RE: What do invented saints tell us about Christianity?
November 12, 2019 at 5:53 am
(This post was last modified: November 12, 2019 at 6:01 am by TimOneill.)
(November 12, 2019 at 12:19 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: He does seems zealous in "defending" Christianity in every way he can to the point of being completely wrong.
For instance first thing on that page he arrogantly attacks Aron Ra for saying how St. Augustine considered Earth to be flat. But the thing is that Aron didn't make a wrong claim, I mean maybe he wasn't right but certainly he wasn't wrong, and especially that wrong for this guy to make a stupid mockery show à la Kirk Cameroon and the banana.
For instance this is what St. Augustine scholar, Leo Ferrari, wrote about St. Augustine
Quote:[Augustine] was familiar with the Greek theory of a spherical Earth, nevertheless, (following in the footsteps of his fellow North African, Lactantius), he was firmly convinced that the Earth was flat, was one of the two biggest bodies in existence and that it lay at the bottom of the universe. Apparently Augustine saw this picture as more useful for scriptural exegesis than the global Earth at the centre of an immense universe.
Leo Ferrari, "Rethinking Augustine's Confessions, Thirty Years of Discoveries", Religious Studies and Theology (2000)
Interesting that the quote you found on a Wiki page was carefully cherry picked, ignoring the scholars who think that it's Ferrari who was, to use your phrase, "completely wrong". For example, C.P.E. Nothaft, "Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari", Augustinian Studies, 42 (1): 35. Or David C. Lindberg, "Science and the Early Church" in Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L. (eds.). God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, 1986. Given that Lindbeg was pretty much the pre-eminent expert on early science in this period, I'm a bit more inclined toward his assessment.
But since, on the basis of a quick Google of a Wiki page, you're a sudden expert on Augustinian natural philosophy, maybe you can explain to us how De genesi ad litteram, I.10.21 and XXX.33 can be reconciled with the claim that Augustine thought the earth was flat. Good luck.
