There are two spheres of revelation the Bible (special revelation) and nature (general revelation). This is a clear case of scientific knowledge correcting the church’s interpretation of the Bible. The church thought that because the Bible uses this kind of descriptive language, it was therefore teaching something about the relationship between the sun and the earth. Scripture describes the movements of the heavens from the perspective of someone standing on earth: the sun moves across the sky, rising in the east and setting in the west. Both Luther and Calvin opposed Copernicus’s views, believing them to undermine Scripture’s authority.Īctually the Bible does not explicitly teach geocentricity anywhere. It was a sad chapter in the history of the church, which had believed for more than fifteen hundred years that the Bible teaches geocentricity, when it condemned Galileo for believing and teaching heliocentricity. They argued that the center of the solar system is not the earth (geocentricity), but the sun (heliocentricity). We are reminded of the sixteenth century, when Copernicus and his followers repudiated the old Ptolemaic view of astronomy. This crisis has resulted in several attempts to reinterpret the Genesis account of creation. Many consider the biblical account to be primitive, mythological, and untenable in light of modern scientific knowledge. Common to these theories is the acceptance of the dominant scientific view that the earth and life on it are very old. In our time a considerable number of theories have arisen denying that the creation, as we know it, took place in twenty-four hour days. This narrative proceeds from the first day to the sixth, each time referring to “the evening and the morning” and numbering the day. In the Genesis account of creation, we read “So the evening and the morning were the first day” (Gen. In the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days and all very good. Here is his commentary on the Westminster Confession's phrase "…in the space of six days." We are commonly asked for a clarification of R.C.
0 kommentar(er)
