Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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and passages from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes, which assert that the earth
stands fast and that the sun moves around it. He suggests severe measures
to restrain such impious teaching as that of Copernicus.
But we must remember that the Copernican theory was opposed by
philosophers as well as theologians of all creeds for nearly a hundred years,
under the notion that it contradicts the testimony of the senses and the
geocentric teaching of the Bible. When towards the close of the sixteenth
century Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) became a convert to the Copernican
theory, and with his rude telescope discovered the satellites of Jupiter and
the phases of Venus, he was denounced as a heretic, summoned before the
Inquisition at Rome and commanded by Bellarmin, the standard theologian
of the papacy, to abandon his error, and to teach that the earth is the
immovable centre of the universe (Feb. 26, 1616). The Congregation of the
Index, moved by Pope Paul V., rendered the decree that “the doctrine of
the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and
entirely contrary to the Holy Scripture,” and condemned the works of
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, which affirm the motion of the earth.
They remained on the Index Purgatorius till the time of Benedict XIV.
Even after the triumph of the Copernican system in the scientific world,
there were respectable theologians, like John Owen and John Wesley, who
found it inconsistent with their theory of inspiration, and rejected it as a
delusive and arbitrary hypothesis tending towards infidelity. “E pur si
muove,” the earth does move for all that!
There can be no contradiction between the Bible and science; for the Bible
is not a book of astronomy or geology or science; but a book of religion,
teaching the relation of the world and man to God; and when it touches
upon the heavenly bodies, it uses the phenomenal popular language
without pronouncing judgment for or against any scientific theory.