I. GROWTH OF A THEOLOGICAL THEORY.
The popular beliefs of classic antiquity regarding storms, thunder, and lightning, took shape in myths representing Vulcan as forging thunderbolts, Jupiter as flinging them at his enemies, Aeolus intrusting the winds in a bag to Aeneas, and the like. An attempt at their further theological development is seen in the Pythagorean statement that lightnings are intended to terrify the damned in Tartarus.
But at a very early period we see the beginning of a scientific view. In Greece, the Ionic philosophers held that such phenomena are obedient to law. Plato, Aristotle, and many lesser lights, attempted to account for them on natural grounds; and their explanations, though crude, were based upon observation and thought. In Rome, Lucretius, Seneca, Pliny, and others, inadequate as their statements were, implanted at least the germs of a science. But, as the Christian Church rose to power, this evolution was checked; the new leaders of thought found, in the Scriptures recognized by them as sacred, the basis for a new view, or rather for a modification of the old view.
This ending of a scientific evolution based upon observation and reason, and this beginning of a sacred science based upon the letter of Scripture and on theology, are seen in the utterances of various fathers in the early Church. As to the general features of this new development, Tertullian held that sundry passages of Scripture prove lightning identical with hell-fire; and this idea was transmitted from generation to generation of later churchmen, who found an especial support of Tertullian's view in the sulphurous smell experienced during thunderstorms. St. Hilary thought the firmament very much lower than the heavens, and that it was created not only for the support of the upper waters, but also for the tempering of our atmosphere.(199) St. Ambrose held that thunder is caused by the winds breaking through the solid firmament, and cited from the prophet Amos the sublime passage regarding "Him that establisheth the thunders."(200) He shows, indeed, some conception of the true source of rain; but his whole reasoning is limited by various scriptural texts. He lays great stress upon the firmament as a solid outer shell of the universe: the heavens he holds to be not far outside this outer shell, and argues regarding their character from St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians and from the one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm. As to "the waters which are above the firmament," he takes up the objection of those who hold that, this outside of the universe being spherical, the waters must slide off it, especially if the firmament revolves; and he points out that it is by no means certain that the OUTSIDE of the firmament IS spherical, and insists that, if it does revolve, the water is just what is needed to lubricate and cool its axis.
(199) For Tertullian, see the Apol. contra gentes, c. 47; also Augustin
de Angelis, Lectiones Meteorologicae, p. 64. For Hilary, see In Psalm
CXXXV. (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. ix, p. 773).
(200) "Firmans tonitrua" (Amos iv, 13); the phrase does not appear in
our version.
St. Jerome held that God at the Creation, having spread out the firmament between heaven and earth, and having separated the upper waters from the lower, caused the upper waters to be frozen into ice, in order to keep all in place. A proof of this view Jerome found in the words of Ezekiel regarding "the crystal stretched above the cherubim."(201)
(201) For Ambrose, see the Hexaemeron, lib. ii, cap. 3,4; lib. iii, cap.
5 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xiv, pp. 148-150, 153, 165). The passage
as to lubrication of the heavenly axis is as follows: "Deinde cum ispi
dicant volvi orbem coeli stellis ardentibus refulgentem, nonne divina
providentia necessario prospexit, ut intra orbem coeli, et supra orbem
redundaret aqua, quae illa ferventis axis incendia temperaret?" For
Jerome, see his Epistola, lxix, cap. 6 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxii,
p.659).
The germinal principle in accordance with which all these theories were evolved was most clearly proclaimed to the world by St. Augustine in his famous utterance: "Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind."(202) No treatise was safe thereafter which did not breathe the spirit and conform to the letter of this maxim. Unfortunately, what was generally understood by the "authority of Scripture" was the tyranny of sacred books imperfectly transcribed, viewed through distorting superstitions, and frequently interpreted by party spirit.