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Henry Imler January 1st, 2005

In 1615 C.E. the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany received a letter from a friend of hers. The letter sparked off one of the great confrontations between the thinkers of religion and those of science. It was one of the major battles between two ideologies that had been diametrically opposed since their respective conceptions. At least that was the way it was seen for many years afterward. Such a view is called the Conflict Theory:”(Wilson, David. The Historiography of Science and Religion. Science and Religion. 2002. John Hopkins University Press. p.14)”:. It states that religion and science have always been opposed to each other’s ideas and are in a state of perpetual conflict. The Trial of Galileo was only a flash point in an old, unending war between two veins of thought. However, if one looks deeper into the issue, a different interpretation is waiting to be found.

Up until its contact with the ideas of Aristotle, the Church had assumed that the world was created by God only a few thousand years ago, sat in the center of all creation, was driven by God�s will. The Church�s attitude towards science can be best characterized by what is known as the Hand Maiden theory. In this view, Scripture was considered as the true representation of reality. Science was seen as something that could bolster Scripture, help explain what Scripture was silent about, but never would it contradict Scripture. This was impossible because Scripture was truth and truth could never contradict truth. Humans were imbued with reason that mirrored God’s, but because humans were tainted with original sin, our reason was prone to failure. Therefore, it was assumed that when reason ventured so far away from Scripture that it conflicted with it, the Church simply dismissed it as necessarily erroneous.

Once the Church was confronted with the ideas of Aristotle, it ran into several serious problems. Aristotle’s world view made wonderful sense. So wonderful, in fact that it seemed to be the only explanation of the natural world. Despite all of its appeals, it came to several logical conclusions that were unacceptable for the Church. In the Aristotelian framework, the universe was completely self contained and eternal, even the prime mover was contained within the system. In the Christian view, God was the creator of the system and stood outside it. God himself was seemingly rendered impotent. God was assumed to be the most perfect being. The most perfect being must have the most perfect thoughts. Therefore, the only thing that God is allowed by logic to think about is Himself. This stood in stark contrast with the personally involved god of the Christian scriptures. Similar disagreements arose on the topics of the soul’s essence and the naturalistic vs. providential view of history.

At first the Church tried to trim down the Aristotelian worldview. In 1231 pope Gregory IX issued a papal bull that warned against the errors contained in the Aristotle’s natural philosophy:”(Lindberg, David. Medieval Science and Religion. Science and Religion. 2002. John Hopkins University Press. p.66)”:. It requested that the errors be trimmed out and then the parts that aligned with the Church�s interpretation of scripture could be taught. This approach never panned out because the �Aristotelian philosophy was simply too valuable to relinquish.�:”(Ibid, 67)”:

Instead the philosophy was taught across the board and attempts were
made to Christianize Aristotle. The most successful in this undertaking was Thomas Aquinas. He was able to successfully mesh the philosophy of the Church and of Aristotle. The accommodation went both ways, parts of Christianity were aristoteleanized and parts of Aristotle were christianized. The Church seemed to have found the balance in the well rationalized philosophy of Aquinas. His was a system that explained reality and theology in a way that was almost perfectly harmonious.

So convincing was Aquinas’ work that a few hundred years later, at the Council of Trent, a terrible thing occurred. It was a well intentioned mistake, but a mistake never the less. Martin Luther, in 1517, first openly challenged the authority and doctrine of the Catholic Church:”Wikipedia(Luther: The Indulgence Controversy, 2/18/2005)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther. His challenge sparked the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. The Church responded in several ways. They tried refuting, repressing, and responding to the challenges that Protestants laid before them. One of the responses of the Catholic Church was its own counter reformation. The Council of Trent, held in several sessions starting in 1545 and ending in 1563, shored up the Church’s position on several topics, such as the sale of indulgences and the nature of salvation. The issue of importance to the Galileo trial was the formal induction of tradition in to the cannon. The Church said that the Holy Spirit had not only spoken though the Apostles, but also the Church Fathers and the Church Doctors. The interesting part is that the Church gets to decide who the Church Fathers and the Church Doctors are. Once a person is named a Church Father or a Church Doctor, their works are considered to be inspired. As expected, Aquinas was named placed into this category. This philosophy became not only the official Church stance, but also viewed to be inspired. As a consequence of Aquinas’ worldview being inducted, the geocentric worldview of Aristotle was also viewed to be inspired. The Council of Trent also declared that only the Church could interpret scripture.

At first glance, this might not seem to be such a large problem. After all Aristotle did such a marvelous job of explaining reality. As a matter of fact, the Church was quite tolerant of other theories to explain the workings of the world. However, one needs to understand the meaning of the word �theory� at this time. The word conveyed a sense of simply �saving the phenomenon�, not explaining reality. That is why Copernicus’ system was used by the Pope to reform the calendar. It was seen by the Church simply as a good method of calculation, not a depiction of reality, and Copernicus, despite his true feelings, did not press the issue as reality.

Galileo did not take the same path as Copernicus. Galileo saw that the Church was attached to geocentricism, a theory that was increasingly being recognized as being fundamentally flawed. He was worried that as the general populace realized this, they would abandon the Church. Being the good catholic that he was:”(Alioto, Anthony. Columbia College. Class Lectures Fall 2004-Spring 2005.)”:, he sought to convince the Church the error of their ways and thus aid in the saving of the rolls. In his above mentioned letter to Christina he declared that the Copernican view did represent reality and that scripture should be reinterpreted to follow the findings of science, namely, the Copernican theory. The Church was not up to his challenge. Both of these ideas: the claim of reality of the Copernican model, and the elevation of science over scripture were unacceptable to the Church; as the Council of Trent had permanently excluded them from acceptance by the Catholic Church. Thus began the Trial of Galileo.

Science had been embraced by religion in the form of the acceptance of Aquinas as a Church father. Once they had embraced Science, the Church latched onto its, then, current form and attempted to cast it in the concrete of dogma. Instead of leaving science in it natural dynamic state, always seeking the truth and being open to change; the Church, at the Council of Trent, created a dogma that it was unable to back away from when pressured by Galileo and the Protestants.