologica, Aquinas is addressing the question, Whether the firmament divides waters from waters? He begins with the following observation: "It would seem that the firmament does not divide waters from waters. For bodies that are of one and the same species have naturally one and the same place. But the Philosopher says (Topic. i, 6): 'All water is the same species.' Water therefore cannot be distinct from water by place." The "Philosopher", of course, is Aristotle. According to Aristotle, the four elements of the sublunary region each have their natural place. "According to the Aristotelian laws of motion ..., the elements would, in the absence of any external pushes and pulls upon them, settle into a series of four concentric shells like the aetherial spheres of the fifth element surrounding them. Earth, the heaviest element, would move naturally into a sphere at the geometric center of the universe. Water, also heavy but not so heavy as earth, would settle in the spherical shell about the central region of earth. Fire, the lightest element, would rise spontaneously to form a shell of its own immediately below the moon's sphere. And air, also a light element, would complete the structure by filling the remaining shell between fire and water." Thomas S. Kuhn, Ibid., page 81.
8 Thomas S. Kuhn, Ibid., pages 109 - 110. For a study on Calvin and Copernicus, see "Calvin and the Astronomical Revolution" by Matthew F. Dowd at http://www.goshen.net/LibraryOfGod/calvin.html.
9 Thomas Aquinas in Question 68 of Book 1 of his Summa Theologica deals with the question, "Whether the firmament divides waters from waters?" In his discussion, he says the following, which reveals his two-source view of truth: "Further, all that was made in the six days was formed out of matter created before days began. But the firmament cannot have been formed out of pre-existing matter, for if so it would be liable to generation and corruption. Therefore the firmament was not made on the second day. "On the contrary, It is written (Gn. 1:6): 'God said: let there be a firmament,' and further on (verse 8); 'And the evening and morning were the second day.' "I answer that, In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to observed, as Augustine teaches (Gen. ad lit. i, 18). The first is, to hold the truth of Scripture without wavering. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation, only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it, if it be proved with certainty to be false; lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing. ... "Still less compatible with the belief that the substance of the firmament was produced on the second day is the opinion of Aristotle, seeing that the mention of days denotes succession of time, whereas the firmament, being naturally incorruptible, is of a matter not susceptible of change of form; wherefore it could not be made out of matter existing antecedently in time."