Refuting Dominic Statham or Medievals vs. Newtonians · What's Not Wrong With Spong? · Spong and Sarfati - Where Both are Wrong
For those who might take the stance tldr, saying God controls all is Biblically endorsed, saying He does so by impersonal laws of physics to exclusion of personal servants in the case of nature phenomena is not so, saying we must not worship the Sun is Biblically endorsed, but saying we must not consider the Sun as moved by a person (of angelic nature) or moving like a person is not so. And any compelling conclusion from the Bible must be given before the public Revelation of God's truth was closed. The intellectual élite of the Middle Ages did not miss it.
Now to his article, here's a link:
Christian theology and the rise of Newtonian science—imposed law and the divine will
by Dominic Statham | This article is from
Journal of Creation 32(2):103–109, August 2018
https://creation.com/christianity-and-newtonian-science
In order for science to progress, it was necessary to reject the erroneous view of nature handed down by Greek philosophers, and which dominated among the intellectual elite during much of the medieval period.
Let's break this down:
In order for science to progress, it was necessary
But was it necessary for science to progress?
to reject the erroneous view of nature handed down by Greek philosophers,
Greek philosophers had diverse views of nature. The one given as erroneous in the Bible (Colossians 2:8) is the one by Epicure, since "elements" refers to atomism (while Aristotle had "four elements", the "form" is more important than these, unlike the status of "elements" - a k a atoms - of Epicure).
and which dominated among the intellectual elite during much of the medieval period.
It so happens, we still have the Bible after the Middle Ages thanks to an intellectual élite, also known as bishops of the Church, and beside them monks and religious, which handed it down to us. Attacking that intellectual élite is tantamount to attacking the credibility of the Bible itself. Or pretending we had a situation in which the Bible was smuggled to us through the inadvertence of its real enemies. There was a time when I believed nearly all in Dale and Elaine Rhooton's Can We Know, including the chapter painting Medieval Catholicism as persecuting the Bible, but I now know better, both as to historic fact and as to common sense than to believe that.
Since Dominic Statham is, perhaps without noticing it, presuming it without stating it very clearly, I have a post against one who gave a long and detailed statement of the charge, namely Craig Lampe, whose "The Forbidden Book" is answered here:
Great Bishop of Geneva! : Answers about "The Forbidden Book"
https://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2013/01/answers-about-forbidden-book.html
I wonder if Craig Lampe has retracted his erroneous history yet ...
Leading historians of science acknowledge that the Christian doctrines of God and Creation played a pivotal role in this process.
Leading historians of ideologies would probably argue some other Christian and Biblical doctrines played a pivotal role in forming Marxism (however at the expense of ignoring John 12:3-8, for instance).
Again, a doctrine inspired by the Bible, but only centuries after all books were completed, need not be correct and does not enjoy the Biblical prerogative of inerrancy.
The Greek view of nature as a living organism was replaced by the biblical view that only people and animals have souls.
Here we touch on ground I think Dominic might want to rehearse some Bible passages ... at least if he takes "have souls" and "living organism" in a broad sense. Here is an article in French in which I cite an article from VTB = Vocabulaire de Théologie Biblique:
New blog on the kid : Avant-hier
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/10/avant-hier.html
It enumerates for the Biblical view of stars as animated beings : Job 38,7; Psalm 148,2f; Genesis 2,1; Baruch 3,33f; Joshua 10,12f; Judges 5,20; and in contrast to Pagan view of them, also as creatures : Amos 5,8; Genesis 1,14ff; Psalm 33,6; 136,7ff.
Also, non-living entities cannot praise or bless the Lord, but the Canticle of the Three Young Men tells both Sun and Moon and all the Stars of Heaven to do so (Daniel 3:62f).
Note in this respect, Earth is the only entity which is not adressed in the second person, but given a third person jussive.
Prior to the late medieval period, Greek philosophy dominated among the intellectual elite. However, around the 13th century onwards, there was a reaction against this by Christian theologians.
Before St. Thomas Aquinas rejects integral Aristotelianism (a k a Averroism) in favour of an eclectic Aristotelianism, corrected by the Bible, or even an eclectic Platonism, corrected by Aristotle, corrected by the Bible, the Averroistic approach had to arise in the 13th C. - it was not simply a heritage from Antiquity.
The Greek philosophers did not share one view, nature as one living organism was very much not typical, and therefore what Christians (the "intellectual élite" of the Middle Ages being such, usually bishops and monks) took over from them would not have included this.
Benedictiones patris tui confortatae sunt benedictionibus patrum ejus, donec veniret desiderium collium aeternorum: fiant in capite Joseph, et in vertice Nazaraei inter fratres suos.
Genesis 49:26 - the blessings of the patriarch Jacob were prophetic. And he spoke of the "desire of the eternal hills". Again, check your Bible lore, Statham!
It is true, there is an alternative reading if "desire of the eternal hills", namely this, given in Haydock comment:
The desire of the everlasting hills, &c. These blessings all looked forward towards Christ, called the desire of the everlasting hills, as being longed for, as it were, by the whole creation. Mystically, the patriarchs and prophets are called the ever-lasting hills, by reason of the eminence of their wisdom and holiness.
But even if the patriarchs and prophets are mystically called ever-lasting hills, we also have "longed for, as it were, by the whole creation" - giving us a preview of Romans 8:22. And St. Paul's "every creature" would involve Sun, Moon and Stars as well. As we have seen from Genesis 1:14ff, they are not uncreated or gods. They don't belong in a genealogy together with the most high, as in Greek Mythology more precisely Hesiod, Theogony, they are among "every creature" of the Most High. Therefore, included in Romans 8:22.
And if winds and waves were just lifeless, blind, senseless matter, why was Christ angry when He stilled the storm? Luke 8:24 uses the word "rebuked" - a loftier synonym for scolded. (H/T to an Amerindian and Catholic friend of mine for this one.)
What about forms? Statham is arguably misreading Plato and certainly misreading Christian Platonists here:
According to Plato, when ‘the Demiurge’ (the creator) shaped the world, he was constrained to follow these preordained ‘ideal’ patterns, rather than being free to make it as he wished.
Here is perhaps the occasion to cite how St. Thomas sees the forms:
I answer that, As ideas, according to Plato, are principles of the knowledge of things and of their generation, an idea has this twofold office, as it exists in the mind of God. So far as the idea is the principle of the making of things, it may be called an "exemplar," and belongs to practical knowledge. But so far as it is a principle of knowledge, it is properly called a "type," and may belong to speculative knowledge also. As an exemplar, therefore, it has respect to everything made by God in any period of time; whereas as a principle of knowledge it has respect to all things known by God, even though they never come to be in time; and to all things that He knows according to their proper type, in so far as they are known by Him in a speculative manner.
Part I : Question 15. Ideas
Article 3. Whether there are ideas of all things that God knows?
http://newadvent.com/summa/1015.htm#article3
Objection 4. Further, it is certain that God knows not only species, but also genera, singulars, and accidents. But there are not ideas of these, according to Plato's teaching, who first taught ideas, as Augustine says (Octog. Tri. Quaest. qu. xlvi). Therefore there are not ideas in God of all things known by Him.
Reply to Objection 4. Genus can have no idea apart from the idea of species, in so far as idea denotes an "exemplar"; for genus cannot exist except in some species. The same is the case with those accidents that inseparably accompany their subject; for these come into being along with their subject. But accidents which supervene to the subject, have their special idea. For an architect produces through the form of the house all the accidents that originally accompany it; whereas those that are superadded to the house when completed, such as painting, or any other such thing, are produced through some other form. Now individual things, according to Plato, have no other idea than that of species; both because particular things are individualized by matter, which, as some say, he held to be uncreated and the concause with the idea; and because the intention of nature regards the species, and produces individuals only that in them the species may be preserved. However, divine providence extends not merely to species; but to individuals as will be shown later I:22:3
It can be noted, both John Duns Scotus and it would seem Bishop Tempier considers there are even ideas of individuals, as called by Scotus "hecceitas".
This does not mean these are the only ideas.
In addition, he had to use materials he had not created himself and these tended to resist his attempts to form them.
Here Plato was not followed by St. Thomas or others in Christendom (except heretical Averroists).
I answer that, Two things belong to providence—namely, the type of the order of things foreordained towards an end; and the execution of this order, which is called government. As regards the first of these, God has immediate providence over everything, because He has in His intellect the types of everything, even the smallest; and whatsoever causes He assigns to certain effects, He gives them the power to produce those effects. Whence it must be that He has beforehand the type of those effects in His mind. As to the second, there are certain intermediaries of God's providence; for He governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any defect in His power, but by reason of the abundance of His goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures. Thus Plato's opinion, as narrated by Gregory of Nyssa (De Provid. viii, 3), is exploded. He taught a threefold providence.
First, one which belongs to the supreme Deity, Who first and foremost has provision over spiritual things, and thus over the whole world as regards genus, species, and universal causes. The second providence, which is over the individuals of all that can be generated and corrupted, he attributed to the divinities who circulate in the heavens; that is, certain separate substances, which move corporeal things in a circular direction. The third providence, over human affairs, he assigned to demons, whom the Platonic philosophers placed between us and the gods, as Augustine tells us (De Civ. Dei, 1, 2: viii, 14).
Part I : Question 22. The providence of God
Article 3. Whether God has immediate providence over everything?
http://newadvent.com/summa/1022.htm#article3
So, the Medieval Christian élite were not blindly following Plato, precisely because they were Christians.
Galen (next mentioned by Statham) may have rejected the Genesis account, or he may not have known of it, but he was a physician, and was followed by Medievals in medicine, not in philosophy.
Instead of studying the motions of the planets and concluding from this that they follow elliptical orbits, as did Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), Plato ‘reasoned’ that they must follow circular paths because circular motion is most perfect, an ‘ideal’ form, and most befitting to the gods.
A circle is a rough sketch of an ellipse, and Plato was probably arguing that they are not angular. In fact, the one overdoing circularity and rejecting most any deviation from it in the history of astronomy was arguably Copernicus : his exact reason for rejecting Geocentrism is that it would involve Spirograph patterns for planetary orbits, if abstraction is made from daily (nearly perfectly circular) concrete movement of it.
It can be added that the Geocentric Riccioli had no beef against the elliptical orbits, as long as the ellipses have Sun as only epicentre, with Solar motion around the Zodiac around Earth as primary orbit.
Platonic thinking was antithetical to science because it detracted from the view that the world could be understood by learning from observations.
This was not the case with Aristotelic thinking.
Now, to the meat of the matter:
Plato taught that the cosmos created by the Demiurge was a living organism, that the world had a divine soul, and the stars and planets were gods. In a similar vein, Aristotle taught that stones fall to the ground because they have a yearning for the centre of the universe (which he believed to be the centre of the earth). Such thinking was an obstruction to science because it attributed causes of motion to motives and inner compulsions, rather than to impersonal, external forces.
Modern science certainly has a preference for impersonal forces. Newsflash : the Bible hasn't.
A divine soul for the universe as a whole is normally rejected by all Christian thinkers - apart from perhaps some few considering the Holy Spirit as that, and some Averroists who were condemned, and Giordano Bruno (a very important Heliocentric precursor) who considered each Solar System has its own Holy Spirit as world soul for its own World. This is what he went to the stake for.
Stars and planets being spirits is arguable independently of whether these spirits should be worshipped or not. Rather not.
In contrast, the Bible clearly distinguishes between the Creator and the creature (i.e. that which was created).
Yes; so far correct.
God is spirit (John 4:24) and is a being separate from the world.
It does not follow that God is the only spirit or that the world is only matter. Men and angels are certainly involved in the category spiritual creatures.
There is only one God (Isaiah 45:5) and His creation is not divine; for God said: “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me” (Isaiah 43:10).
Fine with me.
However, this means only that the Host of Heaven are created beings, not whether they are matter only, matter moved by spirits (view of St. Thomas and Riccioli) or matter having spirits for own souls (rejected by both, but at least compatible with the Biblical statements).
Indeed, to attribute divinity to the creature is idolatry.
But to attribute life and spirituality or intelligence and freewill to it isn't.
As argued by Oratian priest Nicole Malebranche (1638–1715), there can be only one cause which is “nothing but the will of God”.
To be very precise on what he means : if a fire burns a page, according to Malebranche, God has caused the fire, God has caused the page to crumble and blacken, and neither the page nor the fire have caused anything at all. The fire has caused nothing in the page. God caused both the fire and the page burns or page destruction, independently of each other, except He artistically associated them.
But supposing this were so, this would hardly help Newtonian views of the matter, as Newtonianism introduces forces that are causes, in mechanics. Thereby contradicting Malebranche, unless you want to say God mimics forces that don't exist.
For Malebranche, Greek ‘forms’ are nothing more than “the little gods of the heathen” introduced by the evil one to occupy the hearts which the Creator has made to belong to himself.
And for St. Thomas Aquinas, forms (ideas) are triple:
- Forms in God's eternal mind, before He creates;
- The reflexion of these in creatures;
- The categorisations from previous leading back to first in human observers.
To argue for "forms" in God's mind, some have given an alternative punctuation of John's Prologue.
Omnia per ipsum facta sunt : et sine ipso factum est nihil, quod factum est. [4] In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum :
Given as following by St. Augustine*:
Omnia per ipsum facta sunt : et sine ipso factum est nihil.
Quod factum est, in ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum :
The first simply gives universal agency in creation, as usual. The second says, whatever was created - including things that are lifeless - were life in Him, and that life is the (intellectual) light of men (in understanding the things).
In other words**, we see forms (whether we use that language or not, in fact we do, as Green Monkeys don't), because we are enlightened by the Life in which the forms were alive in God's mind, in the Word of the Father, before they were also extant as dead things in creation.
But whether or not forms in the things exist, Malebranche did neither call men nor angels "little gods of the heathens".
And the question on whether heavenly bodies have angelic movers is not one on whether they have forms.
The cosmos is not an organism and does not have a soul, this being firmly established in the very first book of the Bible. Here only animals and people are described as ‘living creatures’ (Genesis 1:20, 24).
You are forgetting, heavenly bodies are called "the host of heaven" in the King James version of Genesis 2:1, which would seem to shadow closely the Hebrew, since the word "host" is cited in a Catholic Vocabulaire de Théologie Biblique*** despite its lack in Douay Rheims, Vulgate, and LXX:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
The universe is not eternal and does not have any self-sustaining or self-generating powers.
The universe is certainly not from eternity and certainly has no self-generating powers, since generated by God.
Whether under God sustaining its existence there is some other kind of (only relatively) self-sustaining powers is not said, and if the answer is negative, what do you make of for instance atom theory or quantum physics?
As to absolutely self sustaining or as to existing from eternity, Medieval Intellectual élites, that is Catholic bishops and theologians, most certainly did not follow Aristotle in this respect.
Rather it is the work of a single Creator upon whom it is totally dependent.
Totally as in letters do not appear because I chose to write them? My choice and the letters appearing are both products of God's will and independent of each other? That is how totally Malebranche would have it. St. Thomas would disagree, God created second causes (human and angelic wills being two categories of these, biological and mechanic/motoric causality two more of them) which while not escaping the overall control of God (even in minutest detail) have internally some connexion by causation as well.
Hence, objects do not have minds and desires,
While dead objects do not have minds, the metaphor of their "desires" is as legitimate as that of them "obeying laws".
While the visible Sun and Moon and stars may be dead objects, the Bible doesn't quite treat them like that. The least one can do to accomodate its actual words in many places is assuming each has an angel acting behind and through the visible body.
When the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God made a joyful melody? Job 38:7
Ergo : angels did so, but are (all) called morning stars because they (some of them) control stars, including the ones referred to as morning stars in everyday life.
The same seems to be the case with angels (or even demons) controlling lightnings:
Canst thou send lightnings, and will they go, and will they return and say to thee: Here we are? (v. 35, same chapter)
Both for stars and lightnings, there are parallels:
He that sendeth forth light, and it goeth: and hath called it, and it obeyeth him with trembling. And the stars have given light in their watches, and rejoiced: They were called, and they said: Here we are: and with cheerfulness they have shined forth to him that made them. (Baruch 3:33-35)
And to the angels indeed he saith: He that maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire. (Hebrews 1:7, citing following)
Who makest thy angels spirits: and thy ministers a burning fire. (Psalm 103:4)
So, objects like lightning and stars do have minds after all, if not in them, then behind them.
In Aristotelic physics falling objects desire the centre of the universe and rising objects desire the periphery of it. In Newtonian physics, they are dead objects (insofar as these movements are concerned) and in the Bible this is not decided. Falling and rising are not dealt with.
It is possible that in Aristotle, stars being made of a different matter desire circular motion.
In St. Thomas, the daily circular motion around Earth of all the visible universe (including sphere of fix stars, primum mobile on his view about solid spheres) is performed by the will of God moving all of it. However, the other motions, like Sun going backwards full circle one year or Moon going backwards a bit more than full circle in one month, these are performed by angels, acting on the visible bodies in their spheres. Also by a spirit's will acting directly on matter, but in this case they are not all powerful, they can only act on one body at a time, each angel.
and are not subject to laws inherent within their natures; instead the non-living world operates according to laws imposed on it from without.
In fact, laws don't impose any locomotions, the fact of moving from one place to another. Movers do : physical moving objects in contact with other objects, physical forces, and mind moving matter. Laws describe whatever kind of power each type of mover has, but a law about a force (say Ohm's law about conductors influencing electric current) does not decide which other movers are available. The electromagnetic movement of a part of a gadget will obey the laws of electromagnetism, but these will not decide how likely it is that the user moves the same part by his hands, in fact, they don't even decide which parts are meant to be moved by electromagnetism (like the membrane in a phone, the one held against the ear, with a safety barrier between) and which parts are meant to be moved by hands (like the receiver containing the membrane).
Likewise the laws of physics, whether rightly or wrongly formulated by Newton, do not decide which parts of the universe are meant to be moved by mind moving matter, like human fingers or tongues, which we agree on, or whether stars are part of that deal too in some respect, which we disagree on.
Also, some laws are according to the standard view inherent in the objects, like Ohm's law is inherent in how electrons move and how electron fields cooperate in pieces of metal. Biological entities very obviously follow laws inherent in their genomes. These do not apply to lifeless matter, but that does not prove lifeless matter cannot be moved by its inner nature. Nor does it prove it cannot be moved by angels.
When St. Thomas decided against Sun, Moon and Stars being biological (which he did) it was partly because he knew no change except locomotion was observed in them, and sometimes also in luminosity, like faces of the Moon or different brightness of Venus. What would he conclude if he had seen pictures of Jupiter's red eye or Solar protuberances? I don't know.
However, deciding a thing is not biological does not mean it cannot be moved by mind moving matter, as God can always and everywhere, and as angels can one object and place at a time.
The moon gives rise to tides, not because it has some sort of friendship with the water of the oceans, but because of the impersonal law of gravity.
I know very well this is the common view, but I know of absolutely no Bible verse to support it.
If waves are not moved by spirits, whom was Our Lord talking to?
Let's see what words the Synoptics used:
- Matthew 8
- Then rising up he commanded the winds, and the sea, and there came a great calm.
St. Matthew gives no direct citation. It is not clear whether it is a command to blind matter as often in creation week, or a command to some kind of person.
- Mark 4
- And rising up, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea: Peace, be still. And the wind ceased: and there was made a great calm.
Both "rebuked" and the citation "peace, be still" indicate adress to a person or as if to a person.
- Luke 8
- But he arising, rebuked the wind and the rage of the water; and it ceased, and there was a calm.
St. Luke also, like St. Matthew, gives no citation, but he uses the word "rebuked".
The Clementine view of the Gospels is:
He used to say that the earliest gospels were those containing the genealogies [Matthew, Luke], while Mark's originated as follows: When, at Rome, Peter had openly preached the word and by the Spirit had proclaimed the gospel, the large audience urged Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered what had been said, to write it all down. This he did, making his gospel available to all who wanted it. When Peter heard about this, he made no objection and gave no special encouragement. Last of all, aware that the physical facts had been recorded in the gospels, encouraged by his pupils and irresistibly moved by the Spirit, John wrote a spiritual gospel.
The stilling of the storm is a case in point. St. Matthew was cautious, since he was aware of Sadducees. St. Luke dared to say "rebuked". St. Mark heard St. Peter give the exact words of the rebuke, or some of them.
With the words given in St. Mark and the verbum dicendi implying moral disapproval in both Sts. Mark and Luke, we must conclude Our Lord was dissatisfied with someone's behaviour, and those would normally be of angelic nature. Nothing in the Bible says, that would be a very exceptional situation.
What is Catchpoole's major point in objects obeying only impersonal laws? The use of "law" in more than one place.
In the Old Testament, God’s commands to nature are often expressed in legal language. For example, the Hebrew word huq is used in both Proverbs 8:29 and Job 28:26. Its verbal form means to ‘engrave’ or ‘legislate’ and is often used in the context of God giving moral and ritual laws. In both these verses, the 4th century Vulgate translation uses the Latin word lex, meaning ‘law’.
Job 28:26 says: When he gave a law for the rain, and a way for the sounding storms.
Proverbs 8:29 says : When he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits: when be balanced the foundations of the earth;
And thanks for saying it is often used in the context of God giving moral and ritual laws. Catholic priests normally obey rubrics, when handling the sacraments. Angels would want to and demons would be forced to "obey the rubrics" - which would be those observed, but not necessarily those deduced by scientists about the observations, when accounting for them. Especially not if being mistaken in seeing all the moving forces as lifeless. And note, laws don't move, movers, either living or lifeless, do. Precisely as rubrics won't achieve the sacraments without priests.
Remember, first the forms in God's eternal Wisdom, then the forms in the things, then the forms in the scientifically curious mind (which all men are to some degree). These last would sometimes be mistaken in their representation of the middle level, what is actually going on.
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), for example, wrote that nature “never transgresses the bounds of the laws imposed to it”, being a “most careful executor of the orders of God” and argued for nature’s strict observance of God’s commands citing, among others, Job 28:26, 38:8–11 and Psalm 104:9.
Let's look at Psalm 103:9.
Thou hast set a bound which they shall not pass over; neither shall they return to cover the earth.
Now, let's look a bit closer to the context, 6-9:
The deep like a garment is its clothing: above the mountains shall the waters stand. At thy rebuke they shall flee: at the voice of thy thunder they shall fear. The mountains ascend, and the plains descend into the place which thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound which they shall not pass over; neither shall they return to cover the earth.
Note, "at thy rebuke" is echoed in the stilling of the storm, but a few words on "at the voice of thy thunder they shall fear" - we must assume Christ was shouting at "the waters" at lower bass and stronger forte or fortissimo than He would have used in normal speech. Hence "thy thunder". But we must also assume from here that someone is fearing that command.
In other words, the very Bible quote on which Catchpoole wants to build "impersonal laws imposed from without" instead in context suggests personal obedience to God's law. Either in water if the water itself is animated, in several different persons if so, or in angelic or demonic movers of them.
However, we have René Descartes arguing the contrary:
René Descartes (1596–1650; figure 2) stated that “the rules of nature are identical with the rules of mechanics” and, in his Le Monde (The World), he asserted “that God is immutable, and that acting always in the same manner, He produces always the same effect”.
First of all, Cartesius, Renatus / Descartes, Renatus is still on the index°:
| Carrozzi, Giuseppe | Le prescrizioni sul diritto del matrimonio con i commenti a ciascun articolo, estratti dal commentario sul codice civile universale del sig. Zeiller con alcune addizioni. | 1817 | |
| Cartesius, Renatus | 0 | Descartes, Renatus | |
| Cary, Edward | The catechist catechized, or loyalty asserted in vindication the oath of allegiance against a new catechisme set forth by a father of the society of Jesus. | 1682 | Brontius, Adolphus [pseudonymus] |
| ... | |||
| Desboulmiers, Jean-Augustin-Julien | Histoires; Honny soit qui mal y pense, ou histoires des filles célèbres du XVIII siècle. | 1762 | |
| Descartes, Renatus | Les passions de l'âme. Donec corrig. | 1663 | |
| Descartes, Renatus | Opera philosophica. Donec corrig. | 1663 | |
| Descartes, Renatus | Notae in programma quoddam sub finem anni 1647 in Belgio editum cum hoc titulo: Explicatio mentis humanae sive animae rationalis. Donec corrig. | 1663 | |
| Descartes, Renatus | Epistola ad celeberrimum virum Gisbertum Voetium, in qua examinantur duo libri nuper pro Voetio Ultraiecti simul editi. Donec corrig. | 1663 | |
| Descartes, Renatus | Meditationes de prima philosophia, in quibus Dei existentia et animae humanae a corpore distinctio demonstratur. Donec corrig. | 1663 | |
| Descartes, Renatus | Epistola ad patrem Dinet societatis Iesu praepositum provincialem per Franciam. Donec corrig. | 1663 | |
| Descartes, Renatus | Meditationes de prima philosophia, in quibus adiectae sunt in hac ultima editione utilissimae quaedam animadversiones ex variis doctissimisque authoribus collectae, cum authoris vita breviter ac concinne conscripta. | 1720 | |
| Deschamps, Felix | Epistola ad d. Martinum Steyaert de summo pontifice eiusque authoritate. | 1689 |
Second, the quote given can be one valid cause of the condemnation. If God always produces the same effects, because He is immutable, that would mean His immutable way of producing effects were some other one than free choice, and hence it would mean He could not produce miracles. Descartes became a precursor of Deism, of Voltaire, with these words. If on the other hand God's way of producing effects immutably involves free choice, both of what to produce and of how to produce it, whether by own will ruling over matter or by obedience of angels ruling with their wills over matter or laws inherent in material objects and so on, which is the Christian view, then we cannot conclude God "always produces the same effect".
French Bishop Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382) and French theologian Pierre D’Ailly (1350–1420) both wrote of the workings of the world as analogous to a clock.
Have you seen the clock°° of a Old Town Hall in Prague? It's a typically medieval clock, and it involves at midday the Twelve Apostles appearing in parade. To a Medieval, as Oresme and d'Ailly both were, the workings of a clock would be very much less impersonal than to a modern. Not to mention, the clock has to be regularly rewound to keep working. Not to mention, it involves an astronomy as the Geocentrics saw it.
In a work containing numerous biblical quotations, Boyle argued that “the universe being once framed by God, and the laws of motion being settled and all upheld by his incessant concourse and general providence, the phenomena of the world thus constituted … operate upon one another according to mechanical laws.” He also expressly denied the concept of immanent law, arguing that “the laws of motion, without which the present state and course of things could not be maintained, did not necessarily spring from the nature of matter, but depended upon the will of the divine author of things”.
Boyle may be giving the view which Catchpoole is presenting, but he may also simply be affirming the liberty of God, with which I have no quarrel whatsoever. If God was not constrained by any necessity arising from the nature of matter, He can still have freely chosen matter have such and such a nature from which certain laws come with probability, the rest of the fixedness coming from God's decree from without. But in fact, I will probably leave Boyle to Catchpoole. He was an Anglican heretic, and a Modern, not a Medieval.
He is even on the index°:
| Boyle, Robert | Some considerations touching the syle of the holy scriptures. | 1695 |
| Boyle, Robert | Of the seraphic love or motives and incentives to the love of God. | 1695 |
| Boyle, Robert | Of the high veneration man's intellect owes to God. | 1695 |
I have two more things to say, before concluding.
- When Catchpoole wants to prove such and such a position belongs to "the intellectual élites of the Middle Ages" he often refers to a recent work of reference, which I cannot consult, because copyright of author has not yet expired, so the work is not yet available for free on the internet. Instead he could have referred to the Medieval works or persons they refer to, so I could both consult it (much is already available on internet in Latin at least) and (knowing the Middle Ages fairly well) have some good view on whether the assessment of them being representative of the élite and the words being representative and rightly interpreted. This also involves an over trust in scientists as historians of science.
Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Scientists Suck at History of Science
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2019/11/scientists-suck-at-history-of-science.html
- While using the word "intellectual élites", he is allowing us to assume that on lower levels, below that élite view, there was another popular view, much closer to the modern one. This is a bit like the move of one Ginzburg who claimed that the miller Menocchio was voicing an actually very popular and widespread atheism, which is from many points of view absurd. People making these kinds of argument, which Catchpoole doesn't explicitly do, but allows a lot of readers to do, are so sure of their own view point, which has usually been more or less recently popularised, that they think everyone in older days must have held the same view and the élite we actually see from the documents must be imposiung their views by some very unpopular tyranny which could only go on because no one had figured out how to organise a popular resistance yet. This is obviously rot. There is often a lag between élite and people, but it is often either people being where the élite was fifty years ago, or élite being where the people arrived twenty years ago. It is not and cannot be centuries of total divergence between the one and the other. People in the Middle Ages were not Atheists and also were not Evangelical Christians believing Locke or Boyle. They were basically believing the same things, with bungling of details, as the élite did. If the élite was not Christian, then Christianity failed and Matthew 28:18-20 is alsready a broken promise. It is not ... since Protestantism is not true.
It can be added, about the index° that Malebranche is on it too:
| Malebranche, Nicolas | Défense de l'auteur de la recherche de la vérité contre l'accusation de mr. De la Ville. 21 nov 1680 | |
| Malebranche, Nicolas | Traité de la nature et de la grace. | 1689 |
| Malebranche, Nicolas | Lettres à un de ses amis dans lesquelles il répond aux philosophiques et théologiques de mr. Arnauld sur le traité de la nature et de la grâce. | 1689 |
| Malebranche, Nicolas | Lettres, touchant celles de mr. Arnaud. | 1689 |
| Malebranche, Nicolas | De la recherche de la vérité, où l'on traite de la nature de l'esprit de l'homme et de l'usage qu'il en doit faire pour éviter l'erreur dans les sciences. | 1707 |
| Malebranche, Nicolas | Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion. | 1712 |
| Malebranche, Nicolas | Traité de morale. | 1712 |
While it was arguably bad general culture came to such a pass Galileo had to be taken off the index, Galileo most certainly deserved getting there. In Dieci autori italiani classici, presented by Isabelle Lavergne, one should read Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi, Prima giornata (83-84-85). Like Bruno before him, Galileo suggests some kind of aliens. In absence of celestial bodies being alive or having living movers, we get to them being inhabited, by some kind of strange biology.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Audoux
St. Elisabeth of Hungary
19.XI.2019
PS, I wrote the essay over several sessions, and by the time I came around to today's, I had forgot the author of the essay was Statham, and had come to associate it with Catchpoole. Every occurrence of Catchpoole above shall be taken as meaning Statham./HGL
PPS, I knew there was a reason why I thought of Catchpoole, I had written a refutation of his Babylonian Easter Eggs yesterday;
Great Bishop of Geneva! : What an Eggcellent Occasion!
https://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2019/11/what-eggcellent-occasion.html
Even with sleep lag and tooth ache, my thoughts don't just ramble quite randomly./HGL
* Cited by Dom Gérard Calvet in Demain le Chrétienté. ** Not checking on my interpretation how close it is to what I read years ago. *** "VTB cerf 1970 avec des Nihil Obstat et Imprimatur de 1969", p. 93 Astres was cited on my post Avant-hier.
° Link to the 1948 (latest) edition of the index librorum:
http://www.cvm.qc.ca/gconti/905/BABEL/Index%20Librorum%20Prohibitorum-1948.htm
°° https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_astronomical_clock
